SOURCE: Willson, Robert F. “Golding's Metamorphoses and Shakespeare's Burlesque Method in A Midsummer Night's Dream.” English Language Notes 7, no. 1 (September 1969): 18-25.

In the following essay, Willson contends that Shakespeare's “Pyramus and Thisbe” mocks Golding's translation of the Metamorphoses through the play-within-a-play's comic poetry and exaggerated alliteration. In addition, however, Willson sees in those scenes a parody of the ignorance of stage actors.

Kenneth Muir has argued that Shakespeare's Pyramus and Thisbe play in A Midsummer Night's Dream is a conscious parody of an amateurish poem by physician Thomas Mouffet, Of the Silkwormes and their Flies. Muir thinks Shakespeare may have chosen to ridicule the poem because its author used the Pyramus and Thisbe story only to illustrate how mulberry fruit, the leaves of which form the chief food of silkworms, turned from white to red after being stained by the blood of the lovers. He sees many parallels...