Frank Sidgwick

“ Bottom takes his name from the wooden reel or spool on which thread is wound; "bottom" simply meaning the base or foundation of the reel. The names of his comrades have no specific connection with the trades they ply; but "Starveling" is appropriate by tradition for a tailor—it takes seven tailors to make a man.
The episode of Bottom's "translation," or transformation into an ass, may have been suggested to Shakespeare by a passage in Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft (1584) —a book with which he must have been acquainted, as we shall see in discussing the fairy-section of the play. ”

“ Scot mentions further the famous story of the Golden Ass of Apuleius [2] ; a legend of the reappearance of one of the Popes, a hundred years after his death, with an ass's head; and gives a charm to put an ass's head on a man. ”

“ The play is in blank verse of a poor kind with occasional rhyming couplets. After a prologue begins "Actus Primus and ultimus"; there are only five scenes in all, and the whole is quite short. The characters consist of Iphidius, father of Pyramus ”