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Francis Flute

A Midsummer Night's Dream · 10 speeches across 3 scenes

Francis Flute is a bellows-mender and amateur actor cast as Thisbe in the mechanicals' play.

Who they are

Flute is one of the six Athenian craftsmen who prepare a play for Theseus's wedding. He resists playing a woman because he has a beard coming, but Quince insists. His performance as Thisbe, especially the tragic discovery of Pyramus's body, provides some of the funniest moments in the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude.

Playing them

Play Flute with earnest but flustered energy. He should not be an obvious comic; his humor comes from genuine awkwardness and discomfort with cross-casting. His speaking voice can crack or pitch high when he is nervous. Over-enunciate the classical 'thee's and 'thou's with deadly seriousness.

Where they appear

Play Francis Flute

Take the part and Yorick reads every other role aloud, following you line by line as you speak.

Rehearse A Midsummer Night's Dream on your phone: App Store · Google Play

Shakespeare the way it was meant to be had — out loud

These plays were written to be performed, not silently read. Yorick is a rehearsal app that lets you perform them: you take a part in any of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, and Yorick reads every other role aloud, listens while you speak your lines, keeps your place, and prompts you the moment you dry.

It is built for the person who has to be off book by tech week — school and college productions, community theatre, festivals, drama students and classical auditions — and for anyone who wants to hear a scene rather than skim it. Alongside the performance you get a plain-English translation of every speech, scene context, performance notes, and the ability to ask about any line and get an answer that already knows the play, the scene and who is speaking.

The text is the public-domain Cambridge/Globe edition. Translations and notes are AI-generated rehearsal aids for actors and students, not a scholarly apparatus. Yorick runs in a browser with nothing to install, and on iPhone and Android.