The Mechanicals first appear in Act 1 Scene 2. They meet in the woods to reheasre the play. This scene is comically effective because these somewhat unsophisticated men seem to take themselves so very seriously and because of their obvious misuse of english. This scene shows us that the Mechanicals' humour is very farce, in that it is very obvious and direct. In this scene the audience finds out immediately that the Mechanicals are completely incapable of performing a classical play, the title alone suggests this, "The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe." A bit of a contradiction. By doing this Shakespeare has successfully got the audience's undivided attention because they, now, cannot wait to find out what happens. In this scene Shakespeare clearly intended them to be purely comical.
Act 3 scene 1 continues to suggest that it was Shakespeare's intention for them to be funny. Bottom is worried that in their play his character, Pyramus, must draw a sword and kill himself, he insists that this will "never please" because it will upset the ladies in the audience and that, for the same reason, they could not possibly have a lion on stage. Snug the joiner, who is to play the lion, agrees and as do all the others. It never occurs to any of them that the ladies at the court will have seen plays before and therefore realise that the characters are not real. Their solutions to to these problems are even more ridiculous than the "problems" themselves.
Although their stupidity continues throughout this scene, you begin to change your veiw of the Mechanicals (though it may not be a radical change because we still see their foolish nature) because of their dedication to come up with ways to deal with the problems like the lion, the moonshine and the wall.
In the last scene the Mechanicals perform their play. Theseus reads the description of the play and he is that something can be "meryy and tragic", "be brief and yet still be tedious". He says this is like "hot ice", an oxymoron, because it makes no sense. However it's not that stupid as the the title of the play can make sense because the audience knows only too well how the mechanical's play can be tedious to watch however short it is, and how it can be funny although it's supposed to be taken seriously.
Theseus' servant, Philostrate, ties to pursuade Theseus not to see this play, amusingly. He say he has seen it and although it is only a few words long it is too long by that number of words, "But by ten words my lord, it is too long". He says the play is tedious because it is so hopelessly bad. He also says that the play is supposed to be a tragedy because Pyramus kills himself, but that is acted so poorly that he laughed until he cried when he saw it; "made mine eyes water; but more merry tears". Even after what Philostrate has said Thesueus decides that he will see the play. He believes the Mechanicals have composed the play out of a sense of duty to him, "never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it."
Theseus understands that the Mechanicals are not professoinal actors and their performance may be poor, but he values their other, more admirable qualities more highly.
Quince begins the play with the prologue where he gets his speech muddled and ends up saying the opposite of what he intended. He says, "All for you delights, we are not here" and joins up two parts of separate sentences together. He means to say that their intentions are to delight the audience and that they are not there to upset people. The court finds this hilarious and some begin to make nasty comments and patronise them which continues throughout the play. Quince's speech could've mad sense but it didn’t because he presented it poorly. Theseus says the speech is "like a tangled chain; nothing impaired but all disordered."
This scene also has the clownish humour of the Mechanicals, Quince's mispunctuated prologue. This scene is not as much farce as the others though because in order to find it humerous you need to understand what Quince intends to say.
The Mechanicals represent honesty, decency, loyalty and endeavour yet we are amused by their antics. They are patronised to the extent that it is no longer funny and we feel sympathy for them, thus we are intended to share Theseus' point of veiw, that they are worthy of praise because they mean well and their efforts are true. This suggests that Shakespeare would want us to take them seriously and leave the theatre appreciating the characters.
