Puck (a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow)Often considered by critics as the heart and soul of A Midsummer Night's Dream is Puck, the mischievous sprite who serves Oberon, the Fairy King.
Also known as Robin Goodfellow, Puck would have been familiar to a sixteenth-century English audience, who would have recognized him as a common household spirit also often associated with travellers. As his name suggests he is indeed a "puck," an elf or goblin that enjoys playing practical jokes on mortals. In the spirit of mischief rather than malevolence, Puck’s character creates the play’s fun and rowdy atmosphere and his magic sets many of the play’s events in motion through his unfortunate mistakes and deliberate pranks. He whizzes around the globe (in forty minutes no less) to fetch Oberon’s magic love juice and by accidentally smearing it on Lysander’s eyelids instead of Demetrius’, he triggers comical chaos for the young lovers. Eventually (at the request of Oberon rather than through a sense of remorse) he gives the young lovers the antidote to the love juice thus removing the obstacles they've faced and ensuring the play's happy ending. More than anything else, Puck loves a good practical joke and one of the play’s most famous pranks has him transforming Bottom's head into that of an ass. He is also fond of shape-shifting himself and at one point brags that he often pretends to be a stool and then disappears so that old ladies will land on their "bum[s]". He also terrorizes the mechanicals in the woods after turning their friend into a human-donkey hybrid: Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire, And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. |
Whilst Puck’s fun-loving spirit may depict him as the heart and soul of the play, his remorseless antics remind us that the realm of fairies is not all goodness and generosity.