Shakespeare’s Star-Crossed Lovers: The tragic, the comedic, and the outright dysfunctional

I couldn’t help but think of Romeo and Juliet while reading and laughing through the “rude mechanics’” painfully funny performance in Act V of A Midsummer Night's Dream. So, I decided to do some googling to see what I could find on the correspondence between Shakespeare’s two pairs of star-crossed lovers.

The first fact I found out is that the story of Pyramus and Thisbe exists outside of the silly play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’m guessing that this is a known fact to most people, but the world of Roman mythology is totally foreign to me. The tale was originally told by Ovid centuries before Shakespeare’s existence, which confirms another example of UN-originality in Shakespeare’s work. He borrowed a great deal of the ancient myth’s plot line for Romeo and Juliet, including the basic story foundation of two young lovers whose love is forbidden by their parents, who both die tragically by suicide due to an unfortunate misunderstanding. According to several Shakespeare websites, the playwright borrowed from the myth intentionally and explicitly referenced it in Romeo and Juliet itself. However, none of these sites give textual evidence (gotta have it!) as to where in the play the myth was oh-so-explicitly referenced, so I’m unable to prove whether or not for sure his story-borrowing was purposeful.
I was also curious to find out when AMND and Romeo and Juliet were respectively written. It appears that R&J was written first, but the dates are so close together and so long ago that it’s hard to say for sure. If Romeo and Juliet was written first, then the funny little Pyramus and Thisbe play in AMND seems to be an example of Shakespeare making fun of his own work. Bottom’s last line as Pyramus in the mechanic’s play certainly seems like a spoof of Juliet stabbing herself:

“Come, tears, confound;
Out, sword, and wound
The pap of Pyramus;
Ay, that left pap,
Where heart doth hop:

(Stabs himself)

Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.”

Bottom’s character’s death mocks Juliet’s dramatic stabbing:

"Yea, noise? then I'll be brief. O happy dagger!
(Snatching ROMEO's dagger)
This is thy sheath;
(Stabs herself)
there rust, and let me die."

So is this an example of Shakespeare’s self-deprecating humor? Is he poking fun at his own tragic story of star-crossed lovers? The play-within-a-play seems to be an obvious example, as it has a storyline that runs parallel to that of Romeo and Juliet. However, isn’t AMND itself making fun of the idea of star-crossed lovers? Perhaps not in the traditional sense. There are four rather than two lovers involved, and one of the four is a female who is ruthlessly pursuing a male who doesn’t return her affections. Hermia and Lysander are the two in the forbidden relationship, yet for a good portion of the play, Lysander detests Hermia due to the meddling of some fairies. Everything gets confused by the fairies’ mischief and suddenly the unwanted female is the object of affection for both men involved. The play’s dysfunctional love web, and especially its hilarious inner Pyramus and Thisbe play, serve as an enjoyable comic response to the tragedy of R&J. My original ideas of Shakespeare being a super-serious literary genius are changing: I still think he’s a genius, but he also has a genius sense of humor.