“I grant you, friends, that if you should frighten the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us,” said Bottom. “But I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar as if it were any nightingale.” “You can play no part but Pyramus,” said Quince firmly. So Bottom had reluctantly to give in, and to devote his energies to deciding what coloured beard it would be best to play the important part of Pyramus in. It was really quite a difficult matter, there were so many to choose from,--straw-colour, orange tawny, purple-in-grain, or French-crown, which was perfect yellow. But Quince said any colour would do, or he might play it without a beard. “Masters, here are your parts,” he concluded, “and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to know them by to-morrow night, and meet me in the palace wood, a mile outside the town, by moonlight. There we will rehearse, for if we meet in the city we shall be dogged with company, and our devices known. I pray you, do not fail me.” The Magic Flower Now, the wood which Hermia and Lysander had appointed as their trysting-place, and where Bottom and his fellow-actors were also to meet to rehearse their play, was the favourite haunt of fairies, and on this Midsummer Night Oberon, King of the Fairies, was to hold his revels there. Sad to say, for some time past there had been great dissension between Oberon and his Queen, Titania, and because of their quarrels nothing went well in the surrounding country. The cause of their disagreement was a lovely Indian boy, the sweetest little changeling imaginable. Queen Titania had him as her attendant, and jealous Oberon wanted the boy for his own page. Titania refused to give him up; he was the child of a dear friend, now dead, and for her sake she had reared up the boy, and for her sake she would not part with him. Oberon and Titania never met now, in grove or green, by the clear fountain, or in the spangled starlight, without quarrelling so fiercely that their elves crept for fear into acorn-cups, and hid themselves there. They generally tried to keep out of each other’s way, but on this night it happened that as King Oberon, with his little sprite Puck and his train, approached from one direction, Queen Titania and her attendant fairies came near from the other. Titania reproached Oberon with all the ill-luck that was happening because of their dissension, and Oberon replied that it only lay with her to amend it. “Why should Titania cross her Oberon?” he asked. “I do but beg a little changeling boy to be my henchman.” “Set your heart at rest,” replied Titania; “the whole of Fairyland will not buy the child of me.” “How long do you intend to stay in this wood?” asked Oberon. “Perhaps till after Theseus’s wedding-day,” said Titania. “If you will join patiently in our dance, and see our moonlight revels, go with us. If not, shun me, and I will take care to avoid your haunts.”