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Scene Study prepares you to perform key scenes for your theater class or audition. We've got all the information you need for a great performance.

Excerpt from Act 3, Scene 2 Dialogue: Hermia, Helena, Lysander, Demetrius

 

LYSANDER

Be not afraid. She shall not harm thee, Helena.

DEMETRIUS

(to LYSANDER)

No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part.

HELENA

Oh, when she’s angry, she is keen and shrewd!
She was a vixen when she went to school.
And though she be but little, she is fierce.

HERMIA

“Little” again? Nothing but “low” and “little”!—
Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?
Let me come to her.

Read the full dialogue.
 

 

Understanding the Given Circumstances

  • The scene takes place at night in a magical forest outside the gates of Athens.
  • At the beginning of the play, Lysander and Demetrius both loved Hermia. Hermia loved Lysander, but she was going to be forced to marry Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander escaped to the forest to elope. Demetrius followed them.
  • Helena, who was in unrequited love with Demetrius, followed them all into the forest, hoping to win Demetrius’s favor.
  • While sleeping in the forest, Demetrius and Lysander each received a love potion designed to make them fall in love with the first person that they saw upon waking. Both woke up to see Helena. Now, they both love her instead of Hermia.
  • Right before Hermia’s entrance, Lysander and Demetrius, overcome with love for Helena, confess their feelings for her in passionate language. Helena believes both are mocking her.
  • Hermia enters the scene searching for Lysander, who left her sleeping in the woods.

 

Blocking and Movement

In theater, blocking is the process of planning the actors’ physical movements and positions. Be sure to show respect and establish trust when working with scene partners. As you prepare to block this scene, ask yourself the following questions:

  • When Hermia enters, she is desperate to find Lysander, who abandoned her sleeping in the forest. How can her entrance reflect her emotional state? How can the other three characters position themselves so that Hermia’s entrance is the most effective?
  • Helena and Hermia each refer insultingly to the height of the other. Helena is tall, while Hermia is short. How can movement and blocking accentuate their physical differences? How does the difference in physical stature affect each character’s willingness to enter a physical fight?
  • What are Lysander and Demetrius doing when Helena and Hermia trade insults with each other? How does their intense love for Helena inform how they react to her argument with Hermia?
  • An active scene with four passionate, violent people in it poses challenges for clarity. How will the audience know where to focus? How will the audience know what each character wants and is trying to achieve?
  • At the end of the scene, Lysander challenges Demetrius to a duel. What is the most effective and dramatic way for them to exit the stage?

 

Character Relationships

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the characters fall in and out of love at a moment’s notice. With the help of love potions and other magical interference, that love transforms into hate and back to love in the magical forest outside of the city. Once these lovers exit the safety of the city walls in Athens, their conflicting emotions reach a fever pitch.

Helena starts this play in love with Demetrius, but he is in unrequited love with her friend Hermia. Hermia regards Demetrius distastefully, since no matter how cruelly she treats him, he still wants to be with her. But Hermia hopes Demetrius will change his mind and return Helena’s love. When Hermia runs off with Lysander, Helena knows Demetrius will follow, and she plans to go after him. At this point, Hermia and Helena are aligned in wanting good fortune in love for one another.

However, when Demetrius does, in fact, declare his love for Helena, the womens’ friendship fractures. Helena doesn’t trust Demetrius’s change of heart, so she begins to wonder if Demetrius is mocking her. Then Lysander also declares his love for Helena, which makes no sense to Helena—she knows he and Hermia are in love. In her confusion, Helena comes to the only conclusion that makes sense to her: this was all a plot on Hermia’s part to humiliate her. (One could forgive Helena for not taking “interference from fairies” into consideration as a possible factor!) The friends become enemies, and the insults fly.
 

Full Act 3, Scene 2 Dialogue: Hermia, Helena, Lysander, Demetrius

 

Enter Hermia.

HERMIA

Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,
The ear more quick of apprehension makes.
Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,
It pays the hearing double recompense.
Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found.
Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound
But why unkindly didst thou leave me so?

LYSANDER

Why should he stay, whom love doth press to go?

HERMIA

What love could press Lysander from my side?

LYSANDER

Lysander’s love, that would not let him bide,
Fair Helena, who more engilds the night
Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light.
Why seek’st thou me? Could not this make thee know
The hate I bear thee made me leave thee so?

HERMIA

You speak not as you think. It cannot be.

HELENA

Lo, she is one of this confederacy!
Now I perceive they have conjoined all three
To fashion this false sport, in spite of me.—
Injurious Hermia! Most ungrateful maid!
Have you conspired, have you with these contrived
To bait me with this foul derision?
Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us—oh, is it all forgot?
All schooldays’ friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry—seeming parted
But yet an union in partition—
Two lovely berries molded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies but one heart,
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crownèd with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, ’tis not maidenly.
Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.

HERMIA

I am amazèd at your passionate words.
I scorn you not. It seems that you scorn me.

HELENA

Have you not set Lysander, as in scorn,
To follow me and praise my eyes and face?
And made your other love, Demetrius—
Who even but now did spurn me with his foot—
To call me goddess, nymph, divine, and rare,
Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this
To her he hates? And wherefore doth Lysander
Deny your love, so rich within his soul,
And tender me, forsooth, affection,
But by your setting on, by your consent?
What though I be not so in grace as you—
So hung upon with love, so fortunate—
But miserable most, to love unloved?
This you should pity rather than despise.

HERMIA

I understand not what you mean by this.

HELENA

Ay, do. Persever, counterfeit sad looks,
Make mouths upon me when I turn my back,
Wink each at other, hold the sweet jest up—
This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled.
If you have any pity, grace, or manners,
You would not make me such an argument.
But fare ye well. ‘Tis partly my own fault,
Which death or absence soon shall remedy.

LYSANDER

Stay, gentle Helena. Hear my excuse.
My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena!

HELENA

Oh, excellent!

HERMIA

(to LYSANDER)
Sweet, do not scorn her so.

DEMETRIUS

If she cannot entreat, I can compel.

LYSANDER

Thou canst compel no more than she entreat.
Thy threats have no more strength than her weak prayers.—
Helen, I love thee. By my life, I do.
I swear by that which I will lose for thee
To prove him false that says I love thee not.

DEMETRIUS

I say I love thee more than he can do.

LYSANDER

If thou say so, withdraw and prove it too.

DEMETRIUS

Quick, come.

HERMIA

Lysander, whereto tends all this? 

(holds LYSANDER back)

LYSANDER

(to HERMIA) Away, you Ethiope!

DEMETRIUS

(to HERMIA) No, no. He’ll
Seem to break loose.
(to LYSANDER)
Take on as you would follow,
But yet come not. You are a tame man, go!

LYSANDER

(to HERMIA) Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! Vile thing, let loose
Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent.

HERMIA

Why are you grown so rude? What change is this,
Sweet love?

LYSANDER

Thy love? Out, tawny Tartar, out!
Out, loathèd medicine! O hated potion, hence!

HERMIA

Do you not jest?

HELENA

Yes, sooth, and so do you.

LYSANDER

Demetrius, I will keep my word with thee.

DEMETRIUS

I would I had your bond, for I perceive
A weak bond holds you. I’ll not trust your word.

LYSANDER

What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead?
Although I hate her, I’ll not harm her so.

HERMIA

(to LYSANDER)
What, can you do me greater harm than hate?
Hate me? Wherefore? O me! What news, my love?
Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?
I am as fair now as I was erewhile.
Since night you loved me. Yet since night you left me.
Why then, you left me—Oh, the gods forbid!—
In earnest, shall I say?

LYSANDER

Ay, by my life,
And never did desire to see thee more.
Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt.
Be certain, nothing truer. ‘Tis no jest
That I do hate thee and love Helena.

HERMIA

O me!
(to HELENA) You juggler! You canker-blossom!
You thief of love! What, have you come by night
And stol’n my love’s heart from him?

HELENA

Fine, i’ faith!
Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,
No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tear
Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?
Fie, fie! You counterfeit, you puppet, you!

HERMIA

“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 prevailed 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.

HELENA

(to LYSANDER and DEMETRIUS)

I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,
Let her not hurt me. I was never cursed.
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.

HERMIA

“Lower”? Hark, again!

HELENA

Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.
I evermore did love you, Hermia,
Did ever keep your counsels, never wronged you—
Save that, in love unto Demetrius,
I told him of your stealth unto this wood.
He followed you. For love I followed him.
But he hath chid me hence and threatened me
To strike me, spurn me—nay, to kill me too.
And now, so you will let me quiet go,
To Athens will I bear my folly back
And follow you no further. Let me go.
You see how simple and how fond I am.

HERMIA

Why, get you gone! Who is ’t that hinders you?

HELENA

A foolish heart, that I leave here behind.

HERMIA

What, with Lysander?

HELENA

With Demetrius.

LYSANDER

Be not afraid. She shall not harm thee, Helena.

DEMETRIUS

(to LYSANDER)

No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part.

HELENA

Oh, when she’s angry, she is keen and shrewd!
She was a vixen when she went to school.
And though she be but little, she is fierce.

HERMIA

“Little” again? Nothing but “low” and “little”!—
Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?
Let me come to her.

LYSANDER

(to HERMIA) Get you gone, you dwarf,
You minimus of hindering knotgrass made,
You bead, you acorn!

DEMETRIUS

You are too officious
In her behalf that scorns your services.
Let her alone. Speak not of Helena.
Take not her part. For if thou dost intend
Never so little show of love to her,
Thou shalt aby it.

LYSANDER

Now she holds me not. 
Now follow, if thou darest, to try whose right, 
Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.

DEMETRIUS

“Follow”? Nay, I’ll go with thee, cheek by jowl.

Exeunt LYSANDER and DEMETRIUS

HERMIA

You, mistress, all this coil is long of you.
Nay, go not back.

HELENA

I will not trust you, I,

Nor longer stay in your curst company.
Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray.
My legs are longer though, to run away.

Exit HELENA

HERMIA

I am amazed and know not what to say.

Exit HERMIA

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