A Midsummer Night's Dream

Roles

• Puck - Male

About this piece

Puck tells fairies' king Oberon that Titania has fallen in love with Bottom

Summary

The play revolves around three plots, all connected by the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, with the legenday Queen of the Amazons, Hyppolita. In the first plot, Egeus, a noblemen, appears at Theseus' court with his daughter Hermia and two men, Demetrius and Lysander. Egeus wants her daughter to marry Demetrius but Hermia is in love with Lysander. Her father urges her to change her mind or else she could even be executed. Lysander and Hermia, however, plan to elope and get married outside of Athens. They confide in Helena who in turn is in love with Demetrius. She tells Demetrius about their plan so that she can win his attention. The second plot regards two fairies in the forest surrounding Athens, Oberon, the king of fairies and his queen Titania. They are having an argument because Oberon wants to use Titania's Indian changeling as a knight and Titania refuses. As a revenge, Oberon sends his servant Puck to find a magical juice from a flower that, applied to a person's eyelids, makes the victim fall in love with the first thing that the eyes see. Oberon wants her to fall in love with some ugly creature in the forest. He also asks Puck to apply it to Demetrius' eyelids since he saw him mistreat Helena in the forest and wants him to fall in love with her. In the third story, a group of laborers meet to rehearse a play about Pyramus and Thisbe that they will perform at Theseus' wedding, Among these labourers there is Nick Bottom whose head will be transformed into an ass by Puck, just to mock him. Puck looks for Demetrius but mistakes Lysander for him and puts some of the magical juice on his eyes while he sleeps. Lysander falls in love with Helena who is the first person that he sees. Titania, on the other hand, first sees Bottom and falls in love with him. In this monologue, in ACT III, Scene 2, Puck tells his king Oberon that Titania has fallen in love with a monster, that is Bottom. He tells him how he transformed his head into that of an ass and he happened to be there when Titania woke from her sleep.

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