William Shakespeare wrote the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play is what the title suggests, a dreamlike adventure that takes place in a magical forest on a summer night. In this play, the main characters are essential to the comedy of the play, which is about the complexities and absurdities of love, magic and dreaming, and the relationships between mythology, fantasy and reality.
In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the two most important characters are Puck and Bottom. In this play there are many characters, all are important and significant in their own way. There are two types of characters, the fairies and the mortals. Puck is the most important fairy, if not the most important character in the whole play. Many people believe he is the play’s protagonist. He is the mischievous jester of Oberon, King of the fairies. He is Oberon’s companion and keeps him amused. His role in this play is to set the story up. He acts a narrator as well as the source of entertainment. In the beginning of the play, four Athenians venture into the forest. Oberon orders Puck to place a love potion on Demetrius’s eyelids, which would cause him to fall in love with Helena. Unintentionally he placed the love potion on Lysander’s eyelids, causing him to forget his true love Hermia. This causes a huge upset to the four Athenians, and they fight and squabble late into the night. This is a major part of the play that was inadvertently set up by Puck. He also plays a deliberate prank on Bottom, a craftsman. There are a group of craftsmen in the forest practicing for a play they will put on at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. Pucks sees Bottom practicing with the rest of the men, and decides to turn his head into that of an ass, merely for the sake of enjoyment. This too, is an important part of the play because it sets up the scene for Titania, Queen of the fairies, to fall in love with him. Bottom is the main character in the sub-plot involving the mortals. He is very self absorbed and egotistical. He believes he should play all of the characters in the play they are putting on for Theseus’s wedding. He thinks so highly of himself, and is completely unaware of his own absurdity. His head is turned into a head of an ass, and Titania falls in love with him (only because Oberon placed the love potion on her eyelids as a joke). He somehow believes that it is perfectly normal for the Queen of fairies to fall in love with someone like himself, a mortal craftsman. Bottom is an important part of the play because he is the “comedian”. His foolishness is amusing and is an integral part of the play.
