footnote in the Signet Classic Shakespeare edition, "quines" are blocks of wood used for building and therefore characteristic of carpenters.
The other men of the company are:
Nick Bottom the weaver; one of the numerous meanings of "bottom" is a "skein of thread."
Francis Flute, the bellows-mender, which is apt since the sides of a bellows are fluted.
Tom Snout, the tinker, who deals largely with the repair of kettles, which are characterized by a snout (or spout).
Snug the joiner, an occupation which joins pieces of wood, it is to be hoped snugly.
Finally, there is Starveling the tailor, a name which is evidence that there has long been a tradition that tailors are weak, cowardly, effeminate creatures, perhaps because they work so much on women's clothes and because it is so easy to assume that a manly man would not be interested in such an occupation.
"... Pyramus and Thisby"
The six laborers have met in order to arrange the production of a play intended to celebrate the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. Quince announces the name of the play:
... our play is, "The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby."
- Act I, scene ii, lines ll-i;
The tale of Pyramus and Thisbe is found in Ovid's Metamorphose: (see page I-8) and has no known source beyond that.
Pyramus and Thisbe were a youth and maiden of Babylon who lived in adjoining houses and who loved each other but were kept separate by the enmity of their parents. They talked through a chink in the wall that separated the estates and arranged to meet outside the city one night.
Thisbe got there first, but was frightened by a lion and fled, leaving he: veil behind. The lion, who had just killed an ox, snapped at the veil, leaving it bloody. Pyramus arrived, found the lion's footprints and the blood; veil. Coming to a natural conclusion, he killed himself. When Thisbe re turned, she found Pyramus' dead body and killed herself as well.
There is a strange similarity between this tale and that of Romeo and Juliet, a play that was written at just about the time A Midsummer Night's Dream was being written. Did Shakespeare's satirical treatment of the Pyramus-Thisbe story get him interested in doing a serious treatment of it Was the serious treatment already written and was he now poking a little good-natured fun at it? We can never tell.
... play Ercles rarely ...
The workmen are among Shakespeare's most delightful creations: nai'v and yet well-meaning. And of them all, the most naive and the best meaning is Bottom. Bottom no sooner hears the name of the play but he says, pompously:
A very good piece of work,
I assure you, and a merry.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 14-15
Since the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe was well known to any Elizabethan with the slightest education, and known to be an utterly tragic one DBF signed for reducing softhearted maidens to floods of tears, Bottom's own characterization of it reveals him at once. He is illuminated as the cock sure know-it-all who knows nothing; the fool who thinks himself CIS, and yet who, through the very enormity of his folly, makes himself lovable. The workmen are each assigned a role in the play and Bottom is given the part of Pyramus the hero. Despite Bottom's pretense of knowledge concerning the play, it promptly turns out that he doesn't know what kind of part Pyramus is. He is told that Pyramus is a lover and he is wistful over the possibility of other roles, saying:
... my chief humor is for a tyrant.
I could play Ercles rarely, or a part
to tear a cat in, to make all split.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 29-31
"Ercles" is Bottom's mispronunciation of Hercules (and much of the humor in Shakespeare's plays rests with the mangling of the English language by the uneducated-something sure to raise patronizing chuckles from the better classes in the audience).
Hercules (Heracles) was the greatest of the legendary heroes of the Greeks. He was a child of Jupiter (Zeus) by an illicit amour with a mortal woman. He thus incurred the vengeful enmity of Juno (Hera). As a result of a crime committed during one of his periodic fits of madness, he was condemned to perform twelve labors for an unworthy relative, Eurystheus, King of Argos.
The tale of his labors (which may originally have been inspired by the progress of the sun through the twelve constellations of the zodiac) were elaborated and interlarded before, between, and afterward by so many