Nick Bottom - Analysis

Analysis

Bottom's discussion of his dream is considered by Ann Thompson to have emulated two passages from Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess.

Critics have commented on the profound religious implications of Bottom’s speech on his awakening without the ass’s head in act 4 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

" 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." (4.1.209–216)

This speech seems to be a comically jumbled evocation of a passage from the New Testament’s 1 Corinthians 2.9–10:

"The things which
eye hathe not sene, nether eare hath heard,
nether came into man's heart, are, which
God hathe prepared for them that love him.
But God hathe reveiled them unto us by
his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all
things, yea, the deepe things of God."

Steven Doloff also suggests that Bottom's humorous and foolish performance at the end of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" mimics a passage from the previous chapter of Corinthians:

"For seing the worlde by wisdome knewe
not God in the wisdome of God, it pleased
God by the foolishnes of preaching
to save them that believe:
Seing also that the Jewes require a signe,
and the Grecians seke after wisdome.
But we preache Christ crucified : unto
the Jewes, even a stombling blocke, & unto
the Grecians, foolishnes:
But unto them which are called, bothe
of the Jewes & Grecias we preache Christ,
the power of GOD, and the wisdome of God.
For the foolishnes of God is wiser the men ." (1 Corinthians 1.21–25)

This passage's description of the skeptical reception Christ was given by his Greek audience appears to be alluded to in Bottom's performance. Just as Christ's preaching is regarded as "foolishnes," Bottom's audience perceives his acting (as well as the entirety of the play he is a part of) as completely without value, except for the humor they can find in the actors' hopelessly flawed rendering of their subject matter. Doloff writes that this allusion is especially likely because, in both texts, the skeptical audience of the "foolish" material is composed of Greeks, as the spectators of Bottom et al. are Theseus, the duke of Athens, and his court.