My mistress with a monster is in love.

Near to her close and consecrated bower,

While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,

A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,

That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,

Were met together to rehearse a play

Intended for great Theseus’ nuptial day.

The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort,

Who Pyramus presented in their sport,

Forsook his scene, and enter’d in a brake,

When I did him at this advantage take:

An ass’s nole I fixèd on his head.

Anon, his Thisbe must be answerèd,

And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,

As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,

Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,

Rising and cawing at the gun’s report,

Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky

So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;

And, at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls;