The Players: Bottom, Quince, Snug, Flute, Snout, and Starveling

(To begin, everyone is standing)

Bottom: (Looking around) Are we all here?

Quince: (Excited) Oh,oh here's a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal! (Turns around to view and point out places) This green plot shall be our stage, and that hill our changing room, and we can pretend those sheep are the audience.

Sheep: Baaaa!

Bottom: Dear Quince....

Quince: What is it my dear Bottom?

Bottom: There are things in this tragedy of Pyro and Frisbee that will never do (shakes his head for emphasis). First (holds up index finger), Pyro must draw a mace (mimicks drawing a mace) and bludgeon himself (pretend doing so). This will doubtless horrify the audience. (Points at Quince) How can you answer that?

Snout: (Clasps head) Zounds! What a quandry!

Starveling: How about if we just leave the killing out? (Said while hands out and palms up)

Bottom: (stomping foot) Not a Whitt! I have a way to make all well. Write me a prologue, and have it say we will do no harm with our maces, and that Pyro is not actually killed. And even better, let us tell the audience that I am not Pyro (points to himself), but Bottom the Chamber Pot Maker!

Quince: But what of the chimera in Act II? Will it not frighten the ladies in the audience?

Starveling: It would not frighten Octavia the paladin. She once slew a five headed chimera.

Snug: Yes. But what of the other ladies?

Flute: Such as Ellen the Arch-Mage, or Gork the Barbarioness? They fear nothing, not even the mother-in-law of a chimera.

Snug: Fine, then, what of the Bards?

Starveling: (Shaking head slowly) Ah, yes, they are a feaful, timid lot.

Bottom: Gentlemen, have you considered: to bring in -- (praying) Zeus shield us -- a chimera among Bards and ladies is a most dreadful thing.

Flute: So (shrugs), let us write another prologue, to tell that he is not a chimera.

Starveling: (Shakes head) Nay, you must name his name; and half his face (cover half-face with hand) must be seen through the chimera's neck; and he himself must speak, saying ``Ladies and Bards" or ``Fair Ladies and Bards, I would request you cease your trembling, -- and the wetting of your undergarments. (Shakes head and points to himself) I come not hither as a chimera; no, I am a man as other men are."

Snout: Yet you are a woman.

Starveling: When I say "men," I mean in the general sense, as "human."

Flute: And yet you are an elf.

Starveling: (Impatiently) When I say ``human," of course I mean ``humanoid" you dolt.

Quince: (Nods) Yes, but this still leaves us with a problem: that is how to bring moonlight into the chamber; for Pyro and Frisbee meet by moonlight.

Snug: Does the moon shine the night we perform our play?

Bottom: A calendar, a calendar, my kingdom for a calendar!

Flute: (Digging in backpack) I have one here. (Looks at it) It does shine that night.

Snout: There is another problem still - we must have a (makes believe he is casting) Wall of Stone, for Pryo and Frisbee, says the story, did talk through a chink in the wall.

Starveling: (in near panic) We have no mage to cast such a spell.

Flute: (points to himself) Hold! Am I not a mage?

Starveling: (condescending) I stand corrected. We have none other than a mere hedge wizard, incapable of casting such a spell.

Flute: (obviously hurt) Knave! Varlot! Medicant! I would turn thee to a toad -- (sulking) had I not memorized Wizard Eye today.

Quince: (points finger straight up) I have a solution. Some man -- (looks at Snout and Flute with scowl on face) or other -- must present a wall (straightens up to mimic a wall), and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough cast about him to signify wall; and let him hold his fingers thus (stick arm and hand straight out, palm out, fingers spread), and through that cranny (points to spread fingers) shall Pyro and Frisbee whisper.

Snug: If that may be, then all is well. Come (motions with hand), sit down, every mother's child, and rehearse your parts.

(All Sit Down)

Snug: Pyro (points to Bottom), you begin; when you have spoken you speach, enter into that brake (points somewhere); and so everyone according to his cue.

Bottom: (starts to rise but remembers something) Wait! What voice die Pyro have? Was it loud and bold? Or was it retiring and meek?

Staveling: (shrugging) He must have been bold, to kill himself with a mace.

Snout: That would depend largely on his hit points, would it not?

Quince: Silence fool! That term is for the gods alone, and should not be uttered by such as we.

Tarrasque: ROAR!

Starveling: Great Zeus what is that?

Bottom: (very frightened) Oh no, it is the dreaded Tarrasque!

Tarrasque: ROAR!

All: AAaaaaaa! (run away)