The Name "Bottom" in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Authors

Cedric Watts Sussex University

Abstract

This essay discusses the surname of Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The esteemed (and vast) Oxford English Dictionary denies that the name could in Shakespeare's day mean "buttocks, backside." By citing a variety of contemporaneous and subsequent texts, I argue that the OED is wrong; that the name connoted not only "buttocks" but also "arse"; and that the word "ass" may have been pronounced (not by everyone, but by many) very similarly to "arse," as is the case in rural and westerly parts of England today. So, when Quince says to the metamorphosed ass-headed weaver, "Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated," he means not merely "You are transformed"; he also means "Your name, 'Bottom,' has been translated, physically, via 'arse' into 'ass.'" If this argument is valid, A Midsummer Night's Dream is even better coordinated and wittier (linguistically, thematically, and visually) than it has been deemed to be. It may then prove, however, even more difficult for translators of its text into foreign languages.

Author Biography

Cedric Watts, Sussex University

Cedric Watts, who served in the Royal Navy, is Research Professor of English at Sussex University. He has edited eighteen plays by Shakespeare and is general editor of the Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series. His critical books include: William Shakespeare: Measure for Measure (Penguin 1986); Hamlet (Twayne 1988); and Romeo and Juliet (Twayne 1991). With John Sutherland, he is co-author of Henry V: War Criminal? and Other Shakespeare Puzzles (Oxford University Press 2000). He has also written on Sophocles, Keats, Ibsen, Cunninghame Graham, Conrad, Graham Greene, and Samuel Beckett, among others; and his theoretical innovations embrace Janiformity, covert plotting, transtextual narration, and thematic precipitation.