“The Botome of Goddes Secretes”: 1 Corinthians and A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Abstract

They [the actors playing the mechanicals] had no idea what was happening behind the studio doors and of course we [the actors playing the characters at Theseus’s court] had never seen the play they now began to perform [Pyramus and Thisby]. They appeared as under-rehearsed as Bottom and his colleagues were in the text. Philip Locke as Peter Quince acted as the play’s Prologue and its genuine prompter, holding the Penguin edition of the Dream in his hand. The court found this very funny at first, but as our jokes at their expense grew more desperate, the actual substance of their play together with the strangeness of our environment began to work upon us and by the time we had reached the death of Pyramus and Thisby, their innocence had a weirdly moving effect on us.