At the wedding feast for Hippolyta and Theseus, the Mechanicals perform a dramatic version of "Pyramus and Thisbe", a tragic story by the Roman author Ovid which is very similar to Romeo and Juliet.

The Mechanicals' performance of the play parodies dramatic conventions by ignoring most of them. Instead of staying in character, for example, the players (actors) stop and enter into conversation with the audience. They also make misleading statements by not using the proper punctuation or pauses to make their meanings clear. Quince, who plays the wall, stops to explain that he is a wall and a special wall at that.

All in all, the players manage to turn a tragedy into a comedy because of their lack of professional skill. However, the newly married Theseus is in a good mood, has few expectations of a polished performance by these amateurs, and states he is willing to humor them in their blunders.

The play within a play, presented by the workmen in celebration of Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding, pokes fun at dramatic traditions in a few ways. Shakespeare appears to be milking the most comedy out of the melodrama the actors employ to perform their roles, making the selected play, a tragedy, an irony.

Shakespeare may have added the play within a play as a way to affirm Elizabethan notions about actors at the time. For example, Bottom is earnest yet dimwitted; Quince is even-tempered, yet suffers at the hands of an unruly cast. Both characters would serve as a ribald punchline for audiences that thought of actors as vain and dull in their offstage lives. 

Through the play within a play convention, Shakespeare also could have been answering to those critics who felt free to demean his work, but had no understanding of sound dramatic structure.