Hippolita. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear
Such gallant chiding. For besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seena'd all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd, like Thessalian bulls,
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never halloo'd to, nor cheer'd with hom,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly: Judge when you hear.
Even Titian never made a hunting-piece of a gusto so fresh and
lusty, and so near the first ages of the world as this.
It had been suggested to us, that the MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM would
do admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece; and our prompter
proposed that Mr. Kean should play the part of Bottom, as worthy of
his great talents. He might, in the discharge of his duty, offer to
play the lady like any of our actresses that he pleased, the lover
or the tyrant like any of our actors that he pleased, and the lion
like 'the most fearful wild-fowl living'.
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