Date:1603
Description:Shakespeare’s source for the play of 'Pyramus and Thisbe'. Nick Bottom, the weaver and leading actor amongst the Athenian craftsmen in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, knows little about 'Pyramus and Thisbe', the play that Peter Quince suggests they rehearse for the Duke’s wedding day. Elizabethans would have known the tale from their schooldays reading Ovid's Metamorphosis. Shakespeare used this familiarity to create some of the comedy as Bottom asks ‘What is Pyramus? a lover? or a tyrant?’, as educated members of the contemporary audience could be relied on to know the answer. (1,2, line 19). Full title: Publius Ovidius Naso, The XV [15] bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, entituled Metamorphosis. Translated out of Latine into English meeter, by Arthur Golding, Imprinted at London by W. W[hite], 1603.
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Donor ref:SR 99.4 [25] (32/10632)
Source: The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust - Library
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