HE role of Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream reaches its climax in his meeting with Titania. Here the image is engendered which is most likely to linger in the mind even when other essentials of the play have grown hazy: ass-headed Bottom in the arms of the Fairy Queen. The potency of this tableau is not easy to account for, and a full-scale attempt to do so has not, so far as I know, been made. Yet the matter will be allowed to be more than passing interest, and I would maintain that its unraveling is essential to a satisfactoy interpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Should I be accused of quelling merriment in the Bottom episodes by weighty analysis, my defense can only be that reflection upon their meaning has enhanced their charm for me. Critics are generally agreed that Bottom as ass is the epitome of common sense. In this guise, he displays a modesty and insouciance which are particularly notable, because they are absent from his character elsewhere in the play. Many critics remark upon Bottom's entire self-possession in the fairy episodes, although they less frequently notice that he does, in fact, betray a certain uneasiness upon first finding himself in the presence of Titania. Quite simply, he wishes he were safely home: "if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn" (III.-i. 1I52-I54).' Nevertheless, he does face his sudden removal to the fairy world with admirable poise. Hardly has he arrived there when he utters the remark that is the bulwark of his reputation for common sense. When Titania, awakening, declares her love for him, he replies that she "should have little reason for that" and adds the reflection that "reason and love keep little company together nowadays . (III. i. I46-I47). The saying is prompted by his understandable scepticism when a beautiful lady, obviously "a spirit of no common rate" (III. i. I57), at first glance extravagantly admires his singing voice, his shape, and his virtue. Egotist though he may be, Bottom must suspect that illusion is at work in this. In the face of aberration in high places, he remains courteous and complacent, and further demonstrates matter-of-factness (if not precisely common sense) by associating the fairy attendants whom Titania assigns to him with objects familiar to him in the workaday world: Cobweb with dressing for cut fingers, Peaseblossom with his botanical parents, and Mustardseed with the condiment derived from his kind. Here, one feels, Bottom's waggishness suggests not so much common sense as a deficiency in imagination: to reduce delicate beings to his own commonplace terms may be a viable mode of behavior in the circumstances, but it is also appropriate to the sensibilities of an ass.