Humor In A Midsummer Night's Dream

In a play with themes as serious as most Shakespearean ones hold, it is difficult to include comedy. Often a few key characters are used as tools in the deliverance of humor. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the two key gateways used to integrate humor are Nick Bottom, the weaver and Robin “Puck” Goodfellow, the fairy king’s jester and well known trickster. The two characters share minimal similarities outside of arising laughter from the audience, however they are both key elements of the play. We are first introduced to Bottom on the second line of Act I, Scene II, “You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the script.” (1.2.2). Bottom is famous for his word mix ups and we see this example here in his first line of the script, in place of the word “generally” he intended to use “individually.” It is made clear through his interaction with his peers that he has a slight superiority complex. He comes across as a little too big for his britches, as they say. Throughout Quinces attempt to control the distribution of roles in his play, he is bombarded with unnecessary comments from Bottom. From offers to play both lovers, Thisbe …show more content…
Puck’s high jinks are not only to entertain the audience, but also used to advance the drama. His most elaborate intentional prank is when he, quite literally, transforms Bottom into an ass. The characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream run rampant with dramatic irony in succession to Bottom’s astronomic transformation, including the man of the hour himself. Upon the other Rustics first glimpse Bottoms newly transfigured appearance Bottom makes the painstaking mistake of asking: “What do you see? You see an ass head of your own, do you?”(3.1.85).
Although a grand amount of Puck’s hilarity is amounted to intentional pranks he has his fair shares of accidental blunders, the most prominent being the Athenian mix up with the purple flower’s love