Pyramus Quotes

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

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 2. Nick Bottom calls the Mechanicals’ play a very good piece of work and a happy one for a wedding night. The self-important and ridiculous weaver is full of it and doesn’t know what he is talking about much of the time. Far from being "merry," the play is a tragedy about the death of two lovers. Bottom has a tendency to take over and act like he is the expert, note how he cannot help but give directions to the director, who will have his hands full trying to keep Bottom in line. The play’s director Peter Quince for his part is guilty of butchering the language, calling the play a "lamentable comedy." He presumably meant to say it was a lamentable tragedy. But he turns out to be ironically right without knowing it. For the version of the Pyramus and Thisbe story we get to see turns out to be lamentably bad, poorly acted and hilariously comic. It is also ironic that the craftsmen choose a play about a pair of ill-fated lovers for such a happy occasion as a wedding.

BOTTOM: What is Pyramus – a lover or a tyrant?
QUINCE: A lover that kills himself most gallant for love.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 2. As Quince assigns the role of Pyramus to Bottom, he explains that Pyramus is a lover who kills himself for love. It is ironic that a lover should take his life for love. Pyramus actually kills himself out of grief for his "dead" love Thisbe. But the irony is that Thisbe is not actually dead, and when she finds Pyramus dead she kills herself. There is also irony in the Mechanicals’ choice of such a tragic play for Duke Theseus’ marriage.

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

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 2. As soon as director Quince starts assigning parts for the Mechanicals’ play, the silliness also begins and we see signs that these bungling amateurs are about to transform this Babylonian tragedy into a comedy. Bottom seems to want to take on every role in the play. Already assigned the character Pyramus, he also offers to play his tragic lover Thisbe. Arguing about his fitness for the female role, he maintains that he can make speak in a high-pitched tone – "a monstrous little voice," he says using an oxymoron. In Shakespeare’s time, women weren’t allowed perform on stage and so men had to play their parts.

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.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. Nick Bottom comes up with the solution to the ladies being frightened by the killing in the play. It is for Quince to write a prologue to explain that nobody is actually killed on stage. Bottom is clearly very over-confident in the acting abilities of the amateur troupe. Quince stamps his authority at their rehearsal in the woods and agrees to Bottom’s suggestion: "Well, we will have such a prologue, and it shall be written in eight and six" – meaning alternating lines of eight and six syllables.

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 Thisbe 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.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. Shakespeare’s theater of the absurd continues, as Quince says that moonlight is required because Pyramus and Thisbe meet by moonlight. Snout worries about how to provide moonlight indoors and wonders if the moon shines on the night of their play. The players consult the almanac to discover that there is indeed moonshine that night.

QUINCE: We must have a wall in the great chamber, for Pyramus and Thisbe, 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 roughcast about him to signify wall.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. Director Quince insists that the play must have a wall, as Pyramus and Thisbe spoke to each other through a hole in a wall. The players have a ludicrous discussion on whether a wall can be brought onto the stage with Bottom suggesting that one of them must play the part of Wall. Snout is selected for the important role.

Thisbe, the flowers of odious savours sweet – .

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. Bottom, speaking as Pyramus, provides us with another of his funny malapropisms. When he speaks about flowers with "odious savours sweet," he is immediately corrected by director Quince: "Odours, odours!" Bottom of course meant to say something like "odours savours sweet." But if the overconfident weaver didn’t so ingloriously mangle the English language, he wouldn’t be the likeable comic character that he is!

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.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. Bellows-mender Francis Flute, playing Thisbe, provides some humor and laughs, when he delivers these memorably terrible lines about Pyramus. He uses a simile to compare Pyramus’ color to a red rose, and at the same time says it is lily-white. He calls the meeting place "Ninny’s tomb" (meaning idiot’s tomb) instead of Ninus’ tomb. He refers to Pyramus as a "most lovely Jew" instead of jewel. An irritated Quince immediately corrects Flute: "’Ninus’ tomb,’ man." The story of Pyramus and Thiste takes place in ancient city of Babylon (modern day Iraq). Babylon, according to legend, was founded by King Ninus some 4,000 ago.

BOTTOM (as Pyramus): If I were fair, Thisbe, I were only thine.
QUINCE: O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted! Pray, masters, fly, masters! Help!

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. There is irony as Pyramus (played by Bottom) tells Thisbe (Flute) that if he were handsome, he would still be entirely hers. Bottom doesn’t realize that he now wears the head of an ass, making his line extra-comical. At the sight of Bottom’s transformation, a terrified Quince lets out a yell and runs off with Flute, Snout, Snug and Starveling. The prankster Puck has played a trick on Bottom by planting an ass’s head on him because of his ass-like behavior.

My mistress with a monster is in love.
Near to her close and consecrated bower,
While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,
A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,
Were met together to rehearse a play
Intended for great Theseus’ nuptial-day.
The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort,
Who Pyramus presented, in their sport
Forsook his scene and enter’d in a brake
When I did him at this advantage take,
An ass’s nole I fixed on his head:
Anon his Thisbe must be answered,
And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,
As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun’s report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;
And, at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls;
He murder cries and help from Athens calls.
Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus strong,
Made senseless things begin to do them wrong;
For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;
Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch.
I led them on in this distracted fear,
And left sweet Pyramus translated there:
When in that moment, so it came to pass,
Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Fairy King Oberon’s faithful servant Puck reports back to his master on the outcome of Oberon placing the love potion on the sleeping Titania. Puck tells how Oberon’s plan for Titania has worked and she has fallen in love with a monster. Puck explains that he came upon a group of workmen-actors in the forest near Titania and transformed the head of the one playing Pyramus into that of an ass. He uses similes to describe how the other workmen ran when they saw him, like wild geese that spot a hunter, or a flock of jackdaws flying at the sound of a gunshot. Titania then woke up "and straightaway loved an ass," the mischievous Puck says with obvious glee.

O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life. He could not have ‘scaped sixpence a day. An the Duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I’ll be hanged. He would have deserved it. Sixpence a day in Pyramus, or nothing.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 2. With Bottom gone missing, Flute bemoans that Bottom has missed the chance to perform for the Duke and earn a pension of sixpence a day in reward for playing Pyramus.

"Merry" and "tragical"? "Tedious" and "brief"?
That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow!
How shall we find the concord of this discord?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Theseus reads a list of plays that the amateur players are ready to perform. Last on the list and the one he chooses is the love story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Theseus’ obvious puzzlement and amusement are foreshadowing of how ridiculous and foolish the play will be. He employs a series of oxymorons and metaphors to describe its contradictions.

A play there is, my lord, some ten words long
(Which is as brief as I have known a play),
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious; for in all the play,
There is not one word apt, one player fitted.
And tragical, my noble lord, it is.
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself,
Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,
Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Philostrate tries to dissuade Theseus from choosing the Mechanicals’ play about Pyramus and Thisbe for the night’s entertainment. The play is brief, he tells him, but it is so tedious and badly played that its short length is still too long. The tragic story of Pyramus’ suicide will bring tears to the eyes, but from laughter, he warns the Duke.

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 Thisbe,
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.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Tinker Snout bizarrely playing the role of a wall and taking his part so seriously is one of the more hilarious features of the Mechanicals’ royal command performance. The lovers Pyramus and Thisme communicate and speak through a "chink" in his wall, Snout explains.

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 Thisbe’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!
[Wall holds up his fingers]
Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this!
But what see I? No Thisbe do I see.
O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!
Cursed be thy stones for thus deceiving me!

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Bottom plumbs the depths of ridiculousness with his opening words in the heroic role of the doomed Pyramus. His impassioned language and attempt at grandiose speech in a tragic love story is the stuff of comedy. His excessive repetition of "O" and "alack" adds to the humor. As does his explaining to his audience of nobles that night is "when day is not." Also his ludicrous conversation with the wall: "O sweet and lovely wall." Not to mention the repeated exclamations and feeble attempt at poetry with alternating rhyme and internal rhyme.

BOTTOM [as Pyramus]: Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover’s grace;
And, like Limander, am I trusty still.
FLUTE [as Thisbe]: And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Pyramus (Bottom) and Thisbe (Flute) declare fidelity to one another. But there are a few flaws in director Quince’s script. Limander is a malapropism for Leander, showing that Quince is not as well acquainted with classical literature as he might like to make out. Flute also compares his character Thisbe’s faithfulness to that of mythological Greek princess Helen. This seems an odd comparison. For when King Menelaus’s wife Helen was abducted by Trojan prince Paris and brought to Troy, some versions of the legend suggest that she willingly ran off with him.

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!

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. A distraught Bottom (as Pyramus) believes that his beloved Thisbe has stabbed heself when he finds her cloak covered in blood. However, he is unaware that she dropped her cloak as she ran off, and the lion then bit it with his bloodied teeth.
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