Puck
Fairy, and Oberon's agent
- Wants
- To enjoy the chaos he is asked to create.
- Undone by
- He is confident and careless, which is a dangerous combination with magic.
← The library
PlayRenaissance · 1595Study guide · no full textGentle
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare →The comedy keeps insisting that love is a kind of enchantment and a kind of theatre. Watch how the mechanicals' play mirrors the lovers' plot, badly and truthfully.
Study guide
This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
The castFull atlas →
Bottom
Weaver, and the play's worst actor
- Wants
- To be admired for a performance nobody asked for.
- Undone by
- He has no idea how ridiculous he is, which is exactly why he survives being enchanted.
Now read the first page with all of this in mind.
The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.