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Pyramus and Thisbe

Ovid and Shakespeare's Love Story of Pyramus and Thisbe

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Image ID: 1562027 Les malheurs de Pirame et Thisbé. [The sorrows of Pyramus and Thisbe.] (1925)

Image ID: 1562027 Les malheurs de Pirame et Thisbé. [The sorrows of Pyramus and Thisbe.] (1925)

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Ovid and Shakepeare's Midsummer Night's Dream

In Babylon a young, handsome boy and a beautiful girl have grown up together in houses built side-by-side. Their parents disapprove of their budding love and forbid them to marry or even converse with each other. But the wall that separates their houses has a hole (chink) in it through which the young lovers can talk in secrecy.

Shakespeare

Prologue
...
This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present
Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;
And through Wall's chink, poor souls, they are content
To whisper.
....
Thisbe
O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,
For parting my fair Pyramus and me!
My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones,
Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.

Pyramus
I see a voice: now will I to the chink,
To spy an I can hear my Thisby's face.
Thisby!

 Ovid (Dryden translation)

Ev'n in this narrow chink they quickly found
A friendly passage for a trackless sound.
Safely they told their sorrows, and their joys,
In whisper'd murmurs, and a dying noise,
By turns to catch each other's breath they strove,
And suck'd in all the balmy breeze of love.
Oft as on diff'rent sides they stood, they cry'd,
Malicious wall, thus lovers to divide!

This isn't enough -- they can't even kiss through the chink -- so the pair conspires to meet in secrecy at the secluded tomb of the Babylonian king, Ninus.

Pyramus
Wilt thou at Ninny's tomb meet me straightway?

Thisbe
'Tide life, 'tide death, I come without delay.

 At last their parents they resolve to cheat
(If to deceive in love be call'd deceit),
To steal by night from home, and thence unknown
To seek the fields, and quit th' unfaithful town.
But, to prevent their wand'ring in the dark,
They both agree to fix upon a mark;
A mark, that could not their designs expose:
The tomb of Ninus was the mark they chose.

On the way, Thisbe, who leaves her home early, sees a lion. Scared, she runs, dropping a scarf in flight which the lion, fresh from a feast, gnashes with his teeth and smears with animal blood.

This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name,
The trusty Thisby, coming first by night,
Did scare away, or rather did affright;
And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall,
Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.		 When lo! a lioness rush'd o'er the plain,
Grimly besmear'd with blood of oxen slain:
And what to the dire sight new horrors brought,
To slake her thirst the neighb'ring spring she sought.
Which, by the moon, when trembling Thisbe spies,
Wing'd with her fear, swift, as the wind, she flies;
And in a cave recovers from her fright,
But drop'd her veil, confounded in her flight.
When sated with repeated draughts, again
The queen of beasts scour'd back along the plain,
She found the veil, and mouthing it all o'er,
With bloody jaws the lifeless prey she tore.

Pyramus, who can't get out early, finds the lion's footprints and the bloody scarf of Thisbe. Devastated by the presumed loss of his beloved, Pyramus pulls out his sword and kills himself.

Pyramus
...
Out, sword, and wound
The pap of Pyramus;
Ay, that left pap,
Where heart doth hop:
Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.
Now am I dead,
Now am I fled;
My soul is in the sky:
Tongue, lose thy light;
Moon take thy flight:		 The veil all rent yet still it self endears,
He kist, and kissing, wash'd it with his tears.
Tho' rich (he cry'd) with many a precious stain,
Still from my blood a deeper tincture gain.
Then in his breast his shining sword he drown'd,
And fell supine, extended on the ground.

Eventually Thisbe, more concerned that Pyramus would think she had changed her mind than worried about the lion, leaves the protective cave in which she's been hiding, only to find the body of her beloved still losing blood from a self-inflicted wound. Unwilling to live without him, she takes the blade and turns it fatally on herself.

Thisbe
Asleep, my love?
What, dead, my dove?
O Pyramus, arise!
Speak, speak. Quite dumb?
Dead, dead? A tomb
Must cover thy sweet eyes.
These My lips,
This cherry nose,
These yellow cowslip cheeks,
Are gone, are gone:
Lovers, make moan:
His eyes were green as leeks.
...
Tongue, not a word:
Come, trusty sword;
Come, blade, my breast imbrue:		 But when her view her bleeding love confest,
She shriek'd, she tore her hair, she beat her breast.
She rais'd the body, and embrac'd it round,
And bath'd with tears unfeign'd the gaping wound.
Then her warm lips to the cold face apply'd,
And is it thus, ah! thus we meet, she cry'd!
My Pyramus! whence sprung thy cruel fate?
My Pyramus!- ah! speak, ere 'tis too late.
I, thy own Thisbe, but one word implore,
One word thy Thisbe never ask'd before.
At Thisbe's name, awak'd, he open'd wide
His dying eyes; with dying eyes he try'd
On her to dwell, but clos'd them slow, and dy'd.

The once white mulberry is changed to red from their blood and their bodies, separated in life, are united in death.

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