School Version

37. Bottom's Fairy Court

The 'moon-circle' is now almost 'full', the clear white line having been well and truly smudged by the traffic of many frantic feet. Outside it, SL and SR, lie the worn out lovers. Inside it Titania waxes poetic as she praises the smoothness of a monstrously hairy ass, watched in voyeuristic fascination by her primary school charges. Behind her, the older schoolmistress (Peaseblossom) averts the eyes of one of her young charges from Titania's grotesque oral intimacies with Bottom, and when asked to scratch Bottom's head, declines.

Although the stage picture is 'cool', its doubleness is clear. What it means to the two adults is not how it appears to the children. We are invited to see the action as much through their eyes as through Titania's and Bottom's. This is also true of the Bar version (Bar 38. Pampered Bottom), but the change of frame, from School to Bar, radically shifts our reading.

A Midsummer Night's Dream