Bottom (as Pyramus)
Flute (as Thisbe)
Flute, as Thisbe, is comparing his character's faithfulness to that of the mythological Greek princess Helen. She was considered the most beautiful woman in the world and was married off at a young age to King Menelaus of the Greek city of Sparta. When she was abducted by the Trojan prince Paris and carried back to his home city of Troy in Turkey, all the Greek kings rose up in arms and sailed across the Aegean Sea to get her back. The resulting Trojan War and its aftermath provided the backdrop for much of ancient mythology and was chronicled in works like the Iliad and the Aenied. But Helen of Troy, as she is known, is an odd choice as the symbol of faithfulness. According to some versions of the myth, she wasn’t so much abducted by Paris, as willingly ran off with him. Shakespeare’s audience would have realized that Quince didn’t know his Greek mythology very well.
