How did Shakespeare use the original tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe for a different purpose in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Answer 1

In the mid-1590s, when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written, no particular "romantic comedy formula" had yet evolved. There were certain features in plays of this type which appear in other romantic comedies of the time, particularly those of Lyly: pairs of lovers are destined to be together, and are brought together, often with the aid of love-potions or similar devices, to be married at the end. This is exactly what happens in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck's verse: "Jack shall have Jill; nought shall go ill; the man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well." is a reiteration of the classic, even hackneyed ending of a typical comedy.

Puck's line occurs in Act IV, which points up the unusual feature of the play--that the romantic plot is completely wound up by the end of Act IV, and Act V is totally dedicated to the play-within-a-play Pyramus and Thisbe, like a kind of extended jig. Will Kempe was thus given even more time than usual to take the limelight.

The Shakespeare play that really does mess with the conventions of romantic comedy is Love's Labour's Lost, in which the couples who have sorted themselves out are, at the last moment, prevented from marrying. Berowne comments: "Our wooing doth not end like an old play; Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy might well have made our sport a comedy." The use of the Jack-and-Jill line shows that Shakespeare was underlining the conventionality of his play in the line he gives to Puck--clearly Midsummer Night's Dream ends "like an old play". Berowne's line also says that if only the women had married them the play would have been a comedy, showing how crucial the wedding at the end of the comedy was to the genre in the minds of the people of that time.

Answer 2

A Midsummer Night's Dream combines legendary ancient Athens, the legendary past of European folklore and Shakespeare's contemporary life. The Rude Mechanicals (Bottom, Quince, Flute, Snout, Snug and Starveling) have English names and speak in the contemporary English vernacular. Bottom, however, interacts with Titania, a figure from German fairy folklore, and all of these English workingmen are supposed to be living in Athens and performing a play for its mythical Duke.

It is not possible to visualize this happening in the real world. It is best to accept it as fantasy.

Answer 3

He made it the basis of the comic subplot involving the amateur actors. So that although it was intended to be a tragedy, it was in fact hilariously funny (if competently performed--even The Beatles who were not actors made a reasonable job of it.)

Answer 4

The fairies use rhyming (rhyming couplets) so it makes it feel more magical.