Puck and Bottom in A Midsummer Nights Dream Essay -- Midsummer Night

Puck and can in A Midsummer Nights Dream When James Joyce was a teenager, a friend asked him if he had ever been in venerate. He answered, How would I write the most perfect love songs of our time if I were in love - A poet must always write about a past or a future emotion, never about a present whiz - A poets job is to write tragedies, not to be an actor in one (Ellman 62). I mention this because - after replacing the word comedy for catastrophe and allowing a little latitude on the meaning of the word actor - Joyce is subconsciously giving A Midsummer Nights Dreams argument about the role of the creative person. That is to say, an artist must be removed from the action, or, at least, not prone to normal temptations. This emotional distance gives the artist the type of perspective that Theseus likens to a madmans. It also, however, gives the artist a vantage point from which he can give the other characters experiences meaning. Therefore, I will argue that, in A Midsummer Nights Dream, Shakespeare sees the artist as mortal who is removed from the plays main action, but gives meaning to the plays experience (for both the audience and the other characters). I will show this by examining the roles of the two counterpart artists Bottom (who supercedes Peter Quince as Every Mothers Sons artist), and Puck (whose art is changing peoples hearts and minds). My first four paragraphs show how Shakespeare uses Puck and Bottom allegorically to equal two different components of the artistic mind. Secondly, I show how Shakespeare leaves them emotionally distant from the main action of the play. Lastly, I will show how they end up rendition the play, thereby, giving it meaning. It is im... ...speares Festive Comedy A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom. Princeton Princeton University Press, 1972. Bonazza, Blaze O. Shakespeares Early Comedies A Structural Analysis*. The Hague Mouton, 1966. Briggs, Katharine M. The t rope of Puck. London Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959. Frye, Northrop. Characterization in Shakespeares Comedy, Shakespeare Quarterly Vol.IV (1953), pp.271-277. Nevo, Ruth. Comic Transformations in Shakespeare. New York Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1981. Palmer, John. Comic Characters of Shakespeare. London Macmillan, 1946. Rhoades, Duane. Shakespeares Defense of Poetry A Midsummer Nights Dream and The tempest. Westport, CT Greenwood Press,1986. Young, David. Something of Great Constancy The Art of A Midsummer Nights Dream. New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 1966.