The tone and atmosphere of the play change in this scene along with the setting. From the palace of the Duke, we move to the home of Quince, a working-class man. With the entry of the players into the action, Shakespeare introduces the notion of class difference and provides a reflection on the position and character of actors within society. While this scene seems to provide a complete contrast with the previous scene, there is also some continuity in the action. For example, the play-within-the-play, "Pyramus and Thisbe," presents a story of misguided lovers, continuing the overall drama's obsession with love and, in particular, with the often crooked course of love, which, as Lysander proclaimed in the previous scene, never runs true.
"Pyramus and Thisbe" also provides thematic continuity with other plays within Shakespeare's ouevre, in particular with Romeo and Juliet, which most critics believe was written shortly before Dream. Both recount the tragic fate of true lovers who kill themselves finding their mistresses seemingly dead. Pyramus kills himself when he thinks that Thisbe has been devoured by a lion, just as Romeo stabs himself after finding Juliet seemingly dead in the tomb of the Capulets. This tragic theme does not necessarily seem appropriate in a play that was supposedly written to be performed at a wedding celebration, but the tragedy here is tempered with mirth. The inept attempts of the players transform Pyramus and Thisbe's sad story into a burlesque.
Although Dream obviously makes reference to Pyramus and Thisbe and to numerous mythological stories, its plot is not based, like most of Shakespeare's other plays, on one particular primary source. The play makes many general allusions to Chaucer's Knight's Tale and to Spencer's The Faerie Queen, and Oberon's name and the stories of Theseus and Hippolyta are adapted from Greek mythology. Because the play was most likely written for a wedding celebration, that occasion provided all the authority the play required.
