Which play features a play-within-a-play based on Pyramus and Thisbe?

A Midsummer Night's Dream features a play-within-a-play based on the tragic story of Pyramus and Thisbe. In Act 1, Scene 2, a group of amateur actors known as the mechanicals plans to perform their version at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. Their deliberately clumsy production becomes the comic climax of Act 5.

The source story comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Pyramus and Thisbe are lovers whose families forbid them to marry; a misunderstanding involving a bloodstained garment leads both to die. Shakespeare turns this tragic material into farce: Bottom plays Pyramus, Flute plays Thisbe, and the actors nervously explain roles such as Wall, Moonshine, and Lion.

A common mix-up is to confuse this embedded performance with the main plot involving the four Athenian lovers and the fairies. Pyramus and Thisbe is not a separate Shakespeare play; it is the title of the performance staged inside A Midsummer Night's Dream. Its comic treatment also anticipates later theatrical parodies of Shakespearean tragedy.