communicated to me, would be prepared to produce eye-witnesses of various
transformations of the old woman into some kind of animal--transformations
effected not only at Welford, but even in the centre of Stratford on
market-day!

Shakespeare had probably met with the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in more
than one form. Golding's translation in 1575 of the story in Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_[24] is reprinted in this book[25]; Chaucer included the
_Legend of Thisbe of Babylon_ as the second story in the _Legend of Good
Women_; and there appears to have been also "a boke intituled Perymus and
Thesbye," for which the Stationers' Register record the granting of a
license in 1562. There is, too, a poem on the subject by I. Thomson in
Robinson's _Handeful of Pleasant Delites_ (1584).

The _Historia de Piramo e Tisbe_ was very early in print in Italy, and
continued to be popular in chap-book form until the nineteenth century at
least.

In his commentary on _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ in the larger Temple
Shakespeare, Professor Gollancz points out the existence of a Pyramus and
Thisbe play, discovered by him in a manuscript at the British Museum.[26]
This MS. is a Cambridge commonplace book of about 1630, containing poems
attributed to Ben Jonson, Sir Walter Raleigh and others, though the greater
portion of the contents appear to be topical verses and epigrams unsigned.
Amongst these is "Tragaedia miserrima Pyrami & Thisbes fata enuncians.
Historia ex Publio Ovidio deprompta. Authore N.R." In the margins are
written corresponding passages in Latin from Ovid, whose story it follows
closely.

The play is in blank verse of a poor kind with occasional rhyming couplets.