Pyramus and Thisbe

The myth of Pyramus and Thisbe is first mentioned in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The story is embedded in the report of a celebration in honor of the god Bacchus, in which the daughters of Minyas tell different love stories.

Content

Pyramus and Thisbe are a Babylonian lovers, which is not allowed to see due to the enmity of his parents. The only way to communicate with each other, represents a gap is in a wall that forms the center of the houses in which to live on one side Pyramus with his parents and on the other side Thisbe with their parents.

After some time Pyramus and Thisbe arrange a nocturnal meeting under a mulberry tree to make Babylon behind forever. Thisbe, which arrives earlier than Pyramus at the mulberry tree, flees from a lion drinking at a spring and from feeding cattle cracked still has a bloody mouth. This Thisbe loses her veil, which is torn by the lioness and smeared with blood. As Pyramus appears, he finds the torn, blood-soaked veil, assumes that Thisbe had been killed by the lioness and therefore falls under the mulberry tree in his sword. When Thisbe returns, she finds the dying lover is overwhelmed by her tears and her love and also plunges into the still warm sword. The blood of lovers wet the roots of the mulberry tree. The mulberries that were previously knows henceforth have a red color. You are always dark as a sign of mourning. The parents of the two lovers leave the ashes of the unfortunate couple fill in the same urn to fulfill their desire to be together.

Motives of the story were processed by Shakespeare in his play " Romeo and Juliet" as a tragedy, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as a parody. In Andreas Gryphius Baroque comedy " Absurda Comica or Mr. Peter Quince " it is also the core issue - and Giovannino Guareschi was used in " Don Camillo ". Intermezzo tragico by Johann Adolf Hasse.