Humor of Puck vs Bottom in a Midsummer Night's Dream

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, which has been staged and cinematized many times. This comedic play encompasses some ancient Greek motives and characteristics with miraculous plot composition and exquisite humor. This play was supposedly been written on the behalf of the wedding of some wealthy British aristocrats and, consequently, contains the topic of love and affection. But aside from the highly sublime topic of love, the play also contains several comedic elements as well. And as it is characteristic of comedy or any other representative of the spectrum of dramatic genres, all the themes and ideas implied by the author are fulfilled or performed by characters, heroes of a play, through their speech, feelings, actions and behavior. The characteristic feature of dramatic genre to reveal some themes and motifs of the play through the characters’ speech is present in A Midsummer Night Dream. For this particular essay I have elected to dissect two prominent characters of this play, Puck and Bottom, to decipher whether they bear essential differences or possess similarities, and the effect these characters display in regard to the overarching themes of the play. For starting point I’ve chosen the cue of Puck, which we observe in the first scene of the third act: “Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,/ A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire,/ And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,/ Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn”. When considering this, one will assuredly notice that this character is capable of changeability. Once the reader is exposed to how many metamorphoses he performs and analyzes his activity throughout the play, Puck’s incontinence becomes quite noticeable. Puck is a mischievous elf, who serves the Fairy King Oberon, whose orders he eagerly fulfills. Although he is a very efficient
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