Trever
5/18/04
Puck is a much more important character than Bottom in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream, even though he is not the main character. A few things to back that up are Puck actually changes people where Bottom doesn’t. Puck also changes Bottom which puts Puck higher in ranking than Bottom. Puck is also in the real play the whole way through, while Bottom isn’t; he is in the play within the play. Bottom is really in the real play for only a little while at the end. Puck has a fifteen-line monologue at the end of A Midsummer Nights Dream and it is also the last speech of the play. Bottom doesn’t have such important lines and he doesn’t take orders from the king as Puck does, either.
Puck takes orders from King Oberon as when Oberon tells him to get him the love flower so that he could put it into Titania’s eyes. This makes Puck a more important character because if he wasn’t important the king wouldn’t give him orders. This is the speech where Oberon tells Puck to get him this love flower:
Fetch me that flow’r; the herb I showed thee once:
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.
In these lines, Oberon isn’t asking Puck to get him the flower, he is telling Puck to get it for him. Oberon also wants it quite fast because he says “Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again.” If you want something done quickly and well you wouldn’t pick someone that either wasn’t important or qualified for the job. Puck is obviously important and reliable.
Puck also takes things into his own hands, like when he turned Bottom into an ass. Puck did this because he was watching the play Pyramus and Thisby and saw that Bottom was acting like a self-important ass. Puck speaks to Bottom just before Bottom turns into an ass:
“I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about a round,
through bog, through brush, through brake, through brier.
Sometimes a horse I’ll be, sometimes a hound,
a hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire;
and neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.”
Not any old character in a play can just do what they want. No one else in the play A Midsummer Nights Dream does this. This is another example of how Puck is more important.
Puck also changes who loves who, as when he pust the love remedy juice in Lysander’s eyes. He does this because in the beginning of the play he puts the love juice in the wrong person’s eyes and messes up the love scene even more. So in this case, he is important because not just anyone fixes what they messed up. Puck’s speech to Lysnder just before he puts the love remedy in his eyes shows that he is fixing his own mistake:
On the ground
Sleep sound:
I’ll apply
To your eye,
Gentle lover, remedy.
When thou wak’st,
Thou tak’st
True delight
In the sight
Of thy former lady’s eye:….
This was also an order from the king, reinforcing the fact that Oberon wouldn’t just pick some nobody to do his work. So this also makes Puck important.
Bottom has control over almost nothing that happens to him. The first example of his powerlessness is his being turned into an ass. He couldn’t stop it or undo it even if he wanted to. It had to be done from the outside by someone who had control and therefore was more important than Bottom himself.
Bottom also had no control over being in love with Titania. Oberon put the love juice or potion in Titania’s eyes and then when Bottom woke her, she was immediately in love with him. He could do nothing about this, although he did not have to love or like her back, which he did choose to do. Choosing to do this makes him less important and less than normal. Donkeys don’t love humans and at the time Bottom was a donkey, so loving Titania makes him an abnormal donkey. An abnormal person would not be of very much importance in this play; the only thing he might be important for is the comedy.
Bottom seems to have no control over anyone, but it could be correctly argued that he has power over the mechanicals. He does have control over them somewhat, but think about it: what do they have control over? The mechanicals have control over nothing, especially the plot of the play, whereas Puck has control over the plot of the play. So even if a character does have control over someone or something it is important to think about what that person or thing has control over. Being in control gives you importance.
Bottom also had control over his play Pyramus and Thisby, which he performed at the end of A Midsummer Nights Dream. However, the audience of this play-within-a-play thought it horrible and mocked it. Even after they did mock his play, Bottom kept on being his normal cocky self. He still thought his play was good and they were laughing because it was funny not stupid.
Puck has the final speech of the play, which is sixteen lines long. It is not just a normal speech; he speaks it as if he was watching A Midsummer Nights Dream from the audience’s perspective or as if he was watching from the outside. When you write a play and have a speech that is that long and has a different perspective than all the other lines in the whole play it is usually delivered by an important character, if not the most important. Puck’s last speech, that ends the play, is:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumb’red here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to scape the serpent’s toung,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call:
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
This whole line is like Puck has been watching the play from the outside. For instance, he is talking about the theme. Normally people in the play think that it is real life or at least play a character that thinks the play is real life. A person existing in “real life” doesn’t think there is a theme to life, so Puck must somehow know that this is a play. If Shakespeare wrote this speech on purpose, which he did, he wouldn’t have picked an unimportant character to deliver it. So this shows that Puck is more important.
It is quite obvious now that Puck is much more important than Bottom. The above examples of Bottom’s helplessness or inability to control events contrast strongly with Puck’s ability to influence the plot of the play.