A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act IV, Scene i

A Midsummer Night’s Dream.         Act 4, Scene 1.      Bottom

(This text is featured in our interview with Ian Gould)

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210  When my cue comes, call me, 

211  and I will answer. My next is “Most fair Pyramus.”

212  Hey-ho! Peter Quince! Flute the bellows-mender!

213  Snout the tinker! Starveling! God’s my life! Stolen

214  hence and left me asleep! I have had a most rare

215  vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say

216  what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about

217  to expound this dream. Methought I was—there

218  is no man can tell what. Methought I was and

219  methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if

220  he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of

221  man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen,

222  man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to

223  conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream

224  was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this

225  dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because

226  it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the

227  latter end of a play, before the Duke. Peradventure,

228  to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.