The play's humor continues in this scene through the vehicle of the players. As in Act I, Scene 1, their belief in the audience's gullibility is highlighted. Bottom has found a new objection to the play: Pyramus must kill himself, which will offend the women in the audience. Again, his comments show his belief that the audience will be unable to differentiate reality from fantasy. To combat this problem, Bottom proposes an elaborate Prologue that will explain Pyramus' identity. Similarly, the lion must show half of his face so the audience will know he is a man rather than a beast. Quince brings two other difficulties to the players' attention: how the moonlight and the wall will be presented.
Again the question hinges on the problem of representation: In the players' opinion, the audience possesses a strong imagination, so with the correct costuming, a man can impersonate any object. For example, with some plaster on his clothing, Snout can become a wall; with a lantern, he can "disfigure," according to Quince, moonshine. Quince's malapropism here is comical, yet correct: These players do, indeed, "disfigure," rather than "figure" (the word Quince meant to use) the characters they play. Similarly, Bottom's misuse of words continues to be funny in this scene, partially because, at bottom, they are correct, given the context of these actors' inept performance; for example, he says "defect" rather than "effect" in line 38 or "odious" rather than "odorous" in lines 78–79. In all of these circumstances, Shakespeare assumes an audience intelligent enough to recognize Bottom's misuses but equally capable of seeing the comic correctness in Bottom's mistakes.
