Act 5, Scene 1

Athens. An Apartment in the Palace of THESEUS.

[Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords, and Attendants.]
Hippolyta
1686 'Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.
Theseus
1687 More strange than true. I never may believe
1688 These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
1689 Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
1690 Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
1691 More than cool reason ever comprehends.
1692 The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
1693 Are of imagination all compact:
1694 One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
1695 That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
1696 Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
1697 The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
1698 Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
1699 And as imagination bodies forth
1700 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
1701 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
1702 A local habitation and a name.
1703 Such tricks hath strong imagination,
1704 That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
1705 It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
1706 Or in the night, imagining some fear,
1707 How easy is a bush supposed a bear?
Hippolyta
1708 But all the story of the night told over,
1709 And all their minds transfigur'd so together,
1710 More witnesseth than fancy's images,
1711 And grows to something of great constancy;
1712 But, howsoever, strange and admirable.
[Enter LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA, and HELENA.]
Theseus
1713 Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.—
1714 Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love
1715 Accompany your hearts!
Lysander
1716 More than to us
1717 Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!
Theseus
1718 Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have,
1719 To wear away this long age of three hours
1720 Between our after-supper and bed-time?
1721 Where is our usual manager of mirth?
1722 What revels are in hand? Is there no play
1723 To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?
1724 Call Philostrate.
Philostrate
1725 Here, mighty Theseus.
Theseus
1726 Say, what abridgment have you for this evening?
1727 What masque? what music? How shall we beguile
1728 The lazy time, if not with some delight?
Philostrate
1729 There is a brief how many sports are ripe;
1730 Make choice of which your highness will see first.
[Giving a paper.]
[Reads.]
Theseus
1731 'The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung
1732 By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.'
1733 We'll none of that: that have I told my love,
1734 In glory of my kinsman Hercules.
1735 'The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,
1736 Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.'
1737 That is an old device, and it was play'd
1738 When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.
1739 'The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
1740 Of learning, late deceas'd in beggary.'
1741 That is some satire, keen and critical,
1742 Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
1743 'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
1744 And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.'
1745 Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
1746 That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
1747 How shall we find the concord of this discord?
Philostrate
1748 A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,
1749 Which is as brief as I have known a play;
1750 But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
1751 Which makes it tedious: for in all the play
1752 There is not one word apt, one player fitted:
1753 And tragical, my noble lord, it is;
1754 For Pyramus therein doth kill himself:
1755 Which when I saw rehears'd, I must confess,
1756 Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears
1757 The passion of loud laughter never shed.
Theseus
1758 What are they that do play it?
Philostrate
1759 Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
1760 Which never labour'd in their minds till now;
1761 And now have toil'd their unbreath'd memories
1762 With this same play against your nuptial.
Theseus
1763 And we will hear it.
Philostrate
1764 No, my noble lord,
1765 It is not for you: I have heard it over,
1766 And it is nothing, nothing in the world;
1767 Unless you can find sport in their intents,
1768 Extremely stretch'd and conn'd with cruel pain,
1769 To do you service.
Theseus
1770 I will hear that play;
1771 For never anything can be amiss
1772 When simpleness and duty tender it.
1773 Go, bring them in: and take your places, ladies.
[Exit PHILOSTRATE.]
Hippolyta
1774 I love not to see wretchedness o'er-charged,
1775 And duty in his service perishing.
Theseus
1776 Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.
Hippolyta
1777 He says they can do nothing in this kind.
Theseus
1778 The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.
1779 Our sport shall be to take what they mistake:
1780 And what poor duty cannot do,
1781 Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.
1782 Where I have come, great clerks have purposed
1783 To greet me with premeditated welcomes;
1784 Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,
1785 Make periods in the midst of sentences,
1786 Throttle their practis'd accent in their fears,
1787 And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off,
1788 Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,
1789 Out of this silence yet I pick'd a welcome;
1790 And in the modesty of fearful duty
1791 I read as much as from the rattling tongue
1792 Of saucy and audacious eloquence.
1793 Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
1794 In least speak most to my capacity.
[Enter PHILOSTRATE.]
Philostrate
1795 So please your grace, the prologue is address'd.
Theseus
1796 Let him approach.
[Flourish of trumpets. Enter PROLOGUE.]
Prologue (Quince)
1797 'If we offend, it is with our good will.
1798 That you should think, we come not to offend,
1799 But with good will. To show our simple skill,
1800 That is the true beginning of our end.
1801 Consider then, we come but in despite.
1802 We do not come, as minding to content you,
1803 Our true intent is. All for your delight
1804 We are not here. That you should here repent you,
1805 The actors are at hand: and, by their show,
1806 You shall know all that you are like to know,'
Theseus
1807 This fellow doth not stand upon points.
Lysander
1808 He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows
1809 not the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak,
1810 but to speak true.
Hippolyta
1811 Indeed he hath played on this prologue like a child
1812 on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.
Theseus
1813 His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all
1814 disordered. Who is next?
[Enter PYRAMUS and THISBE, WALL, MOONSHINE, and LION, as in dumb show.]
Prologue (Quince)
1815 Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;
1816 But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.
1817 This man is Pyramus, if you would know;
1818 This beauteous lady Thisby is certain.
1819 This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present
1820 Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;
1821 And through Wall's chink, poor souls, they are content
1822 To whisper, at the which let no man wonder.
1823 This man, with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn,
1824 Presenteth Moonshine: for, if you will know,
1825 By moonshine did these lovers think no scorn
1826 To meet at Ninus' tomb, there, there to woo.
1827 This grisly beast, which by name Lion hight,
1828 The trusty Thisby, coming first by night,
1829 Did scare away, or rather did affright;
1830 And as she fled, her mantle she did fall;
1831 Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain:
1832 Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth, and tall,
1833 And finds his trusty Thisby's mantle slain;
1834 Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade,
1835 He bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast;
1836 And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade,
1837 His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest,
1838 Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain,
1839 At large discourse while here they do remain.
[Exeunt PROLOGUE, THISBE, LION, and MOONSHINE.]
Theseus
1840 I wonder if the lion be to speak.
Demetrius
1841 No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do.
Wall (Snout)
1842 In this same interlude it doth befall
1843 That I, one Snout by name, present a wall:
1844 And such a wall as I would have you think
1845 That had in it a crannied hole or chink,
1846 Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby,
1847 Did whisper often very secretly.
1848 This loam, this rough-cast, and this stone, doth show
1849 That I am that same wall; the truth is so:
1850 And this the cranny is, right and sinister,
1851 Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.
Theseus
1852 Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?
Demetrius
1853 It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard
1854 discourse, my lord.
Theseus
1855 Pyramus draws near the wall; silence.
[Enter PYRAMUS.]
Pyramus (Bottom)
1856 O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black!
1857 O night, which ever art when day is not!
1858 O night, O night, alack, alack, alack,
1859 I fear my Thisby's promise is forgot!—
1860 And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,
1861 That stand'st between her father's ground and mine;
1862 Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,
1863 Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne.
[WALL holds up his fingers.]
Pyramus (Bottom)
1864 Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this!
1865 But what see what see I? No Thisby do I see.
1866 O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss,
1867 Curs'd be thy stones for thus deceiving me!
Theseus
1868 The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.
Pyramus (Bottom)
1869 No, in truth, sir, he should not. 'Deceiving me' is
1870 Thisby's cue: she is to enter now, and I am to spy her through
1871 the wall. You shall see it will fall pat as I told you.—Yonder
1872 she comes.
[Enter THISBE.]
Thisbe (Flute)
1873 O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,
1874 For parting my fair Pyramus and me:
1875 My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones:
1876 Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.
Pyramus (Bottom)
1877 I see a voice; now will I to the chink,
1878 To spy an I can hear my Thisby's face.
1879 Thisby!
Thisbe (Flute)
1880 My love! thou art my love, I think.
Pyramus (Bottom)
1881 Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover's grace;
1882 And like Limander am I trusty still.
Thisbe (Flute)
1883 And I like Helen, till the fates me kill.
Pyramus (Bottom)
1884 Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.
Thisbe (Flute)
1885 As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.
Pyramus (Bottom)
1886 O, kiss me through the hole of this vile wall.
Thisbe (Flute)
1887 I kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all.
Pyramus (Bottom)
1888 Wilt thou at Ninny's tomb meet me straightway?
Thisbe (Flute)
1889 'Tide life, 'tide death, I come without delay.
Wall (Snout)
1890 Thus have I, wall, my part discharged so;
1891 And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.
[Exeunt WALL, PYRAMUS and THISBE.]
Theseus
1892 Now is the mural down between the two neighbours.
Demetrius
1893 No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear
1894 without warning.
Hippolyta
1895 This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.
Theseus
1896 The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst
1897 are no worse, if imagination amend them.
Hippolyta
1898 It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.
Theseus
1899 If we imagine no worse of them than they of
1900 themselves, they may pass for excellent men.
1901 Here come two noble beasts in, a moon and a lion.
[Enter LION and MOONSHINE.]
Lion (Snug)
1902 You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear
1903 The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,
1904 May now, perchance, both quake and tremble here,
1905 When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.
1906 Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am
1907 A lion fell, nor else no lion's dam:
1908 For, if I should as lion come in strife
1909 Into this place, 'twere pity on my life.
Theseus
1910 A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.
Demetrius
1911 The very best at a beast, my lord, that e'er I saw.
Lysander
1912 This lion is a very fox for his valour.
Theseus
1913 True; and a goose for his discretion.
Demetrius
1914 Not so, my lord; for his valour cannot carry his
1915 discretion, and the fox carries the goose.
Theseus
1916 His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour;
1917 for the goose carries not the fox. It is well; leave it to his
1918 discretion, and let us listen to the moon.
Moonshine (Starveling)
1919 This lanthorn doth the horned moon present:
Demetrius
1920 He should have worn the horns on his head.
Theseus
1921 He is no crescent, and his horns are invisible within
1922 the circumference.
Moonshine (Starveling)
1923 This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;
1924 Myself the man i' the moon do seem to be.
Theseus
1925 This is the greatest error of all the rest: the man should be
1926 put into the lantern. How is it else the man i' the moon?
Demetrius
1927 He dares not come there for the candle: for, you
1928 see, it is already in snuff.
Hippolyta
1929 I am aweary of this moon: would he would change!
Theseus
1930 It appears, by his small light of discretion, that he
1931 is in the wane: but yet, in courtesy, in all reason, we must
1932 stay the time.
Lysander
1933 Proceed, moon.
Moonshine (Starveling)
1934 All that I have to say, is to tell you that the lantern
1935 is the moon; I, the man i' the moon; this thorn-bush, my
1936 thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.
Demetrius
1937 Why, all these should be in the lantern; for all
1938 these are in the moon. But silence; here comes Thisbe.
[Enter THISBE.]
Thisbe (Flute)
1939 This is old Ninny's tomb. Where is my love?
Lion (Snug)
1940 Oh!
[The LION roars.--THISBE runs off.]
Demetrius
1941 Well roared, lion.
Theseus
1942 Well run, Thisbe.
Hippolyta
1943 Well shone, moon.—Truly, the moon shines with a good grace.
[The LION tears THISBE'S Mantle, and exit.]
Theseus
1944 Well moused, lion.
Demetrius
1945 And so comes Pyramus.
Lysander
1946 And then the lion vanishes.
[Enter PYRAMUS.]
Pyramus (Bottom)
1947 Sweet moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;
1948 I thank thee, moon, for shining now so bright:
1949 For, by thy gracious golden, glittering streams,
1950 I trust to take of truest Thisby's sight.
1951 But stay;—O spite!
1952 But mark,—poor knight,
1953 What dreadful dole is here!
1954 Eyes, do you see?
1955 How can it be?
1956 O dainty duck! O dear!
1957 Thy mantle good,
1958 What! stained with blood?
1959 Approach, ye furies fell!
1960 O fates! come, come;
1961 Cut thread and thrum;
1962 Quail, rush, conclude, and quell!
Theseus
1963 This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go
1964 near to make a man look sad.
Hippolyta
1965 Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.
Pyramus (Bottom)
1966 O wherefore, nature, didst thou lions frame?
1967 Since lion vile hath here deflower'd my dear;
1968 Which is—no, no—which was the fairest dame
1969 That liv'd, that lov'd, that lik'd, that look'd with cheer.
1970 Come, tears, confound;
1971 Out, sword, and wound
1972 The pap of Pyramus:
1973 Ay, that left pap,
1974 Where heart doth hop:—
1975 Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.
1976 Now am I dead,
1977 Now am I fled;
1978 My soul is in the sky:
1979 Tongue, lose thy light!
1980 Moon, take thy flight!
1981 Now die, die, die, die, die.
[Dies. Exit MOONSHINE.]
Demetrius
1982 No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one.
Lysander
1983 Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing.
Theseus
1984 With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover and prove an ass.
Hippolyta
1985 How chance moonshine is gone before Thisbe comes
1986 back and finds her lover?
Theseus
1987 She will find him by starlight.—Here she comes; and
1988 her passion ends the play.
[Enter THISBE.]
Hippolyta
1989 Methinks she should not use a long one for such a
1990 Pyramus: I hope she will be brief.
Demetrius
1991 A mote will turn the balance, which Pyramus, which
1992 Thisbe, is the better.
Lysander
1993 She hath spied him already with those sweet eyes.
Demetrius
1994 And thus she moans, videlicet.—
Thisbe (Flute)
1995 Asleep, my love?
1996 What, dead, my dove?
1997 O Pyramus, arise,
1998 Speak, speak. Quite dumb?
1999 Dead, dead? A tomb
2000 Must cover thy sweet eyes.
2001 These lily lips,
2002 This cherry nose,
2003 These yellow cowslip cheeks,
2004 Are gone, are gone:
2005 Lovers, make moan!
2006 His eyes were green as leeks.
2007 O Sisters Three,
2008 Come, come to me,
2009 With hands as pale as milk;
2010 Lay them in gore,
2011 Since you have shore
2012 With shears his thread of silk.
2013 Tongue, not a word:—
2014 Come, trusty sword;
2015 Come, blade, my breast imbrue;
2016 And farewell, friends:—
2017 Thus Thisbe ends;
2018 Adieu, adieu, adieu.
[Dies.]
Theseus
2019 Moonshine and lion are left to bury the dead.
Demetrius
2020 Ay, and wall too.
Bottom
2021 No, I assure you; the wall is down that parted their fathers.
2022 Will it please you to see the epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask
2023 dance between two of our company?
Theseus
2024 No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no
2025 excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all dead there
2026 need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had played
2027 Pyramus, and hang'd himself in Thisbe's garter, it would have
2028 been a fine tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably
2029 discharged. But come, your Bergomask; let your epilogue alone.
[Here a dance of Clowns.]
Theseus
2030 The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:—
2031 Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.
2032 I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn,
2033 As much as we this night have overwatch'd.
2034 This palpable-gross play hath well beguil'd
2035 The heavy gait of night.—Sweet friends, to bed.—
2036 A fortnight hold we this solemnity,
2037 In nightly revels and new jollity.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1688archaic vocab
“antique fables”
'Antique' here carries the older sense of 'ancient' or 'belonging to former times' (cognate with 'antic,' meaning grotesque or fantastical). Theseus dismisses the lovers' night-wood narrative as old wives' tales of no factual standing.
TLN 1692classical allusion
“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact:”
Theseus groups madmen, lovers, and poets together as creatures ruled by unregulated imagination rather than reason — a tripartite taxonomy that draws on Plato's account of poetic 'divine frenzy' in the *Ion* and Aristotle's distinction between reason and phantasia in the *De Anima*. Sidney's *Defence of Poesy* (1595) is the contemporary English synthesis Elizabethan audiences would recognize: Sidney defends the poet's 'erected wit' against rationalist critics. Shakespeare gives Theseus the skeptic's position, allowing the play to implicitly rebuke it.
TLN 1696classical allusion
“Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt”
'Helen' is Helen of Troy, whose face proverbially launched a thousand ships and stood for the supreme standard of female beauty in the classical world. 'A brow of Egypt' means a dark-complexioned or 'gypsy' face — 'Egypt' (Egyptian/Gypsy) was Elizabethan shorthand for a dark skin regarded as plain or low-status. The lover, blinded by passion, projects Hellenic beauty onto what the world considers an unremarkable face.
TLN 1701rhetorical device
“airy nothing / A local habitation and a name”
Shakespeare's most famous statement about poetic making: the poet's pen transforms what exists only in imagination ('airy nothing') into something with a place ('local habitation') and a word ('name'). This is the classical concept of *enargeia* — making the absent vivid and present — and it also describes precisely what this play itself does: conjuring fairies, enchanted woods, and Athenian craftsmen from words on a page.
TLN 1708rhetorical device
“But all the story of the night told over, / And all their minds transfigur'd so together, / More witnesseth than fancy's images, / And grows to something of great constancy”
Hippolyta's counter-argument to Theseus: four independent minds returning with the same coherent story is evidence beyond mere imagination. 'Constancy' = consistency, reliability (OED s.v. constancy n. 3: 'firmness, fixedness'). Where Theseus trusts only single-observer reason, Hippolyta implicitly appeals to what we would now call corroborating testimony. Her argument is formally an *enthymeme* (compressed syllogism): four witnesses agreeing implies something real.
TLN 1731classical allusion
“The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung / By an Athenian eunuch to the harp”
The Centauromachy — the battle of Centaurs and Lapiths — is in Ovid's *Metamorphoses* XII and in Plutarch's *Life of Theseus*, where Theseus fights. The Centaurs (half-man, half-horse) attacked the Lapiths at a wedding feast, an oddly violent piece for a wedding-night. Theseus declines because he has already told Hippolyta the story 'in glory of my kinsman Hercules.' 'Eunuch' singers were a courtly Italian Renaissance touch.
TLN 1735classical allusion
“The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, / Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage”
This is the death of Orpheus, described in Ovid's *Metamorphoses* Book XI. Orpheus, the Thracian singer who charmed all nature with his lyre, was torn apart by a band of Maenads — female worshippers of Bacchus ('Bacchanals') — in a frenzy because he refused their advances after losing Eurydice. The Bacchanals were associated with wine, ecstasy, and violence. The story is another wedding-night choice that would be grimly apt — and equally inappropriate.
TLN 1739historical topical
“The thrice three Muses mourning for the death / Of learning, late deceas'd in beggary”
The 'thrice three Muses' are the nine Muses of classical learning (Hesiod, *Theogony* 77). This entertainment is described as a 'satire' about the neglect of scholarship. Editors have proposed two contemporary allusions: Spenser's *Tears of the Muses* (1591), in which each Muse laments the decay of arts and learning in England; and Robert Greene's *Greenes Groats-Worth of Wit* (1592), a pamphlet in which a dying author deplores the fate of scholars in poverty. Both identify a poet dying in beggary as the central image. Neither identification is certain.
TLN 1743rhetorical device
“A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus / And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth”
The programme note piles up two oxymorons: 'tedious brief' and 'tragical mirth.' An oxymoron joins contradictory terms to produce a paradox. Theseus immediately notices and catalogues these contradictions ('Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!'), adding a third — 'hot ice' — to mock their absurdity. The joke is that the contradictions are accidentally accurate: the play is both funny and painful, both long in feeling and short in plot.
classical Pyramus and Thisbe
TLN 1782cultural context
“Where I have come, great clerks have purposed / To greet me with premeditated welcomes”
'Great clerks' = learned scholars (OED s.v. clerk n. 5: 'a scholar, a man of learning'). Theseus describes the Elizabethan convention of learned speeches delivered to royal visitors by scholars — such as the elaborate Latin orations presented to Elizabeth I on her progresses to Oxford and Cambridge. The speech validates the humble mechanicals' effort by comparing it to such formal occasions where elite scholars froze with stage fright.
TLN 1797stage direction note
“If we offend, it is with our good will.”
Quince's prologue is meant to say the opposite of what it says. Read with correct punctuation it should mean: 'If we offend, it is with our good will [that we ask forgiveness] — that you should think we come not to offend, but with good will.' But Quince stops in the wrong places, making the sentences confess to offending deliberately. Theseus diagnoses this: 'This fellow doth not stand upon points' — 'points' being both punctuation marks and the fine details of delivery. Lysander calls it riding 'like a rough colt' with no sense of 'the stop' (stopping-point = full stop).
TLN 1811cultural context
“played on this prologue like a child on a recorder”
A recorder is a simple wooden flute, considered a beginner's instrument in the Elizabethan period — the first instrument given to a child learning music. Hippolyta's simile mocks Quince's prologue as technically possible but lacking any artistic control: noise without 'government' (governance, mastery). The recorder appears elsewhere in Shakespeare (*Hamlet* 3.2) as the instrument any fool can blow into.
TLN 1834rhetorical device
“Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade, / He bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast”
Seven words beginning with 'b' in two lines is a parody of early Elizabethan 'tumbling verse' — the alliterative, heavily stressed verse associated with pre-Shakespearean popular drama (particularly the style of playwrights like Thomas Preston in *Cambyses*, c. 1570). This kind of excessive alliteration was already old-fashioned and self-parodying by the mid-1590s. The audience would have recognized it instantly as the lowest rung of theatrical rhetoric.
TLN 1842stage direction note
“In this same interlude it doth befall / That I, one Snout by name, present a wall”
Snout breaks the theatrical convention by announcing his own off-stage name ('one Snout by name') while nominally in character as Wall — a naive form of what scholars now call 'metatheatre.' In professional performance, a player was supposed to become the role; the mechanicals cannot sustain that fiction and keep stepping outside it. This is the same impulse that makes the Lion announce 'I, one Snug the joiner, am / A lion fell, nor else no lion's dam' (TLN 1906–1907).
TLN 1882classical allusion
“Limander”
Bottom, playing Pyramus, garbles 'Leander' — the lover from the classical myth of Hero and Leander (told in Ovid's *Heroides* 18–19 and Musaeus's *Hero and Leander*) — as 'Limander.' Similarly, Thisbe garbles 'Helen' (the model of faithful love, probably Helen of Troy or Helen of classical mythology) as nothing, and garbles 'Cephalus' and 'Procris' (faithful lovers from Ovid's *Metamorphoses* 7) as 'Shafalus' and 'Procrus.' The mangling mocks the mechanicals' half-digested classical education.
classical Pyramus and Thisbe
TLN 1896cultural context
“The best in this kind are but shadows”
'Shadows' was a standard Elizabethan term for actors — stage players were legally 'shadows' of real persons, and in Platonist thought the theatrical image was twice removed from reality (real thing → idea → image). Theseus's remark is a backhanded compliment: the best professional actors are only representations, so the worst amateurs are no worse in kind. The word ties the mechanicals to Oberon's fairy world; Puck uses the same word in the epilogue to describe the fairies themselves.
TLN 1906archaic vocab
“Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am / A lion fell, nor else no lion's dam”
'Fell' = fierce, savage (OED s.v. fell adj.1 2: 'Fierce, cruel, savage'). Snug's disclaimer is a botched negation: grammatically 'nor else no lion's dam' produces a double negative, but the intent is to assure the audience he is fierce neither as a male lion nor as a mother lion defending cubs. The announcement defeats its own purpose: a truly frightening lion would not need to deny it.
TLN 1919cultural context
“horned moon”
The crescent moon was called 'horned' because its two tips resembled horns (OED s.v. horned adj. 2a). Demetrius immediately makes a cuckoldry joke: 'He should have worn the horns on his head' — cuckolds (men with unfaithful wives) were proverbially said to wear invisible horns. Theseus deflects with mock-astronomical pedantry: a man inside a sphere cannot be a crescent, so the horns are hidden within the 'circumference.'
TLN 1944archaic vocab
“moused”
'Moused' = shaken about, pulled roughly (as a cat 'mouses' a small creature) — OED s.v. mouse v. 2 (archaic): 'To tear as a cat does a mouse; to pull about roughly.' Theseus praises the Lion for tearing and mauling Thisbe's mantle, using a homely hunting metaphor in mock-heroic condescension.
TLN 1959classical allusion
“ye furies fell”
The Furies (Greek: Erinyes; Roman: Furiae) were the goddesses of vengeance who pursued the guilty with torments. In tragedy — Aeschylus's *Oresteia*, Seneca's *Medea* — calling on the Furies signals extreme grief or impending revenge. Bottom-as-Pyramus invoking them over a lion-mangled veil is a parody of Senecan tragic convention: the elevated appeal to infernal powers is comically disproportionate to the cause.
TLN 1960classical allusion
“O fates! come, come; / Cut thread and thrum”
The three Fates (Greek: Moirai; Roman: Parcae) spin the thread of each life, measure it, and cut it at death. Hesiod names them Clotho (spinner), Lachesis (measurer), and Atropos (cutter). 'Thread and thrum' adds a weaver's term: 'thrum' is the end-tuft of yarn left on the loom after the cloth is cut off. Bottom the weaver incorporates his trade into his dying speech — the joke is simultaneously heroic (invoking the Fates) and absurdly domestic (thrum is workshop waste).
TLN 2001rhetorical device
“These lily lips, / This cherry nose”
A *blazon* is a poetic catalogue of a beloved's body parts assigning each a conventional color — lily-white skin, cherry-red lips. Thisbe's lament inverts every assignment: lips are lily (white, corpse-colored), the nose is cherry (red, swollen), the cheeks are 'yellow cowslip' (sallow, jaundiced). The Petrarchan convention is wrong-footed point by point, producing an accidental portrait of a dead man.
TLN 2007classical allusion
“O Sisters Three, / Come, come to me, / With hands as pale as milk”
Thisbe invokes the three Fates — the same mythological figures Pyramus called on in his death speech (TLN 1960–1961). Their hands are 'pale as milk' because they are death-white spinners of mortal life; 'shore' (line 2011) is a past tense of 'shear' — they have cut his thread of silk (life). The parallelism of both lovers calling on the Fates symmetrizes their deaths as mirror images.
TLN 2022cultural context
“Bergomask”
A Bergomask (also 'bergamasque') was a boisterous rustic dance originating in Bergamo, a city in northern Italy whose inhabitants were proverbially clownish. In Elizabethan England it meant a clumsy comic dance imitating Italian peasants. It was the entertainers' standard alternative to a formal epilogue — energy and slapstick in place of words. The OED's earliest citation is from the 1560s.
TLN 2030cultural context
“The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve”
'Told' = counted, tolled (OED s.v. tell v. 9: 'to count'); the bell 'tells' (counts out) the hour by striking. The bell's 'tongue' is the clapper, and it is 'iron' because church and clock bells were cast from bronze (bell-metal, an alloy of copper and tin), and the clapper or tongue was commonly iron. The metaphor personifies the clock as a voice announcing midnight — the threshold between the wedding-night entertainments and the fairy blessing about to come.