Snug is a minor character from
William Shakespeare's play ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream
''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a Comedy (drama), comedy play written by William Shakespeare in about 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One s ...
''. He is a
joiner who comes from
Athens
Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...
who is hired by
Peter Quince to play the part of the lion in
Pyramus and Thisbe. When he is first assigned the part, he is afraid it may take him a while to finally remember his lines (even though the lion's role was nothing but roaring originally).
Bottom offers to play the part of the lion (as he offers to play all other parts), but he is rejected by Quince, who worries (as do the other characters) that his loud and ferocious roar in the play will frighten the ladies of power in the audience and get Quince and all his actors
hanged. In the end, the lion's part is revised to explain that he is in fact not a lion and means the audience no harm.
Portrayal
Snug is often played as a stupid man, a manner describing almost all of the Mechanicals.
Snug is the only Mechanical to whom the playwright did not assign a first name.
In
Jean-Louis and
Jules Supervielle's French adaptation, ''
Le Songe d'une nuit d'été'' (1959), Snug is renamed Asène to , where
Georges Neveux's 1945 adaptation used the English names.
On the Elizabethan stage, the role of Snug and the other
Mechanicals was intended to be doubled with
Titania's four fairy escorts: Moth, Mustardseed, Cobweb, and Peaseblossom.
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
See also
*
Mechanical (character)
Male Shakespearean characters
Characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Fictional artisans
Fictional actors
Literary characters introduced in 1596
Fictional Greek people
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Snug (''A Midsummer Night's Dream'')