Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night's Dream was written in 1545 around the same time Shakespeare wrote his famous other play about two star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. This scene is a play within a play where a group of rough craftspersons (the Mechanicals) bumble their way through a ridiculous performance of Pyramus & Thisbe, a story Shakespeare borrowed from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The Mechanicals' play is widely considered to be Shakespeare's light-hearted and silly model for Romeo and Juliet.
