Puck

Play

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Summary

Puck — also called Robin Goodfellow — is Oberon's mischievous fairy sprite, the play's most energetic and entertaining figure. He can circle the earth in forty minutes, takes delight in confusion and metamorphosis, and it is his error (or perhaps deliberate mischief) in applying the love potion to Lysander instead of Demetrius that creates the play's central tangle. He transforms Bottom's head into that of an ass. His famous closing address to the audience — breaking the fourth wall to ask for applause and offer the play itself as a dream — is one of the most famous epilogues in Shakespeare.

Notable Quotations

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" *(III.ii)*

"I'll put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes." *(II.i)*

"If we shadows have offended, / Think but this, and all is mended, / That you have but slumbered here / While these visions did appear." *(V.i, Epilogue)*

"I am that merry wanderer of the night." *(II.i)*

Cross-references

• A Midsummer Night's Dream — the play
• Comedies — genre
• character_oberon — his master and commander
• character_titania — whom he enchants on Oberon's orders
• character_bottom — whose head he transforms into an ass's
• character_lysander — to whom he misapplies the love potion