BOTTOM THE WEAVER
A bucolic egoist, vain, dense, and narrow.
The groundwork for this is No. 3 with a little 13 added. White is rubbed into the cheeks in the shape of high lights to broaden the appearance of the face. A triangular shadow painted on the under part of the nose makes this feature seem to tilt upward. The eyebrows are almost entirely obliterated with thick grease paint, as also are the eyelashes. The small perpendicular lines at the ends of the eyes seem to reduce their size. The corners of the mouth are extended with paint, and the tight-fitting wig drawn well over the forehead seems, while it diminishes the size of the head, to make the face appear larger.
Much of the stupidity of countenance is due to expression.
BOTTOM THE WEAVER
Bottom awakes. When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer: my next is, "Most fair Pyramus." Hey, ho! Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God's, my life! stolen hence, and left me asleep. I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream,—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was,—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream; it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.
