Changelings, Bottom, and Transnational Exchange

The second chapter turns to commercial theater, re-examining the much contentious question of staging the Indian Boy in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream by focusing on the metamorphosis of Bottom the weaver. While critics traditionally associate Bottom's transformation with texts such as Apuleius’ The Golden Ass , they overlook the affinities with classical and medieval ethnographies and travelogues that described the inhabitants of foreign lands, but especially Indians, as part human. The weaver with an ass’ head has iconographical similarities with the monstrous races of India such as the cynocephali and the manticore. During the late sixteenth century, European travelers continued to find monsters, particularly in the shapes of Hindu idols. This chapter reads Bottom's transformation alongside these depictions of monstrous Indians.