ABSTRACT
The most lamentable comedy presented before Duke Theseus is not Pyramus and Thisbe as it was first cast. In rehearsal, Bottom and his friends have decided that the ‘unknown’ author of their play has failed to foresee certain practical needs of the production, so Snout and Starveling drop their roles as the lovers’ parents in order to portray Wall and Moonshine. But elsewhere in his work Shakespeare gives his fellow-actors no grounds for such a reproach. Provision is always made for small or walk-on parts where these are needed to meet the exigencies of the mise-en-scene. These characters perform the humblest functions entrusted to the players of minimal roles, and so furnish a natural point of departure for our survey of the various ways in which supers and small-part players serve the playwright’s ends.
