Page:A Midsummer-Nights Dream (Rackham).djvu/190

122 No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear without warning.

This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.

The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.

It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.

If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.

You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear

The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,

May now perchance both quake and tremble here,

When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.

Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am

A lion-fell, nor else no lion’s dam;

For, if I should as lion come in strife

Into this place, ’twere pity on my life.