ACT III

SCENE i

Near to where Titania is sleeping, the mechanicals try to hash out anticipated production problems and practice their play. They are so convinced that they will be convincing that they decide to write a prologue so that the audience will not die of fright, what with all the swords and the lion and all. The lion should assure them that he's not real, and the audience will need assuring that Pyramus and Thisby are not really dying up on the stage. They also decide they need someone to play the moon, oh, and also the wall. It's again odd that we hear there is to be a moon on the night of the play since there should be no moon at all according to Theseus at the very beginning of the play (Asimov 36-37). Instead of "Ninus' Tomb" these goobers keep saying "Ninny's Tomb." Puck eavesdrops and decides to stir things up among these yokels by transforming Bottom into a were-ass. Bottom's new donkey-headed form scares off the others: "Thou art translated," says Quince (III.i.118-119). The players run off.

Bottom thinks they are playing a joke, as Helena does, so he sings a song to show that he is not afraid. But when Titania wakes and the first thing she sees is Bottom with his ass's head, she reels immediately with passion for him. He is disbelieving, "yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days" (III.i.143-144). Titania swears her love and takes him among the fairies. He is much taken with them -- Masters Cobweb and Peaseblossom and Mustardseed. "Bottom is amiably innocent, and not very bawdy" (Bloom 149), "amiable enough to the infatuated Titania, ... truly charmed by the four elves" (Bloom 161). The fairies are usually played by children (Wells 66), rendering fairyland a hell-hole, in my opinion. The more recent film offers instead a truly aesthetically attractive fairyland, notwithstanding an extraneous cameo appearance by Medusa's head. The use of the term "Monsieur" in the scene, and the reference to "a honey-bag," suggest Alençon and his request of money-bags from Elizabeth (Clark 617-618; cf. Ogburn and Ogburn 589). The reference to "enforced chastity" (III.i.198) brings to mind Elizabeth's demands on her maids and courtiers (Ogburn and Ogburn 588).

Every exigency finds Bottom round and ready: his response is always admirable. The Puck-induced metamorphosis is a mere externality: the inner Bottom is unfazed and immutable. ... Like Dogberry after him, Bottom is an ancestor of Sheridan's Mrs. Malaprop, and uses certain words without knowing what they signify. Though he is thus sometimes inaccurate at the circumference, he is always sound at the core, which is what Bottom the Weaver's name means, the center of the skein upon which the weaver's wool is wound. (Bloom 150-151)

SCENE ii Oberon is pleased with Puck's reports -- "Titania wak'd, and straightway lov'd an ass" (III.ii.34) -- until it is discovered that he got the wrong Athenian youth. Puck doses Demetrius so that he'll pursue Helena, but "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" (III.ii.115). With two men pursuing her when formerly there were none, Helena thinks this is an elaborate mockery with Hermia involved too, and eventually she gets in a fight with Hermia. With the "maypole" insult (III.ii.296), "Not only does Hermia in this way refer disparagingly to Helena as tall and skinny (and perhaps with as little figure as a maypole), but she also implies that the men, Lysander and Demetrius, are dancing about her with immoral intent" (Asimov 45). Hermia's "shrewish strain" may have captured Anne Cecil's (Ogburn and Ogburn 159, 583, 622). Puck is delighted with the merry mix-ups, but Oberon has had enough and instructs Puck to fix all this under cover of fog. Puck agrees: "Jack shall have Jill; / Nought shall go ill" (III.ii.461-462) -- the opposite of the end of Love's Labour's Lost.