William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream

ACT IV 1. SCENE I. The Wood. (continued)

HELENA
And Hippolyta.

LYSANDER
And he did bid us follow to the temple.

DEMETRIUS
Why, then, we are awake: let's follow him;
And by the way let us recount our dreams.

[Exeunt.]

[As they go out, BOTTOM awakes.]

BOTTOM
When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is 'Most
fair Pyramus.'--Heigh-ho!--Peter Quince! Flute, the
bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God's my life,
stol'n hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare
vision. I have had a dream--past the wit of man to say
what dream it was.--Man is but an ass if he go about
to expound this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell
what. Methought I was, and methought I had,--but man is but a
patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The
eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen; man's
hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart
to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a
ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because
it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a
play, before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more
gracious, I shall sing it at her death.

[Exit.]