Page:A Midsummer-Nights Dream (Rackham).djvu/136

80 No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tear

Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?

Fie, fie! you counterfeit, you puppet, you!

Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.

Now I perceive that she hath made compare

Between our statures ; she hath urged her height;

And with her personage, her tall personage,

Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him.

And are you grown so high in his esteem,

Because I am so dwarfish and so low?

How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;

How low am I? I am not yet so low

But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes,

I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,

Let her not hurt me: I was never curst;

I have no gift at all in shrewishness;

I am a right maid for my cowardice:

Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,

Because she is something lower than myself,

That I can match her.

Lower! hark, again.