Moore: The Transformation of Bottom 
49 
there was among the scanty properties but one Ass-head, inserted in 
the text ‘with the Asse head’ — the only one they had. 11 
I cannot but think that this trifling expression stamps this stage- 
direction as taken from a play-house copy. 12 
Whether or not Collier and his successors have been right 
in conjecturing that the play in question was A Midsummer 
Night’s Dream, it is evident that a theatrical property ass- 
head was a principal feature of the sacrilege committed by 
a Mr. Wilson who was censured by the Commissary General, 
John Spencer, for enacting “a play or Tragidie” — elsewhere 
called a comedy — at the house of John Williams, bishop of 
Lincoln, on Sunday, September 27, 1631 : 
Likewise wee doe order that Mr. Wilson because hee was a spe- 
ciall plotter and Contriver of this busines and did in such a brutishe 
Maner act the same with an Asses head, therefore hee shall vppon 
Tuisday next from 6 of the Clocke in the Morning till sixe of the Clocke 
at night sitt in the Porters Lodge at my Lord Bishopps house with his 
feete in the stockes and Attyred with his Asse head and a bottle of haye 
sett before him and this superscripcion on his breast: 
Good people I have played the beast 
And brought ill things to passe 
I was a man, but thus have made 
Myself e a Silly Asse. 13 
But militant Puritanism was hardly more unfavorable to 
the presentation of Bottom’s enchantment than was the spirit 
of the court. With the development of the masques and, 
later, of post-Restoration splendor in the presentation of 
Shakespeare, all sense of mystery in the enchantment of 
mortals was at an end. Man-monkeys could come down freely 
from the trees to enter into the dance, and the physiognomy 
of an actor could be falsified at will for the sake of a bizarre 
effect. It is curious to note that Pepys, who had nothing to 
say in favor of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was immensely 
fond of the unimaginative extravaganzas which supplanted it. 
It may be reasonably supposed that A Midsummer Night’s 
Dream owes something to the popular moralities for its use 
of a property false-head as an efficient substitute for the 
elaborate preparations so requisite in authentic witchcraft; 
and that the encounter of Bottom with the ladies of the fairy 
court is akin to the frequent experiences of the morality 
11 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (New Variorum Edition), Preface, xv. 
12 Ibid., note on III, i, 116. 
13 Lambeth Ms. 1030, art. 5, p. 3, as given in The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, 
London and New York, 1909, I, 352. 
