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[Exit.]

¶

Enter Quince, Thisby [Flute], and the rabble [Snout, Starveling].

Quin. Have you sent to Bottom’s house? Is he come home yet?

[Star.] He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is transported.

Flu. If he come not, then the play is marr’d. It goes not forward, doth it?

Quin. It is not possible. You have not a man in all Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he.

Flu. No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in Athens.

Quin. Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very paramour for a sweet voice.

Flu. You must say “paragon.” A paramour is (God bless us!) a thing of naught.

Enter Snug the joiner.

Snug. Masters, the Duke is coming from the temple, and there is two or three lords and ladies more married. If our sport had gone forward, we had all been made men.

Flu. O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life; he could not have scap’d sixpence a day. And the Duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I’ll be hang’d. He would have deserv’d it. Sixpence a day in Pyramus, or nothing.