Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Puck's Final Speech

Puck’s Final Speech

By William Shakespeare

 

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act V, Scene 1

 

If we shadows have offended, 

Think but this, and all is mended, 

That you have but slumber’d here 

While these visions did appear. 

And this weak and idle theme, 

No more yielding but a dream, 

Gentles, do not reprehend: 

if you pardon, we will mend: 

And, as I am an honest Puck, 

If we have unearned luck 

Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue, 

We will make amends ere long; 

Else the Puck a liar call; 

So, good night unto you all. 

Give me your hands, if we be friends, 

And Robin shall restore amends.

 

The mischievous Puck ends A Midsummer Night’s Dream with these lines. It is one of my favorite passages from Shakespeare.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

joseph said...

and very nice final in the theater's scene from "Le cercle des poëtes"