Joliffe, Edmund- The Mechanicals

unaccompanied

This piece is inspired by the Mechanicals from Shakespeare’s 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream'.

Bottom is perhaps the most well-known of the Mechanicals and is a comic character whose head is turned into an ass in the play. Flute is a bellows maker. Quince is the director of the play within the play ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ that the Mechanicals put on and often struggles to fit his lines into the correct meter and make rhymes. Snug plays 

the lion in ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’. He is keen to assure the audience that he is not an actual lion in case they get scared. Snout plays the wall that the lovers speak through and has only two lines. Starveling plays the moonshine and is utterly derided by the audience. 

The Mechanicals should be played with a brief pause between each movement, except for Snout, which should lead straight into Starveling.