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After the war, he studied with Rosina Filippi, joining the Old Vic Company appearing as "Starveling" in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1920. In 1924 Albert de Courville brought Hay Petrie into vaudeville with The Looking Glass , in which he sang "Oh Shakespeare you're the best of all but you can't fill the fourteen shilling stall".
- Puck
- Oberon
- Titania
- Lysander
- Demetrius
- Hermia
- Helena
- Theseus
- Nick Bottom
- Egeus
Also known as Robin Goodfellow, Puck is Oberon’s jester, a mischievous fairy who delights in playing pranks on mortals. Though A Midsummer Night’s Dreamdivides its action between several groups of characters, Puck is the closest thing the play has to a protagonist. His enchanting, mischievous spirit pervades the atmosphere, and his antics are respo...
The king of the fairies, Oberon is initially at odds with his wife, Titania, because she refuses to relinquish control of a young Indian prince whom he wants for a knight. Oberon’s desire for revenge on Titania leads him to send Puck to obtain the love-potion flower that creates so much of the play’s confusion and farce. Read an in-depth analysis o...
The beautiful queen of the fairies, Titania resists the attempts of her husband, Oberon, to make a knight of the young Indian prince that she has been given. Titania’s brief, potion-induced love for Nick Bottom, whose head Puck has transformed into that of an ass, yields the play’s foremost example of the contrast motif. Read an in-depth analysis o...
A young man of Athens, in love with Hermia. Lysander’s relationship with Hermia invokes the theme of love’s difficulty: he cannot marry her openly because Egeus, her father, wishes her to wed Demetrius; when Lysander and Hermia run away into the forest, Lysander becomes the victim of misapplied magic and wakes up in love with Helena. Read an in-dep...
A young man of Athens, initially in love with Hermia and ultimately in love with Helena. Demetrius’s obstinate pursuit of Hermia throws love out of balance among the quartet of Athenian youths and precludes a symmetrical two-couple arrangement. Read an in-depth analysis of Demetrius.
Egeus’s daughter, a young woman of Athens. Hermia is in love with Lysander and is a childhood friend of Helena. As a result of the fairies’ mischief with Oberon’s love potion, both Lysander and Demetrius suddenly fall in love with Helena. Self-conscious about her short stature, Hermia suspects that Helena has wooed the men with her height. By morni...
A young woman of Athens, in love with Demetrius. Demetrius and Helena were once betrothed, but when Demetrius met Helena’s friend Hermia, he fell in love with her and abandoned Helena. Lacking confidence in her looks, Helena thinks that Demetrius and Lysander are mocking her when the fairies’ mischief causes them to fall in love with her. Read an i...
The heroic duke of Athens, engaged to Hippolyta. Theseus represents power and order throughout the play. He appears only at the beginning and end of the story, removed from the dreamlike events of the forest. Read an in-depth analysis of Theseus.
The overconfident weaver chosen to play Pyramus in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. Bottom is full of advice and self-confidence but frequently makes silly mistakes and misuses language. His simultaneous nonchalance about the beautiful Titania’s sudden love for him and unawareness of the fact that Puck has transformed his he...
Hermia’s father, who brings a complaint against his daughter to Theseus: Egeus has given Demetrius permission to marry Hermia, but Hermia, in love with Lysander, refuses to marry Demetrius. Egeus’s severe insistence that Hermia either respect his wishes or be held accountable to Athenian law places him squarely outside the whimsical dream realm of ...
Aug 1, 2024 · A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck and Hermia, as portrayed by Mickey Rooney (left) and Olivia de Havilland, in the film A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1935. (more) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, comedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written about 1595–96 and published in 1600 in a quarto edition from the author’s manuscript, in which there ...
- David Bevington
Aug 1, 2024 · Oberon and Puck undo their magic, releasing Titania and returning Bottom to human form. They make Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander believe they’ve merely been dreaming. Lysander and Hermia are to be married, as are Demetrius and Helena. Theseus and Hippolyta’s royal wedding party is treated to the mechanicals’ farcical production, a ...
With Puck’s magic potion and a bit of mischief, the lovers re-couple, while Bottom gains a donkey’s head—and Titania’s love! With the Shakescleare modern English translation of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, you can understand with ease how Shakespeare’s twisted comic plot untangles, and better grasp the play’s famous lines, including ...
Jun 18, 2020 · A Midsummer Night’s Dream: analysis. As Harold Bloom pointed out in Shakespeare: The Invention Of The Human, four worlds essentially come together and interact with each other in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: the world of classical myth (represented by Theseus and Hippolyta), the world of ‘modern’ lovers (Helena, Hermia, Demetrius, and Lysander), the fairy world (Oberon, Titania, and Puck ...
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A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy play written by William Shakespeare in about 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict among four Athenian lovers.
