In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a group of slightly ramshackle workmen decide to put on a play. The play they choose — The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe — is famously and funnily terrible, as is their handling of it. Its central scene takes place at night, so they decide to dress up one actor with a lantern and a thorn bush: the idea is that light might shine through the thorns and convey the illusion of moonlight.