Snug
Snug embodies the mechanicals' central theatrical anxiety about whether a performance can be too convincing — specifically, whether a lion roaring on stage will cause genuine alarm. His careful, pre-announced, self-identified performance is the play's most self-aware theatrical act, and its most quietly successful.
Appears In
Biography
Snug is a joiner assigned the role of Lion in the mechanicals' Pyramus and Thisbe — a casting that produces his most memorable moment, not in the performance itself, but in his request, at the first rehearsal, to know whether the lion's part is already written out. He is, he explains, slow of study. Quince reassures him that the lion has very little to do: roar. Snug finds this manageable.
The mechanicals' extended discussion of how to handle the lion's appearance without frightening the ladies of the court is the play's richest sustained comic set piece about theatrical illusion. Bottom proposes that the actor playing the lion speak through the mask to reassure them; the company agrees on a compromise in which the lion's humanity is pre-announced in the prologue. Snug's execution of this in Act V is perfect: he introduces himself as Snug the joiner, assures the company he is not actually a lion, and then roars.
His roar — calibrated by the company's earlier discussion to be neither too fierce nor too tame — is delivered with evident self-consciousness. The audience nevertheless appreciates it. Snug's Lion is the mechanicals' most purely theatrical character: a man playing an animal while simultaneously being a man, and making the most of both at once.
Motivation
Snug is motivated by the desire to do the job well without accidentally terrifying anyone — a balance the play treats as a legitimate theatrical concern and solves with characteristic good-natured literalism.
Personality
Snug's slowness of study is the only personality detail the play gives him, and it is enough: a man who takes things carefully, asks for preparation time, and then delivers exactly what was required of him. His Lion is the mechanicals' most successfully managed performance, which is a quiet joke about the relationship between competence and confidence.