Actor

Who never laboured in my mind before

Could empty every colour of nature

Onstage, then install political mirrors.

I could enact what’s hid behind the door.

I could skite with ribaldry, overreach,

Shorten or lengthen, more some or less some,

Out-illusion their illusions in a lesson.

I could part night from day in stand-up speech.

I could be all desire, or its opposite,

Start on odd bod shapes to end with a heart;

Live out changes as ass, lion, or fairy,

Leave them breathless when I take the ferry.

“I could play Ercles rarely, or a part

To tear a cat in, to make all split.”

A corner of Bridie's work table during production. This sonnet opens with Philostrate's bemusing answer to Theseus about the worker-actors in the play: "Hard-handed men that work in Athens here, Which never labour'd in their minds till now..." (Act V) The sonnet comes out of Bottom's fantasies about being an actor in Act I. Bottom playing Hercules - the mind boggles! And what does Shakespeare mean by 'rarely'? That he will play it not often (thank heavens!) or like no other ( you can say that again)? Any interpretation is comic, because he himself labours with his own illusions.