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on a play. Pyramus and Thisbe is a melodrama that involves a knight, the knight’s lady who is played by a man, a talking wall that separates the two lovers, and a death scene that almost never ends. The plot of this play-within-a-play closely resembles that of Romeo and Juliet , and Shakespeare takes enormous joy in poking gentle fun at amateur actors putting on a play.
    FLUTE
    ( as Thisbe, discovering Pyramus dead on the ground )
Asleep, my love?
What, dead, my dove?
O Pyramus, arise!
Speak, speak. Quite dumb?
Dead? Dead? A tomb
Must cover thy sweet eyes .
These lily lips ,
This cherry nose ,
These yellow cowslip cheeks
Are gone, are gone!
Lovers, make moan;
His eyes were green as leeks .
    Have your children enact this speech aloud. You lie down and play dead and have one of them play poor grieving Thisbe, bemoaning the loss of her beloved Pyramus. It’s guaranteed to make them laugh.
    Bottom’s story begins taking off about halfway through the play. In Act IV, Scene 1, we come upon Bottom and his friends rehearsing their play in a clearing in the woods. Amid mangled words and missed cues, Puck wanders onto the scene and transforms Bottom by putting an ass head on his shoulders. His fellow actors are frightened and run off, at which point, Titania—who is asleep nearby under the spell of Oberon’s magic flower—wakes up. As you’ll remember, the power of the magicflower is that anyone who has been anointed by its juice will fall in love with the next live creature that he sees; and the first live creature that Titania sees on waking up is Bottom. So she falls instantly in love with this monster—half man, half donkey—and leads him away to her bed of flowers ( where the wild thyme blows ).
    Two scenes later we see Titania and her fairies pampering Bottom with every donkey luxury imaginable. Here is what Titania says to Bottom when we come upon them among the flowers—and if you have a daughter, here’s her chance to play a fairy queen:
Come sit thee down upon this flowery bed ,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy [caress]
And stick muskroses in thy sleek smooth head ,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy .

    A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, with Judi Dench as Titania and Oliver Chris as Bottom (photo credit 8.2)
    As you can imagine, Bottom is lapping up all this attention.
    BOTTOM
Where’s Peaseblossom?
    PEASEBLOSSOM
Ready .
    BOTTOM
Scratch my head, Peaseblossom. Where’s Monsieur Cobweb?
    COBWEB
Ready .
    BOTTOM
Monsieur Cobweb, good monsieur, get you your weapons in your hand and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee and … bring me the honey-bag.… I must to the barber’s, monsieur, for methinks I am marvels [marvelous] hairy about the face. And I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch .
    The end of the Mechanicals’ Plot is a happy one. Titania and Oberon are reunited, and as they dance together, Puck removes the ass head from Bottom’s shoulders. When Bottom awakes, whole again, he remembers the luscious experience with Titania as though it were a dream. He rubs his eyes and shakes himself and says with wonder:
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.… The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom .

CHAPTER 9
    Passage 4
Theseus and Hippolyta
    THESEUS
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in
Another moon. But, O, methinks how slow
This old moon wanes!…
    HIPPOLYTA
Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities .
( A