Transgendering Thisne

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Abstract

Act 2, scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has the artisan-performers gather in the forest so that their play parts might be distributed. Much of the scene’s comedy is generated by Bottom’s absurd desire to assume all the available roles. Having already been awarded the part of Pyramus, he offers an impromptu audition demonstrating how he might also fulfill the part of Pyramus’s lover, Thisbe, beginning with the words: “I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice: ‘Thisne, Thisne!’” (1.2.48–49). That Bottom employs “‘Thisne’” instead of “‘Thisbe”’ represents one of the Dream’s cruxes, and this, as one would expect, has prompted a certain amount of editorial debate. Verity wonders if the words represent a mistake and cannot seem to decide if this should be attributed to the poet, the character, or the printer; Wright suggests—despite the old copies rendering “Thisne” in italics as if it represented a name—that the word signifies “in this way,” with Bottom then providing an example of how he will produce the voice. (The range of speculations that this passage has inspired are covered in A New Varorium Edition of Shakespeare: Midsummer Night’s Dreame 38–39.) I would like to advance the idea that the scene should be understood as representing another instance of the confusions and reversals of role-switching in which the Dream delights. I hope to demonstrate that these words indicate that in the brief performance Bottom offers his fellow performers he muddles the genders of Pyramus and Thisbe. The scene’s broader context also offers support for understanding the scene as unfolding in this manner: the comedy of Bottom’s confused assumption of a female role is intensified and self-reflexively marked out by its coming immediately after Flute has expressed his strong reluctance to “play a woman” (1.2.43–44). I imagine Bottom’s lines as being performed originally in the following way. In his rush to demonstrate his skills, Bottom realizes Thisbe’s name in a “monstrous little voice”—with ‘“Thisne!”’ indicating that the delivery is ridiculously feminized (that Bottom is not confused about the Thisbe’s name is evidenced in his previous line where he refers to the character correctly). The humor derives, of course, from the fact that in the dialogue that Bottom improvises these words should be spoken by Pyramus—and so should be delivered in a “gallant” (1.2.20) and manly vein. Bottom then switches characters, and we must imagine now assumes this latter tone in what is his representation of Thisbe. Again, Bottom’s confusion is made plausible at the level of character by the fact his next speech begins by naming the character whose manly voice he has (wrongly) assumed: ‘“Ah, Pyramus.”’ Understanding the scene in this way means that as the speech unfolds, the joke is extended and developed—as Bottom’s masculine portrayal continues, the words he speaks point up his mistake in incremental stages: “my lover dear! Thy Thisbe dear, and lady dear!” The burlesque that this realization offers to the whole business of role, and especially to the arrangement whereby (when original produced) female roles were performed by male actors, seems particularly fitting to the ironic mood and self-reflexive humor of Shakespeare’s play, and appears to me as the most profitable way to interpret the crux.