Act 1, Scene 2

The Same. A Room in a Cottage.

[Enter SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, QUINCE, and STARVELING.]
Quince
256 Is all our company here?
Bottom
257 You were best to call them generally, man by man,
258 according to the scrip.
Quince
259 Here is the scroll of every man's name, which is thought
260 fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the
261 duke and duchess on his wedding-day at night.
Bottom
262 First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on;
263 then read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point.
Quince
264 Marry, our play is—The most lamentable comedy and most
265 cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.
Bottom
266 A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry.—
267 Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll.—
268 Masters, spread yourselves.
Quince
269 Answer, as I call you.—Nick Bottom, the weaver.
Bottom
270 Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.
Quince
271 You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.
Bottom
272 What is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant?
Quince
273 A lover, that kills himself most gallantly for love.
Bottom
274 That will ask some tears in the true performing of it.
275 If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move
276 storms; I will condole in some measure. To the rest:—yet my
277 chief humour is for a tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a
278 part to tear a cat in, to make all split.
Bottom
279 The raging rocks
280 And shivering shocks
281 Shall break the locks
282 Of prison gates:
Bottom
283 And Phibbus' car
284 Shall shine from far,
285 And make and mar
286 The foolish Fates.
Bottom
287 This was lofty.—Now name the rest of the players.—This is
288 Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein;—a lover is more condoling.
Quince
289 Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.
Flute
290 Here, Peter Quince.
Quince
291 Flute, you must take Thisby on you.
Flute
292 What is Thisby? a wandering knight?
Quince
293 It is the lady that Pyramus must love.
Flute
294 Nay, faith, let not me play a woman; I have a beard coming.
Quince
295 That's all one; you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as
296 small as you will.
Bottom
297 An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too:
298 I'll speak in a monstrous little voice;—'Thisne, Thisne!'—
299 'Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear; thy Thisby dear! and lady dear!'
Quince
300 No, no, you must play Pyramus; and, Flute, you Thisby.
Bottom
301 Well, proceed.
Quince
302 Robin Starveling, the tailor.
Starveling
303 Here, Peter Quince.
Quince
304 Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby's mother.—
305 Tom Snout, the tinker.
Snout
306 Here, Peter Quince.
Quince
307 You, Pyramus' father; myself, Thisby's father;—Snug,
308 the joiner, you, the lion's part:—and, I hope, here is a play
309 fitted.
Snug
310 Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it
311 me, for I am slow of study.
Quince
312 You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.
Bottom
313 Let me play the lion too: I will roar that I will do
314 any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar that I will make the
315 duke say 'Let him roar again, let him roar again.'
Quince
316 An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the
317 duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were
318 enough to hang us all.
All
319 That would hang us every mother's son.
Bottom
320 I grant you, friends, if you should fright the ladies
321 out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang
322 us: but I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as
323 gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an 'twere any
324 nightingale.
Quince
325 You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a
326 sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's
327 day; a most lovely gentleman-like man; therefore you must
328 needs play Pyramus.
Bottom
329 Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?
Quince
330 Why, what you will.
Bottom
331 I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard,
332 your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your
333 French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.
Quince
334 Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and
335 then you will play bare-faced.— But, masters, here are your
336 parts: and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to
337 con them by to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a
338 mile without the town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse: for
339 if we meet in the city, we shall be dogg'd with company, and our
340 devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties,
341 such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not.
Bottom
342 We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely
343 and courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu.
Quince
344 At the duke's oak we meet.
Bottom
345 Enough; hold, or cut bow-strings.
[Exeunt.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 258archaic vocab
“scrip”
Bottom means 'script' — the written list of parts and perhaps the play text itself. The word is a contracted form of 'script' common in Elizabethan usage; Quince immediately produces a 'scroll' (TLN 259), confirming the same thing.
TLN 260cultural context
“interlude”
An interlude was a short dramatic piece performed between courses of a feast or as part of a court entertainment — the standard term for a play-within-a-celebration in the sixteenth century. The word signals that this is amateur occasion-theatre, not a professional performance.
TLN 264classical allusion
“The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby”
Pyramus and Thisbe is the tragic lovers' story from Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book IV, lines 55-166): two Babylonian youths, forbidden to meet, communicate through a crack in a wall; a lion frightens Thisbe, Pyramus finds her veil and kills himself thinking her dead, Thisbe then kills herself over his body — the prototype for Romeo and Juliet. Calling it simultaneously a 'lamentable comedy' and a 'most cruel death' mashes genre labels: comedies end in marriages, tragedies in deaths. The mash-up title signals that the mechanicals have no idea what they are handling.
classical Pyramus and Thisbe
TLN 277classical allusion
“Ercles”
Bottom's pronunciation of Hercules — the Greek hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and Alcmene, famous for his Twelve Labours and his fits of murderous rage. On the pre-Shakespearean English stage, 'ranting Hercules' had become the cliche of over-the-top tragic acting, associated especially with the bombastic style of early Elizabethan drama (plays such as Preston's Cambyses, c. 1569).
TLN 278cultural context
“tear a cat”
A proverbial phrase for wild ranting on stage — to perform in a frenzied, swaggering manner. The image is of a bully or braggart tearing apart a small animal to prove ferocity. It belongs to the contemporary vocabulary of theatrical self-parody.
TLN 283classical allusion
“Phibbus' car”
Bottom's garbled pronunciation of Phoebus, the sun-god Apollo driving his chariot ('car') across the sky. The image of the sun-god's fiery chariot was a stock property of the bombastic verse Bottom is parodying. 'Car' is archaic for chariot, from Latin carrus.
TLN 288cultural context
“Ercles' vein”
'Vein' here means manner or style of performance, not a blood vessel. 'Ercles' vein' = the ranting, furious acting style associated with stage-Hercules roles in early Elizabethan drama — loud, alliterative, physically violent verse. Bottom has just performed a specimen of it (TLN 279-286) and now names the style, obliviously pleased with himself.
TLN 292cultural context
“a wandering knight”
Flute assumes 'Thisbe' must be a character type he knows from popular romance — the wandering or errant knight of chivalric narrative, familiar from prose romances and ballads. The question reveals that Flute has no idea the play is a classical tragedy; he is reaching for the nearest genre he knows.
TLN 322archaic vocab
“aggravate”
Bottom means 'moderate' or 'diminish' — the opposite of what aggravate means. This is a characteristic Bottomianism (malapropism): he reaches for a grand-sounding word and lands on its antonym. He wants to say he will soften his voice to roar as gently as a dove.
TLN 331archaic vocab
“discharge”
Discharge = perform (a role), carry out (a duty). The theatrical usage — 'discharge a part' — is standard Elizabethan English for acting a role; Bottom is asking which beard style he should wear while performing Pyramus.
TLN 333wordplay
“French-crown-colour beard”
The 'French crown' is simultaneously a gold coin (the French ecu, worth roughly the colour of bright yellow gold) and a slang term for the bald patch caused by syphilis ('the French disease'). Quince immediately pounces on the double meaning at TLN 334: 'Some of your French crowns have no hair at all' — syphilis causes hair loss, so some men sporting 'French crowns' are bald rather than bearded.
TLN 337archaic vocab
“con”
Con = learn by heart, memorise (from Old English 'cunnan', to know). Quince tells the company to have their parts memorised ('conned') by the next night. The word survives in modern 'conning' a role but is otherwise archaic.
TLN 342archaic vocab
“obscenely”
Another Bottomianism: he means 'seemly' or 'decently,' but says 'obscenely' — the word that means indecently or offensively. The malapropism is funnier because the confused word is its own precise antonym, and the audience hears the inadvertent boast that they will rehearse indecently in the woods by moonlight.
TLN 345cultural context
“hold, or cut bow-strings”
A proverbial archery phrase meaning 'keep your word or face the consequences' — be at the meeting place or break faith. An archer who fails to appear at a match was said to have 'cut' (abandoned) his bow-string. Tilley records it as B567. Bottom uses it as a breezy, masculine sign-off.