Bottom's Dream

(Josie Sayz: This is my transformation of William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. I have transformed it into a Shakespearean ballad about the character Nick Bottom entitled ‘Bottom’s Dream’. The ballad shows the series of events that surround Bottom as he meets Titania, the Fairy Queen, and he group of fairies, up to him awakening after then have gone and believing that it was all a dream. In the play Bottom then goes on to say that he wants Peter Quince to write him a ballad of the events that have happened to him, which shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, “because it hath no bottom.”.)

The time I thought myself asleep

And wonder’d round the ground.

I thought myself a lonely sight,

Alone without a sound.

My fellow clowns, for where they be?

Our art and beauty lost.

For leaving me alone you see

My feelings they have crossed.

This song I need to sing to you

To tell thee of my dream.

No bottom near the ending be

Or so the tale may seem…

When I awoke I think I saw:

Beauty before my eyes.

At closer look my mind mistook

And caught me by surprise.

For what I see looking at me

Comes not without compare.

Fair mistress lies, a secret kind

And that I must declare:

This song I need to sing to you

To tell thee of my dream.

No bottom near the ending be

Although my eyes did gleam…

Those words she spoke up in the air

Their meaning quite profound.

Sent ‘Fairies to attend to thee’

At once they came, surround.

Come Cobweb hop and Mustardseed

For duties do await.

Peaseblossom too and Moth, he flew

And that I do debate.

This song I need to sing to you

To tell thee of my dream.

No bottom near the ending be

And this is what I mean…

Titania, my Fairy Queen

Whose beauty does not sleep.

For if I do depart from thee

My feelings, they shall weep.

In loving sight she kiss’d my ears

And said she loved me so.

Awaking, alone, now light,

Why did she have to go?

This song I need to sing to you

To tell thee of my dream.

No bottom near the ending be

As strange as it may seem…

Was this a thought, all but a dream?

Arising from the ground,

I ask myself if I did sleep

And did I make a sound?

Deluded by the woodland sights,

My theories they do seem

Illusion set before my eyes

In this forested theme.

This song I need to sing to you

To tell thee of my dream.

No bottom near the ending be

And that is ‘Bottom’s Dream’.

- Josie -