character study of Puck

Character study of Puck

Pg .1 The character of Puck is a mischievous sprite of popular folklore , also

known as Robin Goodfellow . He was originally an evil demon who was transformed and

popularized in his present form by Shakespeare . Shakespeare depicts him in A

Midsummer Nights Dream ' as a happy wanderer of the night

Though the character Puck has little character development in

Shakespeare 's play , and is not a protagonist he is still the most important character of A

Midsummers Nights Dream ' He is a quick-witted

sprite which sets off many of the

events of the play in motion . He plays deliberate pranks on the other human characters by

transforming bottom 's head into a ass 's head and creates unfortunate mistakes such as

smearing the love potion on Lysander 's eyelids instead of Demetrius 's

Puck 's capricious spirit , magical fancy , and fun-loving humor , and lovely

language is part of the atmosphere in the play . There are wild contrast such as the

implicit comparison between the rough , earthy craftsman and the delicate , graceful fairies

like Puck who dominate A Midsummer night 's dream

Puck illustrates many of these differences within his character . He is

graceful however not as sweet as the other fairies . He is Oberon 's jester and is given to

coarseness , which leads Puck to change Bottom 's head into an ass 's head just for fun

This explains Puck 's character as good-hearted but is prone to cruel tricks . Another

difference is where other fairies are beautiful and ethereal , Puck is shown as bizarre

looking . Another fairy in this piece mentions that some would call Puck a Hobgoblin

Character study of Puck

Pg .2

which is a term that is decidedly less glamorous than those of a Fairy ' A play within a

play , A midsummer nights dream ' Retells the story of Ovid and is supposed to be

Shakespeare 's parody of Romeo and Juliet

The play is simply about ideas and emotion rather than plot . The audience

does not know if it is a dream or not . The play begins with Thesus , the Duke of Athens

is set to marry Hippolyta , who is a lady warrior who he has conquered Egeus brings his

daughter Hermia to court . Hermia and Lysander want to get married however Egeus

wants her to marry Demetrius , who also wants her . Athenian law dictates , Hermia must

marry the man of her father 's choice , or be executed . Thesus enforces this law giving

everyone a few days to decide . Demetrius has seduced and abandoned Helena , who is

Hermia 's friend

Lysander and Hermia elope and get married beyond the Athenian law

Hermia tells Helena who tells Demetrius to ingratiate herself to Demetrius . Hermia and

Lysander runs away into the woods where Demetrius and Helena follow them

Meanwhile , in the woods , Robin Goodfellow (Puck ) meets with a fairy , who serves

Queen Titania . Queen Titania tells Puck that Titania is coming to the woods outside of

Athens that night . Puck informs the fairy it would be better if Titiania and his master

Oberon , did not meet on account of they always argue when they are together . Titania

and Oberon come onstage and argue while puck watches

Later , Oberon vows revenge on Titania for causing him embarrassment and

asks puck to fetch some pansies , the juice of which is supposed to make a person fall in

love with the first person they see when they wake up . Oberon 's plan is for Puck to place

Character study of Puck

Pg .3

the juice onto Titania 's eyes while she sleeps , so that she will fall in love with the first

animal she sees when she wakes . Puck leaves and Oberon hides and Demetris and

Helena arrive in the woods next to where Oberon sleeps . Demitris tells Helena to go

away , and he does not love her even though she has told him about Hermia and Lysander

trying to run away . She threatens to chase him down if he leaves her in the woods

Oberon hears this and decides to make Demitris fall in love with Helena . He

tells puck to take some juice of the flower and go anoint the eyes of the Athenian man in

the woods however doing so it must be the woman standing beside him will be the first

they see . Puck agrees and goes off to do his errand only to later realize that he had

mistaken Lysander for Demetrius . The result is an ironic comment on the irrationality of

love when Lysander sees Helena and falls in love with her . It is not clear if Puck 's

intention was true or a genuine mistake on the account of Puck 's playful , prankish nature

such as when Puck puts a donkey head on Bottom the weaver (Which in Elizabethan

times , the male donkey symbolizes a man 's generous sexual endowment

Demetrius and Lysander meet Helena and Hermia and the two men come to

blows . Oberon sees this and instructs Puck to separate the men . Puck in a comedic twist

using ventriloquism which results in Lysander and Demetrius getting lost in the dark and

deciding to sleep allowing Puck to apply the flower juice . Oberon applies the antidote for

juice to Lysander and Titiana . Demetrius awakens and falls in love with Helena . Thesus

enters , and the proper lovers are together making everyone happy . The human 's as well

as the audience wonders if all that 's happened was real or a dream There is no depth of

characterizations in A Midsummer 's night dream ' The play is more about ideas rather

Character study of Puck

Pg .4

than personalities

A Midsummer 's night dream ' is the most unusual amount Shakespeare `s

plays in lacking a written source for its plot . The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta is

described in Chaucer 's Knights Tale ' Is the same theme of a daughter who wants to

marry against her father 's wishes was a common theme in Roman comedy The

character of bottom and his friends are caricatures of amateur stage players

Shakespeare got his idea for the forests spirits from spoken folk

traditions . The mysterious people in the forest might be helpful mischievous , or sinister

like the character of Puck . Shakespeare mentions a sprite in King Henry IV Part 1 , when

the king relates a folk legend that Some night-tripping fairy ' might steal babies and

leave a fairy child or someone 's else 's child ' People may have believed to be half-

believed , like Puck . Puck goes by another name Hobgoblin ' Goblin was the name of a

lesser devil . Puck is an imaginary figure of fun that personifies nature as Mother

nature ' and the artistic Jack Frost ' who is the painter of autumn leaves and creator of

the beautiful ice patterns on windowpanes

A midsummer 's night Dream breaks the theatrical rule of the third wall

where the players do not acknowledge the audience . Oberon begins the play by

informing the audience that he is invisible . The play-within-a-play is interrupted several

times by actors explaining what they are doing

Shakespeare writes in the character of Puck about how fantasy and

imagination can influence how people see the world , and how we behave toward each

other . At the end Puck invites the audience to believe that , if they didn 't like the play

Character study of Puck

Pg .5

they just dreamed it . Puck misleads night travelers ' in the play as he laughed at their

harm ' This represents the will-o-wisp , the eerie light that leads night travelers off the

road and into the marsh . Today this would be referred to as swamp gas Puck remarks

that only one male human in a million keeps his promises . As the spirit of chaos and

unreason , Puck says . And those things do best me / that befall preposterously

Puck promises to prevent birth defects in the newlywed 's babies

Unlike the other characters of A Midsummer night 's dream (The

individual characters can be traced back to classical literature ) e .g the story of Pyramus

and Thisbe is told in Ovid 's Metamorphoses , and the transformation of Bottom to an ass

is from Apuleius ' The golden ass ' Shakespeare would have studied both stories in

school . There is no exact source where Shakespeare came up with the character of Puck

It may have been from his imagination or some source that was never really revealed

Shakespeare 's intention for Puck was to change the concept that small

fairies are kind . History indicated prior to Elizabethean times , that fairies were evil spirits

who were feared by villagers because they stole children and sacrificed them by the devil

Shakespeare along with other of the time redefined fairies during this time period

turning them into gentle , albeit mischievous spirits

Puck 's suggestion in the end hides a more sexual tension between the

male and female characters , witnessed Oberon 's attempts to humiliate Titiana and

Theseus conquest of Hippolyta . These tensions are rapidly dissolved by the sure

assertion , which the play assumes , which makes the play seem even less real

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One of a few Shakespearean plays with no direct literary source . A midsummer 's

Night dream balances a series of romantic entanglements with brief however profound

meditations on the illogical aspects of love , dreams , and the poetry of the play itself . This

play appears to have been constructed form scratch by Shakespeare . It pursues three sets

of characters . We follow the distracted lovers , the quarrelling supernatural king and

queen , and the bungling amateur players who attempt to prepare for the performance for

the duke . The three strands intersect perfectly , and together they acknowledge the

importance of yielding to the unseen , unpredictable , and illogical demands of everyday

life . The world of the rational and fake , the world of planned events , reason and

experienced is the real dream world . The more profound reality is often to be discovered

by accident , fantasy , and imagination . Puck is our narrator participant and judge as

as well as the witness to the human condition performed in the play

There is no grand metaphysical theory or a system of right living in A

midsummer 's night dream ' or most of other works by Shakespeare . His work mirrors the

human condition . We will not exactly meet the character of Puck or his any of his

supernatural companions in the woods . The intention is that we will find them when we

fall in love , go crazy , engage in creative writing , fall asleep , and dream we enter a realm

of the imagination . This also happens when we choose as thesus does to look beyond the

performance at intention . Even when we pride ourselves (As lysander ) on being rational

there are important facets of humanity that are both non-rational and beyond our control

A midsummer 's nights dream and the character of Puck celebrate this essential fact of

life

-Reference Site- Benet 's Readers Encyclopedia Fourth edition Edited by Bruce Murphy

Shakespeare for beginners by Brandon Toropov

A Midsummer 's nights Dream- the complete works of William Shakespeare- Volume 1

Tales from Shakespeare : Puffin Classics by Charles and Mary Lamb

Wikipedia- A Midsummer 's Nights Dream- Online Encyclopedia...