Midsummers Nights Dream (Adapted Version) : Peter Quince Lines

Scene 2: The Magic Forest That Night

QUINCE: Is all our company here?

BOTTOM:You’d Better Call The Role

QUINCE:Here is the scroll of every man’s name, which is thought fit to act in our play before the Duke and Duchess on their wedding night.

BOTTOM: First, good Peter Quince, say what the play is about, then read the names of the actors, and so grow to a point.

QUINCE: All right. Our play is “The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby”

BOTTOM:A very good piece of work, I assure you. Now good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll.

QUINCE:Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom the weaver.

BOTTOM:Ready name what part i am to play, and proceed.

QUINCE:You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus

BOTTOM:Who is Pyramus? A lover or a Tyrant?

QUINCE:A lover that kills himself for love

BOTTOM: I am better in the role of a tyrant. I could play Hercules very well, but I’ll also be good as a lover

QUINCE: Francis Flute, The bellows mender

FLUTE:Here, Peter Quince

QUINCE: Flute,You must take thisby as your role

FLUTE: Who’s Thisbly? A wandaring Knight?

QUINCE: It is the lady that Pyramus mustlove.

FLUTE:Nay, faith, don’t make me play a woman. I have a beard coming.

QUINCE: That doesn’t matter. You shall play it in a mask and you may speak it as small as you can

BOTTOM: If I may hide my face, let me play thisby, too. I’ll speak in a monstrous voice… “Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear… they thisby dear, and lady dear..

QUINCE: No, no. You must play Pyramus. Flute will play Thisby

BOTTOM: well proceed

QUINCE: Robin Starveling, The Tailor?

STARVELING: here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE: Robin Starveling you must play thisby’s mother. Tom Snout, the tinker?

SNOUT: Here, Peter Quince

QUINCE: You, Pyramus’s father…..myself, Thisby’s father. Snug the joiner, you the lions part. And I hope Here is a play well cast.

SNUG: Have you the lions part written? If you have , give it to me for I am a slow study

Quince: You may do it without lines for it is nothing but roaring

BOTTOM: Let me play the lion too! I will roar that it will do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar so well that the duke will say, “ let him roar again, Let him roar again.”

QUINCE: If you should do it to terribly, you would fright the Duchess and the ladies that they would shriek, and that were enough to hang us all.

ALL: That would hang us all, every mother son.

BOTTOM: Well, I will undertake it. What beard were i best to play it in?

QUINCE: Why, Whatever you like.

BOTTOM: I will play it in either your straw color beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your yellow beard

QUINCE: Masters here are your parts, and i request you to memorize them by tomorrow night, and meet me in the palace wood a mile without the town, by moonlight. There we will rehearse, for if we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with company. In the meantime, I will draw a list of properties such as our play needs. I pray you, fail me not.

BOTTOM: We will meet, ad there we may rehearse mos wonderfully. Take pains, be perfect. Adieu

At the Duke’s oak we meet

Scene 5: Same spot in the forest a little later

BOTTOM: Are we all here?

QUINCE: here’s a marevelous place for our rehearsal. Thisgreen plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn bush our dressing room and we will do it in action as we will do it before our Duke.

BOTTOM: ….this will put them out of fear

QUINCE: Well, we will have such a prolouge

BOTTOM: Nay, and half his face must be seen through the lions neck and he himself must speak through saying thus,” Ladies, oh fair Ladies, you think I come hither as a lion. No, I am no such thing. I am Snug, The joiner”.

QUINCE: Well, it shall be so. But there are two hard things… that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber, for you know Pyramus and Thisby meet by moonlight

BOTTOM: A calendar, a calendar! Look in the almanac. Let us see if the moon doth shine.

QUINCE: Yes, It doth shine that night

BOTTOM: Some man or other must repersent the wall, and let him hold his finger thus, and through the cranny shall Pyramus and Thisby whisper.

QUINCE: If that may be then all is well. Come, sit down everybody and rehearse your parts. Pyramus, you begin, and so everyone according to his cue.

PUCK: What have we here, so near the cradle of the fairy Queen? What? A play in rehersal? I’ll listen, and be an actor, too, perhaps, if I see a cause.

QUINCE: Speak, Pyramus. Thisby stand up.

BOTTOM: Thisby, The flowers of odious savours sweet…

QUINCE: Odours, Odours!

FLUTE: Must I speak now?

QUINCE: Ay, you must. For you must understand he goes but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come again