A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)

David Strathairn: Theseus

Photos 

Quotes 

• Theseus : No epilogue, I pray you, for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse, for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed.

• Theseus : The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve: Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.

  Oberon : Now, until the break of day / Through this house each fairy stray. / To the best bride-bed will we, / Which by us shall blessed be; / So shall all the couples three / Ever true in loving be; / And the owner of it blest / Ever shall in safety rest. / Trip awa; make no stay; / Meet me all by break of day.

• Theseus : Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief? That is hot ice and wonderous strange snow.

• Theseus : Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past. Begin these wood-birds but to couple now? I pray you all, stand up. I know you two are rival enemies. How comes this gentle concord in the world that hatred is so far from jealousy, to sleep by hate and fear no enmity?

  Lysander : My lord, I shall reply amazedly, half sleep, half waking... but as I think, for truly would I speak, I came with Hermia hither. Our intent was to be gone from Athens where we might without the peril of the Athenian law...

  Egeus : Enough! My lord, you have heard enough. I beg the law, the law upon his head. They would have stolen away. They would, Demetrius, thereby to have defeated you and me, you of your wife and me of my consent, of my consent that she should be your wife.

  Demetrius : My good lord, I wot not by what power, but by some power it is, my love to Hermia melted as the snow, and all the faith, the virtue of my heart, the object and the pleasure of mine eye is only Helena.

  [riding a few feet away to talk to Hippolyta privately, Theseus then returns] 

  Theseus : Fair lovers... you are fortunately met. Egeus, I will overbear your will, for in the temple by and by with us, these couples shall eternally be knit. Away with us to Athens, three and three. We'll hold a feast in great solemnity.

• Theseus : [Reveiewing possible plays to be presented]  "Battle with the Centaurs," to be sung by an Athenian eunuch to the harp. We'll none of that.