Fie, fie! You counterfeit, you puppet296, you!
HERMIA Puppet? Why so? Ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures, she hath urged299 her height, And with her personage300, 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 maypole304? Speak!
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.
Attacks her
HELENA I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen, Let her not hurt me; I was never curst308, I have no gift at all in shrewishness309; I am a right310 maid for my cowardice; Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,
Because she is something lower312 than myself, That I can match her.
HERMIA Lower? Hark, again.
HELENA Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.
I evermore316 did love you, Hermia, Did ever keep your counsels, never wronged you,
Save that, in love unto Demetrius,
I told him of your stealth319 unto this wood.
He followed you. For love I followed him.
But he hath chid me hence321 and threatened me To strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too;
And now, so323 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 fond326 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 No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part332.
HELENA O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd333.
She was a vixen when she went to school,