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All Site ContentMidsummer Night's DreamAct 3Scene 1
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Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling, Lines 43-75
Context and Language Videos
Act 3,
Scene 1
Lines 43-75

A performance of lines 43-75 by Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling in Act 3, Scene 1 of myShakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

myShakespeare | Midsummer Night's Dream 3.1 Performance: Quince et al Lines 43-75

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.

Snug

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 Robin, invisible]

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.

Quince

Ay, or else one must come in with a bush of
thorns and a lantern, and say he comes to disfigure or
to present the person of Moonshine. Then there is
another thing: 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,” and let him
hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall
Pyramus and Thisbe whisper.

Quince

If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down,
every mother's son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus,
you begin. When you have spoken your speech, enter
into that brake. And so every one according to his cue.

Robin 

[Invisible, Robin speaks an aside which only the audience can hear]
What hempen homespuns have we swagg’ring here
So near the cradle of the Fairy Queen?
What, a play toward? I'll be an auditor —
An actor too, perhaps, if I see cause.