Pyramus and Thisbe, the fairest youth and maiden in Semiramis' Babylon, loved through a crack in the wall between their fathers' houses — until a lioness stained Thisbe's cloak with blood, Pyramus thought her dead and fell on his sword, and she followed him; their blood darkened the mulberry forever.1
The wall between
In adjoining houses near the walls Queen Semiramis had built of brick, the two grew fond and spoke through a chink in the party wall — a crack their fathers' hatred of each other could not seal. They planned to steal out by night to Ninus' tomb outside the city and meet there alone.2
The lioness
Thisbe arrived first and fled a lioness fresh from the kill, dropping her cloak in her terror. When Pyramus came and saw the blood-stained garment and the beast's tracks, he believed his love destroyed and drove his sword into his side. Thisbe returned, found him dying, and took the weapon from his breast to follow.3
The mulberry
Their blood spattered the roots of a mulberry tree, and the gods changed its fruit from white to dark red in memory of the lovers. Hyginus counts Pyramus among those who killed themselves for love of Thisbe, and Thisbe among those who died when Pyramus had already slain himself.4
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How the centuries saw it
Stormy Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe
Nicolas Poussin, 1651
Poussin's stormy landscape — the lovers under the mulberry, Ovid's Babylonian tragedy as classical weather.
Pyramus and Thisbe
Hans Baldung, 1530
Baldung's 1530 pair — Pyramus fallen on his sword, Thisbe discovering him, the wall's crack already behind them.
Pyramus and Thisbe
Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1520
Cranach's German Renaissance take — the lion, the bloody veil, and the double suicide that dyes the mulberry.
Thisbe
John William Waterhouse, 1909
Waterhouse's Thisbe alone at the wall — the crack through which the fairest of Babylon whispered before the tomb.
In play
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
The mechanicals' play-within-the-play — Pyramus and Thisbe as comic tragedy, the wall, the lion, the mulberry stain.
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Book 4 — Babylonian lovers, a crack in the wall, and the mulberry dyed by their blood: the tragic template behind Romeo and Juliet.
Pyramus and Thisbe
The fairest youth and maiden of Babylon — love through a wall that ends under a mulberry tree.
Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's Verona tragedy inherits Ovid's plot — the wall, the misread death, the double suicide — through the Pyramus and Thisbe template.