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 Phoebus’ 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.
– William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 2. Nick Bottom is the classic comic fool and the star of the Mechanicals’ play. It’s a play so bad that it’s good, with acting so ridiculous that it’s hilarious, and an audience of nobles who find it exceedingly funny and entertaining. We get a flavor of the amusing nonsense to come in this speech from Bottom. He says that role he would like to play is a tyrant or Ercles, a mispronunciation of Hercules, who is not even in the play. He goes on to deliver a childish, rhyming monologue with nonsensical images about rocks that rage and shocks that shiver. Then he tells us it is "lofty" art. The audience laughs at the ridiculous Bottom, rather than with him.