Bottom Midsummer Night's Dream Quotes

A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.

We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream. Spoken by Bottom, Act I Sc. 2

and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.

There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that? SNOUT By'r lakin, a parlous fear. STARVELING I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done. BOTTOM Not a whit: I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put them out of fear. QUINCE Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written in eight and six. BOTTOM No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.

[Re-enter PUCK, and BOTTOM with an ass’s head.] PYRAMUS ‘If I were fair, Thisbe, I were only thine:—’ QUINCE O monstrous! O strange! we are haunted. Pray, masters! fly, masters! Help! [Exeunt Clowns.] PUCK 90 I’ll follow you; I’ll lead you about a round, Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier; Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, 95 Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. [Exit.] BOTTOM Why do they run away? This is a knavery of them to make me afeard. [Re-enter SNOUT.]

Avoiding the Scylla of the nunnery, Hermia sails dangerously close to the Charybdis of Titania's lust for the ass-headed Bottom, but emerges safely, and somewhat more self-knowledgeably, into the orderly harbor of marriage.

I auditioned for the next play our director, Dominic, had lined up: A Midsummer Night's Dream, touring at several different parks in the Puget Sound area in July and August. Dominic cast me as Puck. "A fairy?" Andy said, all innocence. "I know you're not going to comment on that," I said. "I could've made better jokes with 'Bottom.