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.

Enter PUCK

QUINCE          [consulting an almanac] 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.       (3.1.43-53)

Well, it shall be so, concedes Quince. We can explain that the lion isn’t a real lion. But something’s been preying on his mind too: but there is two hard things, two theatrical problems that I just haven’t cracked yet. That is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for you know Pyramus and Thisbe meet by moonlight. How can we do it? (Quince is, of course, speaking these lines in broad daylight, and in the middle of the night, so far as the play is concerned, night which has been established by the usual theatrical expedient of a lantern on stage.) Snout immediately grasps the problem, and sees a solution: doth the moon shine that night we play our play? Bottom sees what he’s driving at, and in order to ascertain it, they need a calendar, a calendar, look in the almanac, which will give the phases of the moon. Find out moonshine, find out moonshine. (Much faffing around with whatever almanac or equivalent the production has supplied. Or perhaps Quince doesn’t even bother, he knows perfectly well there will be moonshine, after all, it’s only a few days away, he just didn’t anticipate the solution to this particular theatrical problem to be quite so literal.) Yes! Yes, it doth shine that night. We’re in luck, lads. Completely simple, then, as Bottom spells it out: 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. We can just leave a window open and the moon will shine in! (Does Bottom not envisage glass windows, or at least panes too small to allow the moon to shine in unimpeded? Perhaps; it’d be an incidentally realistic touch for an artisan wholly unused to great houses and window glass of any kind.) Much relief all round; they’re cracking all of it, the not-real death, the not-real lion, and now the real moonlight!

And in the middle of all of this, Puck apparently arrives, unseen, with mischief on his mind…