Athens — Bottom's vision, and the troupe reunited

The wood, mid-morning. Bottom wakes alone on the forest floor. He thinks for a moment he is still at the rehearsal, missed his cue, and starts up: "When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is, 'Most fair Pyramus.'" Then he registers that no one is there. The events of the night come back to him in fragments. His head feels strange because it has just stopped being a donkey's.

What follows is one of the quietest, strangest passages in all of Shakespeare. "I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was." He tries, gamely, to describe it and fails. "Methought I was — there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had — but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had." He garbles a famous passage from St. Paul on what the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard, mixing up the senses entirely; the garbling is itself the point. His instruments for reporting the vision are not equal to it. He resolves Quince must write a ballad called "Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom," and sets off for Athens.

In Quince's house, the troupe has given Bottom up for lost. Without him there is no Pyramus and so no play. Flute laments: "he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in Athens." A messenger arrives — the duke is married, two more couples with him, the feast is on — the door opens and Bottom bursts in, restored. He refuses to tell them what happened: "ask me not, for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian." The play is on. They must hurry to the palace.