QUINCE You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man, a proper man as one shall see in a summer’s day, a most lovely gentlemanlike man: therefore you must needs play Pyramus.
BOTTOM Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?
QUINCE Why, what you will.
BOTTOM I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfit yellow.
QUINCE Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced. (1.2.79-91)
Quince is adamant, but also he’s worked out that flattery is the way to win this: you can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man, handsome as you like, a proper man as one shall see in a summer’s day, a most lovely gentlemanlike man. Ladies will swoon, men will envy, etc. Therefore you must needs play Pyramus. No one else can do it! It has to be you! Bottom might wrestle with himself, and then be magnanimous: well, I will undertake it. Yes. I will play Pyramus. HOORAY the others can say, at last, finally. And then a total swerve, which might baffle or else frustrate Quince: what beard were I best to play it in? What? What? After all that, such a tiny, weird detail? But Bottom knows that false beards are central to theatre. (True: there are lots in the wardrobe records of the Revels office, and other places too, for instance at Trinity College in Cambridge.) He’s got to get this right, and after all there are many options: I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard—dirty blond—your orange-tawny beard, a fetching auburn, your purple-in-grain beard, edgy, daringly punk!—or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfit yellow. Golden! Quince feels able to make a daring, slightly risqué joke, which might let off a bit of steam: some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced. *klaxon* *pox joke alert* no hair because syphilis, the French disease, causes patchy baldness! Oh Quince, you’re such a man of the world. I hope Flute doesn’t get the joke.
