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. Methought I was – there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had – but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. 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.
– William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Bottom is at his bombastic and comic best when he wakes up in the forest, ass-head gone, and makes this speech about the previous night’s strange happenings. As he thinks back on Fairy Queen Titania taking him as her lover, he decides that it was all simply a dream. He says that a man would have to be "an ass" if he thought he could explain the dream – ironically Bottom was an ass at the time! Still he believes his dream is worthy of turning into art, he hopes that Quince will write a ballad about it and call it "Bottom’s Dream." In his speech Bottom manages to be both serious and funny at the same time. His attempt to rewrite the Bible is very funny, as he mangles the quote from 1 Corinthians 2:9 – "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." In his garbled version, he gets all the body senses mixed up.