Robin Starveling

Robin Starveling is a character in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596), one of the Rude Mechanicals who plays the part of Moonshine in their performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. His part is often considered one of the more humorous in the play, as he uses a lantern in a failed attempt to portray Moonshine and is wittily derided by his audience. His use of the lantern as a symbol for the Moon is an example of synecdoche, or the part symbolizing the whole. Scholars have argued that his amateur performance communicates many of the problems Shakespeare would have been familiar with in the theatre: heckling, lack of adequate props, and amateur acting abilities.