How happy some o'er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.
I thought this passage was an insight to anyone's mind. Don't we all have doubts about our own qualities, and compare our own attributes to others? Shakespeare gave Helena the use of beautiful words to not only express her pain, but her jealousy and in doing so... he explained how her thought process of winning Demetruis back would work. The words do a happy "pop" to me, they jump, in an almost merry way. To get the same information across to the audience in "modern English," it would take many more words. Here, the passage pokes at our curiosity and informs us at the same time.
I feel that Helena has no self confidence at all. She always compares herself to Hermia. She always wishes that she was Hermia.
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