A Midsummer Night's Dream

There were two reasons I read A Midsummer Night's Dream. The first was that after Romeo and Juliet I wanted to read something more by Shakespeare, but I'm lazy and wanted to read something easy. The second is that when I was younger I used to be obsessed with the Sisters Grimm series ( it was the next step up from Cinderella) and one of the main characters in that series was Puck. I was really curious if Puck was similarly portrayed in both texts (he was.)

Puck is a servant, but he seems more like Oberon and Titania's mischievous little son. He runs around causing trouble and generally creating problems for the public. Despite this, I think he has good intentions. He is the creator of the main problem in the story when he puts the love potion on Lysander instead of Demetrius. This totally destroys the careful love triangle. This was an innocent mistake however, and he didn't mean to create such angst, though I'm sure he wasn't shedding tears over it afterwards. 

He doesn't really have such great intentions when he gives Bottom a donkey/ass head, but Bottom is an ass, so why not exploit his personality for entertainment? Though his intentions are obviously to make Bottom look like an idiot, at least those aren't bad intentions. He doesn't make someone like Hermia have a donkey head. Besides, Bottom doesn't even really notice his donkey head, as he is too caught up in self love. Unlike Narcissus, who was so stuck up he had to look in the mirror (lake) till death, Bottom is so stuck up that he doesn't even need to see his reflection to assure himself of his greatness. He's on a whole other level.

I also think that when Shakespeare was writing Puck's character, he was thinking about opposite ideas and comparing and contrasting. This is because Puck is kind of a mixture between faeries and something more common. He is graceful and floaty, but coarse and chortley. (Chortley is not a word, but when I picture Puck, he always seems to be chortling.) The whole play is full of contrast: Titania and Bottom are opposites, as are the craftsmen and the faeries. Puck is different from other faeries; more human and more ugly.
 
This is why Puck is my favorite character in the play (and probably everyone else's as well, but I'm not going to lie and say another character for the benefit of being original.) He is human and makes mistakes, but laughs through them and through life. I seriously wish I could laugh at my problems like he does, because I think that I could be so much less stressed and worried all the time if I did. I love fairy tales and have been obsessed with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty etc. since I was a kiddie, but as I grew older, I began to  resent all of their perfection. What Shakespeare does so well is give his ethereal characters flaws. The faeries are supposed to be pretty perfect, but Puck is far from perfect. Titania is a stubborn drama queen. Oberon is obnoxious and has a selfish side. They are also both extremely self- righteous. Their brattiness and Puck's non faerieness is what I love about the play. I actually think that, though Romeo & Juliet is considered the better play, the characters are generally more interesting in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Romeo and Juliet are pretty great people. Maybe if Juliet was jealous and suspicious and Romeo was a drunk, but they still were madly in love, I would like it even more.