The forest in A Midsummer Night's Dreamis populated with a world of supernatural beings: Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, and a cadre of charming magical creatures who serve them, including Peasebottom, Cobweb and Moth, and Puck or Robin Goodfellow, a mischievous fellow from folklore who would have been familiar to English audiences at the time. Puck can traverse the globe in moments, and Puck and the fairies flit about serving at...
The forest in A Midsummer Night's Dream is populated with a world of supernatural beings: Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, and a cadre of charming magical creatures who serve them, including Peasebottom, Cobweb and Moth, and Puck or Robin Goodfellow, a mischievous fellow from folklore who would have been familiar to English audiences at the time. Puck can traverse the globe in moments, and Puck and the fairies flit about serving at the command of their monarchs. Puck puts the magical potions in the eyes of the humans that cause comic (and potentially dark) mishap and mayhem.
The fairies add to the magical, upside-down world of the Midsummer's night forest, where the irrational—love—trumps reason in many ways. These fantastical creatures represent the imagination and the way imagination creates love, so that
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind . . .
These creatures may be "real" within the logic of the play, and Shakespeare goes to great length to describe the forest in rich sensory detail—or the entire action, as Puck suggests, may be a dream. Whatever their literal reality within the play, the "potions" and "magic" the fairies dispense represent love's mad side. Do we humans need a potion to suddenly fall in or out of love with a person? Do we need a charm to fall in love with an "ass"? The supernatural characters in the play thus symbolize the irrational mystery at the heart of love. As Puck comments, "what fools these mortals be."
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