Enter [QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT and STARVELING. TITANIA lying asleep.]
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 sayst thou, bully Bottom?
BOTTOM There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself, which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that?
SNOUT Byrlakin, a parlous fear. (3.1.1-12)
The Athenian workers’ amateur dramatic club! So easy to forget about them, with the fairies and the lovers and the DRUGS and all the running around and confusion. They’ve come to rehearse their play: are we all met? asks Bottom, taking charge, even though he’s not the director. Quince (who is) is scoping out the facilities, it’s all happening, this is it: pat, pat, yes, everyone’s here, and on time too! and here’s a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal, absolutely perfect, everything we need. This green plot shall be our stage—he gestures to the actual stage, where there is of course no grass—this hawthorn brake our tiring-house—he gestures to the actual tiring house, where there are no hawthorn bushes; and we will do it in action, as we will do it before the duke. On your feet, everyone, we’re doing the actions, not just running lines!
But Bottom has something on his mind: Peter Quince! What sayst thou, bully Bottom? This can be said with a tone of weariness, it’s not impossible that Bottom has been bending Quince’s ear ever since they left town. Mate, what is it now? There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe that will never please. (Reminding an Ovidian-minded audience that Pyramus and Thisbe is very much not a comedy.) I’ve just got some reservations about the show? First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself—well, obviously, yes, Quince might be about to say, everyone knows that—which the ladies cannot abide. Real concern, but also perhaps a slight note of triumph, you haven’t thought of that, have you? Me, Bottom, I have Insights into the ladies and what they will and will not abide. How answer you that? Snout’s been listening in, with some anxiety: byrlakin, a parlous fear, and it’s an appropriately feminine response, by our ladykin, an almost parodically ‘mild oath’, as editors say, by the little Virgin Mary! that would indeed be a perilous fear, both for us and for them!
Quince sees—yet again—that this is not going to be straightforward. Sighs.
