Mechanicals — A Midsummer Night’s Dream (All Scenes)

Doubling: Titania and Puck appear only in the Act III scene and can be doubled with audience members or offstage voices.

Staging: Three scenes played in sequence: Act I Scene ii (Quince’s house), Act III Scene i (the wood, rehearsal), Act V Scene i (the performance). No set required. A rehearsal placard or sign change between scenes is optional but not necessary.

Production Notes

The Mechanicals are six working-class Athenians who decide to put on a play for the Duke’s wedding — “The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.” Bottom the weaver dominates every scene with cheerful overconfidence. The comedy comes from watching people take their art utterly seriously while being completely out of their depth.

These three scenes work beautifully as a stand-alone piece. Together they tell a complete story: preparation, disruption (Bottom gets a donkey’s head), and triumphant (if hilarious) performance. See the audience cue-card explainer on the Cuttings page for the DT:FC pattern.

This is wonderful material for younger or newer Players: the characters are broad, the humor is physical, and the text rewards playing rather than polishing. Bottom’s irrepressible enthusiasm is contagious.

Script

ACT I, SCENE II — Athens. Quince’s house.

Folger: MSND I.2

Enter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING.

QUINCE: Is all our company here?

BOTTOM: You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip.

QUINCE: Here is the scroll of every one’s name, which is thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the duke and the duchess, on his wedding-day at night.

BOTTOM: First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on, then read the names of the actors, and so grow to a point.

QUINCE: Marry, our play is, The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.

BOTTOM: A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.

QUINCE: Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.

BOTTOM: Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.

QUINCE: You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.

BOTTOM: What is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant?

QUINCE: A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.

BOTTOM: That will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some measure. To the rest: yet my chief humour is for a tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.

The raging rocks And shivering shocks Shall break the locks Of prison gates; And Phibbus’ car Shall shine from far And make and mar The foolish Fates.

This was lofty! Now name the rest of the players. This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein; a lover is more condoling.

QUINCE: Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.

FLUTE: Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE: Flute, you must take Thisby on you.

FLUTE: What is Thisby? a wandering knight?

QUINCE: It is the lady that Pyramus must love.

FLUTE: Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.

QUINCE: That’s all one: you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will.

BOTTOM: An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too, I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice. ‘Thisne, Thisne;’ ‘Ah, Pyramus, lover dear! thy Thisby dear, and lady dear!’

QUINCE: No, no; you must play Pyramus: and, Flute, you Thisby.

BOTTOM: Well, proceed.

QUINCE: Robin Starveling, the tailor.

STARVELING: Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE: Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby’s mother. Tom Snout, the tinker.

SNOUT: Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE: You, Pyramus’ father: myself, Thisby’s father: Snug, the joiner; you, the lion’s part: and, I hope, here is a play fitted.

SNUG: Have you the lion’s part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.

QUINCE: You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.

BOTTOM: Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me; I will roar, that I will make the duke say ‘Let him roar again, let him roar again.’

QUINCE: An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all.

ALL: That would hang us, every mother’s son.

BOTTOM: I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us: but I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an ‘twere any nightingale.

QUINCE: You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer’s day; a most lovely gentleman-like man: therefore you must needs play Pyramus.

BOTTOM: Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?

QUINCE: Why, what you will.

BOTTOM: I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.

QUINCE: Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced. But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request you and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with company, and our devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not.

BOTTOM: We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect: adieu.

QUINCE: At the duke’s oak we meet.

BOTTOM: Enough; hold or cut bow-strings.

ACT III, SCENE I — The wood. Titania lying asleep.

Folger: MSND III.1

Enter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING.

BOTTOM: Are we all met?

QUINCE: Pat, pat; and here’s a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal. This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn-brake our tiring-house; and we will do it in action as we will do it before the duke.

BOTTOM: Peter Quince!

QUINCE: What sayest thou, bully Bottom?

BOTTOM: There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that?

SNOUT: By’r lakin, a parlous fear.

STARVELING: I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.

BOTTOM: Not a whit: I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put them out of fear.

QUINCE: Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written in eight and six.

BOTTOM: No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.

SNOUT: Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?

STARVELING: I fear it, I promise you.

BOTTOM: Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves: to bring in—God shield us!—a lion among ladies, is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to look to ‘t.

SNOUT: Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.

BOTTOM: Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion’s neck: and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect,—‘Ladies,‘—or ‘Fair-ladies,’—‘I would wish you,‘—or ‘I would request you,‘—or ‘I would entreat you,‘—not to fear, not to tremble: my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life: no, I am no such thing; I am a man as other men are; and there indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.

QUINCE: Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things; that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for, you know, Pyramus and Thisby meet by moonlight.

SNOUT: Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?

BOTTOM: A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac; find out moonshine, find out moonshine.

QUINCE: Yes, it doth shine that night.

BOTTOM: Why, then may you leave a casement of the great chamber window, where we play, open, and the moon may shine in at the casement.

QUINCE: Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, the person of Moonshine. Then, there is another thing: we must have a wall in the great chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby says the story, did talk through the chink of a wall.

SNOUT: You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom?

BOTTOM: Some man or other must present Wall: and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall; and let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisby whisper.

QUINCE: If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down, every mother’s son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus, you begin: when you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake: and so every one according to his cue.

Enter PUCK behind.

PUCK: What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here, So near the cradle of the fairy queen? What, a play toward! I’ll be an auditor; An actor too perhaps, if I see cause.

QUINCE: Speak, Pyramus. Thisby, stand forth.

BOTTOM: Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet,—

QUINCE: Odious! odorous!

BOTTOM: —odours savours sweet: So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisby dear. But hark, a voice! stay thou but here awhile, And by and by I will to thee appear.

Exit BOTTOM.

PUCK: A stranger Pyramus than e’er played here! Exit.

FLUTE: Must I speak now?

QUINCE: Ay, marry, must you; for you must understand he goes but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come again.

FLUTE: Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue, Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier, Most brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew, As true as truest horse that yet would never tire, I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb.

QUINCE: ‘Ninus’ tomb,’ man; why, you must not speak that yet; that you answer to Pyramus: you speak all your part at once, cues and all. Pyramus enter: your cue is past; it is, ‘never tire.’

FLUTE: O,—As true as truest horse, that yet would never tire.

Re-enter PUCK, and BOTTOM with an ass’s head.

BOTTOM: If I were fair, Thisby, I were only thine.

QUINCE: O monstrous! O strange! we are haunted. Pray, masters! fly, masters! Help!

Exeunt QUINCE, SNUG, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING.

PUCK: I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about a round, Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier: Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. Exit.

BOTTOM: Why do they run away? this is a knavery of them to make me afeard.

Re-enter SNOUT.

SNOUT: O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee?

BOTTOM: What do you see? you see an asshead of your own, do you?

Re-enter QUINCE.

QUINCE: Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art translated. Exit.

BOTTOM: I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can: I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid.

(Sings)

The ousel cock so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill, The throstle with his note so true, The wren with little quill,—

TITANIA: (Waking) What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

BOTTOM: (Sings)

The finch, the sparrow and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay;—

for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry ‘cuckoo’ never so?

TITANIA: I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again: Mine ear is much enamored of thy note; So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape; And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.

BOTTOM: Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays; the more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.

TITANIA: Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.

BOTTOM: Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.

TITANIA: Out of this wood do not desire to go: Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. I am a spirit of no common rate; The summer still doth tend upon my state; And I do love thee: therefore, go with me; I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee, And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, And sing while thou on pressèd flowers dost sleep.

ACT V, SCENE I — Athens. The palace of Theseus. (The Performance)

Folger: MSND V.1

(The Mechanicals perform “The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby” before Theseus, Hippolyta, and the lovers. QUINCE delivers the Prologue; SNOUT plays the Wall; STARVELING plays Moonshine; SNUG plays the Lion; BOTTOM plays Pyramus; FLUTE plays Thisby.)

QUINCE: (As Prologue) If we offend, it is with our good will. That you should think, we come not to offend, But with good will. To show our simple skill, That is the true beginning of our end. Consider then we come but in despite. We do not come as minding to contest you, Our true intent is. All for your delight We are not here. That you should here repent you, The actors are at hand and by their show You shall know all that you are like to know.

SNOUT: (As Wall) In this same interlude it doth befall That I, one Snout by name, present a wall; And such a wall, as I would have you think, That had in it a crannied hole or chink, Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby, Did whisper often very secretly. This loam, this rough-cast and this stone doth show That I am that same wall; the truth is so: And this the cranny is, right and sinister, Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.

BOTTOM: (As Pyramus) O grim-look’d night! O night with hue so black! O night, which ever art when day is not! O night, O night! alack, alack, alack, I fear my Thisby’s promise is forgot! And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall, That stand’st between her father’s ground and mine! Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall, Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!

(SNOUT holds up his fingers.)

Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this! But what see I? No Thisby do I see. O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss! Cursed be thy stones for thus deceiving me!

FLUTE: (As Thisby) O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans, For parting my fair Pyramus and me! My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones, Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.

BOTTOM: (As Pyramus) I see a voice: now will I to the chink, To spy an I can hear my Thisby’s face. Thisby!

FLUTE: My love thou art, my love I think.

BOTTOM: Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover’s grace; And, like Limander, am I trusty still.

FLUTE: And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.

BOTTOM: Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.

FLUTE: As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.

BOTTOM: O, kiss me through the hole of this vile wall!

FLUTE: I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips at all.

BOTTOM: Wilt thou at Ninny’s tomb meet me straightway?

FLUTE: ‘Tide life, ‘tide death, I come without delay.

(Exeunt BOTTOM and FLUTE.)

SNOUT: Thus have I, Wall, my part dischargèd so; And, being done, thus Wall away doth go. (Exit.)

(Enter SNUG as Lion, and STARVELING as Moonshine.)

SNUG: (As Lion) You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor, May now perchance both quake and tremble here, When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar. Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am A lion-fell, nor else no lion’s dam; For, if I should as lion come in strife Into this place, ‘twere pity on my life.

FLUTE: (As Thisby, re-entering) This is old Ninny’s tomb. Where is my love?

SNUG: (Roaring) Oh—

(FLUTE as Thisby runs off, dropping mantle.)

(Re-enter BOTTOM as Pyramus.)

BOTTOM: (As Pyramus) Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams; I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright; For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams, I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.

But stay, O spite! But mark, poor knight, What dreadful dole is here! Eyes, do you see? How can it be? O dainty duck! O dear! Thy mantle good, What, stained with blood! Approach, ye Furies fell! O Fates, come, come, Cut thread and thrum; Quail, crush, conclude, and quell!

O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame? Since lion vile hath here deflower’d my dear: Which is—no, no—which was the fairest dame That lived, that loved, that liked, that look’d with cheer.

Come, tears, confound; Out, sword, and wound The pap of Pyramus; Ay, that left pap, Where heart doth hop:

(Stabs himself.)

Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. Now am I dead, Now am I fled; My soul is in the sky: Tongue, lose thy light; Moon take thy flight:

(Exit STARVELING as Moonshine.)

Now die, die, die, die, die.

(Dies.)

(Re-enter FLUTE as Thisby.)

FLUTE: (As Thisby) 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. O Sisters Three, Come, come to me, With hands as pale as milk; Lay them in gore, Since you have shore With shears his thread of silk. Tongue, not a word: Come, trusty sword; Come, blade, my breast imbrue:

(Stabs herself.)

And, farewell, friends; Thus Thisby ends: Adieu, adieu, adieu. (Dies.)

Facilitator Notes

Warm-up: Play a quick game of “Yes, And” or another agreement exercise — the Mechanicals work because they are genuinely trying to help each other, however badly it goes.

Staging the three scenes: Each scene has its own energy. Act I is planning and optimism. Act III is chaos and transformation. Act V is performance terror transformed into joy. Let Players identify which they’re in before playing it.

Debrief prompts: