Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged.
PLAYING.
O sweet Bully Bottom; Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life: he could not have scaped sixpence a day; or the duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I’ll be hanged; he would have deserved it; sixpence a day in Pyramus or nothing.
IV, 2, 23.
There is probably an allusion here to some actor who had been pensioned by the Queen with this sum. The author of “Cambyses,” Thomas Preston, was pensioned, at the rate of twenty pounds a year, by the Queen for his rare ability in acting. The play in which Preston acted was John Ritwise’s “Dido,” played before Queen Elizabeth at Cambridge, 1564. Shakespeare likewise ridiculed the title page of “Cambyses” by alluding to the most lamentable comedy of Pyramus and Thisby.
After the lapse of so many years it is doubtful whether the audience fully appreciated or understood the allusion.
PROPERTIES.
In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties.
I, 2, 108.
REHEARSAL.