A Midsummer Night's Dream - Bottom and Puck. Who is the protagonist?
Though Bottom often steals the show in performance, Puck is usually considered the most important character in A Midsummer Night’s dream.
Beginning with the importance of the characters and their roles, firstly Puck is the mischievous goblin through-out the play and Bottom is part of the craftsmen who are of lower class then the rest of the characters. These two characters are completely different, coming from separate environments; Puck from the fairy world and Bottom from the working class, however they both serve the same purpose; to make their audience laugh. Puck is a supernatural character who likes to play pranks on humans and takes a joke on human’s stupidity whilst Bottom is an over confident, loud character who wants to the main attention in the play. Despite the fact that Bottom acts confident and arrogant, I believe he’s secretly vulnerable and the over confident trait is all an act which is often a common trait in a human’s personality nowadays. Puck is very child-like and sly, although Puck is the mischievous character, he always has a serious element to hisways because he does solve the problems he’s caused and he reassures the audience that they don’t need to be offended which is portrayed at the close of the play “if we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended”. Bottom and his fellow craftsmen are producing a play to entertain the Queen of The Amazon and the Athenian Duke which produces a section of the comedy in the entire play and Puck is meddling with the young lovers love.
The comedy that is produced in the play are both by Bottom and Puck because Bottom makes a mess of himself and the audience laugh at him whilst Puck causes mayhem between characters making us laugh with him because he enjoys playing practical jokes. Comedy is portrayed by Puck as he turns Bottom’s head into an ass’s head and mocks him. Making the audience mock him although Bottom doesn’t know what’s happened which is shown through this quote “What do you
Beginning with the importance of the characters and their roles, firstly Puck is the mischievous goblin through-out the play and Bottom is part of the craftsmen who are of lower class then the rest of the characters. These two characters are completely different, coming from separate environments; Puck from the fairy world and Bottom from the working class, however they both serve the same purpose; to make their audience laugh. Puck is a supernatural character who likes to play pranks on humans and takes a joke on human’s stupidity whilst Bottom is an over confident, loud character who wants to the main attention in the play. Despite the fact that Bottom acts confident and arrogant, I believe he’s secretly vulnerable and the over confident trait is all an act which is often a common trait in a human’s personality nowadays. Puck is very child-like and sly, although Puck is the mischievous character, he always has a serious element to hisways because he does solve the problems he’s caused and he reassures the audience that they don’t need to be offended which is portrayed at the close of the play “if we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended”. Bottom and his fellow craftsmen are producing a play to entertain the Queen of The Amazon and the Athenian Duke which produces a section of the comedy in the entire play and Puck is meddling with the young lovers love.
The comedy that is produced in the play are both by Bottom and Puck because Bottom makes a mess of himself and the audience laugh at him whilst Puck causes mayhem between characters making us laugh with him because he enjoys playing practical jokes. Comedy is portrayed by Puck as he turns Bottom’s head into an ass’s head and mocks him. Making the audience mock him although Bottom doesn’t know what’s happened which is shown through this quote “What do you
Bibliography: Word count: 1,429 AQA AS English Literature B (Nelson Thornes Publication, 2nd Edition) A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare (Cambridge Schools Version) York Notes Advanced (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) DVD – A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999 version)