Summary: Act I, scene ii
In another part of Athens, far from Theseus’s palace,
a group of common laborers meets at the house of Peter Quince to
rehearse a play that the men hope to perform for the grand celebration
preceding the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. Quince, a carpenter, tries
to conduct the meeting, but the talkative weaver Nick Bottom continually
interrupts him with advice and direction. Quince tells the group
what play they are to perform: The Most Lamentable Comedy
and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe, which tells the
story of two lovers, separated by their parents’ feud, who speak to
each other at night through a hole in a wall. In the play, a lion
surprises Thisbe one night and tatters her mantle before she escapes. When
Pyramus finds the shredded garment, he assumes that the lion has
killed Thisbe; stricken with grief, he commits suicide. When Thisbe
finds Pyramus’s bloody corpse, she too commits suicide. Quince assigns
their parts: Bottom is to play Pyramus; Francis Flute, Thisbe; Robin
Starveling, Thisbe’s mother; Tom Snout, Pyramus’s father; Quince
himself, Thisbe’s father; and Snug, the lion.
As Quince doles out the parts, Bottom often interrupts,
announcing that he should be the one to play the assigned part.
He says that his ability to speak in a woman’s voice would make
him a wonderful Thisbe and that his ability to roar would make him
a wonderful lion. Quince eventually convinces him that Pyramus is
the part for him, by virtue of the fact that Pyramus is supposed
to be very handsome. Snug worries that he will be unable to learn
the lion’s part, but Quince reassures him that it will be very easy
to learn, since the lion speaks no words and only growls and roars.
This worries the craftsmen, who reason that if the lion frightens
any of the noble ladies in the audience, they will all be executed;
since they are only common laborers, they do not want to risk upsetting
powerful people. Bottom says that he could roar
as sweetly as a nightingale so as not to frighten anyone, but Quince
again convinces him that he can only play Pyramus. The group disperses,
agreeing to meet in the woods the following night to rehearse their
play.
Read a translation of
Act I, scene ii →
Analysis
The most important motif in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, and one of the most important literary techniques
Shakespeare uses throughout the play, is that of contrast. The three
main groups of characters are all vastly different from one another,
and the styles, moods, and structures of their respective subplots
also differ. It is by incorporating these contrasting realms into
a single story that Shakespeare creates the play’s dreamlike atmosphere.
Almost diametrically opposite the beautiful, serious, and love-struck
young nobles are the clumsy, ridiculous, and deeply confused craftsmen, around
whom many of the play’s most comical scenes are centered.
Where the young lovers are graceful and well spoken—almost comically
well suited to their roles as melodramatically passionate youths—the
craftsmen often fumble their words and could not be less well suited
for acting. This disjunction reveals itself as it becomes readily
apparent that the craftsmen have no idea how to put on a dramatic
production: their speeches are full of impossible ideas and mistakes
(Bottom, for example, claims that he will roar “as gently / as any
sucking dove”); their concerns about their parts are absurd
(Flute does not want to play Thisbe because he is growing a beard);
and their extended discussion about whether they will be executed
if the lion’s roaring frightens the ladies further evidences the
fact that their primary concern is with themselves, not their art
(II.i.67–68).
The fact that the workmen have chosen to perform the Pyramus and
Thisbe story, a Babylonian myth familiar to Shakespeare’s audiences
from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, only heightens the comedy.
The story of Pyramus and Thisbe is highly dramatic, with suicides
and tragically wasted love (themes that Shakespeare takes up in Romeo and
Juliet as well). Badly suited to their task and inexperienced, although
endlessly well meaning, the craftsmen are sympathetic figures even
when the audience laughs at them—a fact made explicit in Act V,
when Theseus makes fun of their play even as he honors their effort.
The contrast between the serious nature of the play and the bumbling
foolishness of the craftsmen makes the endeavor all the more ridiculous.
Further, the actors’ botched telling of the youthful love between
Pyramus and Thisbe implicitly mocks the melodramatic love tangle
of Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander.
