The palace — Pyramus and Thisbe, and the fairies' blessing

The duke's palace, after the weddings. Theseus and Hippolyta open Act 5 discussing what the lovers have told them about the wood. Theseus dismisses it — "I never may believe these antique fables" — and gives one of the play's most-quoted speeches: "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact." Hippolyta answers with weight: "all the story of the night told over... grows to something of great constancy." The story may be mad, but its consistency is hard to dismiss. The play does not arbitrate.

The three couples enter; Theseus picks "the most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe" — "very tragical mirth," a contradiction he is amused by. Philostrate warns him the play is hopeless and the players sincere; Theseus answers with the gentlest defense of amateurs: "never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it." The mechanicals enter. Quince's prologue comes out as gibberish. Snout plays the wall with his fingers spread for a chink. Starveling plays Moonshine and gives up his lines under heckling. Pyramus (Bottom) finds Thisbe's bloody mantle and stabs himself; Thisbe (Flute) stabs herself in turn. Hippolyta finds it painful: "this is the silliest stuff that ever I heard." Theseus answers gently: "the best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them."

The lovers retire. The stage empty, Oberon, Titania, Puck and the fairies dance through the dark palace, singing a blessing on the house — the children conceived tonight free of harm; the fields lucky. They depart. Puck speaks the epilogue alone: "if we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended — that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear." He offers the performance back to the audience as a dream, asks for their applause, and goes.