A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Act 4 Scene 2
Athens. QUINCE'S house.
The mechanicals may be agitated and pacing, panicking both about the possibility of performing and about Bottom's continued absence.
Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING
QUINCE
Have you sent to Bottom's house? Is he come home yet?
STARVELING
He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is transported.
FLUTE
If he come not, then the play is marred. It goes
not forward, doth it?
The group may have admired Bottom throughout the play, or their respect for him may have been increased by his absence and their concern.
QUINCE
It is not possible. You have not a man in all
Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he.
FLUTE
No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft
man in Athens.
QUINCE
Yea and the best person too; and he is a very
paramour for a sweet voice.
Quince's word use isn't entirely wrong: Bottom may have the sweet voice of a lover, though "paramour" also carries implications of illicit and explicitly sexual affairs.
FLUTE
You must say 'paragon.' A paramour is, God bless us,
a thing of naught.
Enter SNUG
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.
Service to a Renaissance aristocrat could be rewarded with a pension for life. The mechanicals hope that Theseus will reward their performance with a permanent stipend.
FLUTE
O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a
day during his life. He could not have 'scaped
sixpence a day. An 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.
Enter BOTTOM
Bottom's arrival is an opportunity for a high-energy theatrical entrance, and possibly some comic business.
BOTTOM
Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?
QUINCE
Bottom! O most courageous day! O most happy hour!
Bottom shifts between his desire to tell and his refusal (or inability) to speak, which may also indicate his agitated state.
BOTTOM
Masters, I am to discourse wonders; but ask me not
what; for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian. I
will tell you everything, right as it fell out.
QUINCE
Let us hear, sweet Bottom.
Bottom once more acts as the group's coach, and once more mixes up performance and reality, especially in associating the smell of the actors' breath with the sweetness of their speeches.
BOTTOM
Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, that
the Duke hath dined. Get your apparel together,
good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your
pumps. meet presently at the palace; every man look
o'er his part; for the short and the long is, our
play is preferred. In any case, let Thisbe have
clean linen, and let not him that plays the lion
pare his nails, for they shall hang out for the
lion's claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onions
nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath, and I
do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet
comedy. No more words. Away! Go, away!
Exeunt