A Midsummer Night's Dream Villain Essay

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Shakespeare has a way of creating his characters so the audience can relate to them in a way. In his villains we see the negative characteristics that are in ourselves and others around us; things that often define the “natural man” such as greed or jealousy. With the entire terrible and treacherous thing that Shakespeare makes his villains do, he always manages to make them human in a way. As if he is meaning to display that no matter how twisted a person can be, they are still a person. In Shakespeare’s plays Othello, Hamlet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the villains share the characteristics of greed, clever and conniving ways, and recklessness; however, they all bring their own features to the table. The first of the villains is Puck …show more content…

Sometimes referred to as Robin or Robing Goodfellow, Puck is a trickster by nature and loves to play pranks on others, by this, he and Bottom actually progress the three central stories of the play. Puck is introduced first and creates drama in the lovers’ story by messing up who loves whom. Puck also turns Bottoms head into an ass and makes Titania fall in love with him so he might bring the Indian boy/slave for Oberon, the fairy king. Puck introduces himself in Act two, Scene one by saying, “ I am that merry wanderer of the night./I jest to Oberon and make him smile/When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,/Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:/And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,/In very likeness of a roasted crab,/And when she drinks, against her lips I bob/And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale./The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,/Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;/Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,/And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;/And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,/And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear/A merrier hour was never wasted there.” (Act II, Scene I) In all the mischief that Puck causes throughout the play, it is apparent that he doesn’t really mean to make bad things happen, he is only trying to have a little fun. The definition of a …show more content…

Iago seems to be like Puck and Claudius because of his clever and conniving ways, but he has a very fascinating characteristic: his complete lack of considerable motivation for his actions. In the first scene, he seems to be angry that Othello didn’t give him the lieutenant position. At the end of Act I, scene iii, Iago says he thinks Othello may have slept with his wife, Emilia: “It is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets / He has done my office” (Act I, Scene III, Lines 369–370) He explains his lust for Desdemona as a way to get even with Othello “wife for wife.” (Act II, Scene I, Line 286) Although Iago gives these reasons, none seem to adequately explain his pure hatred for Othello. This lack of motivation or, possibly, inability or unwillingness to express the true reason behind his actions makes them all the more terrifying. Shakespearean critic A. C. Bradley said that "evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the evil character of Iago." (Bradley, A. C.) “Léone Teyssandier writes that a possible motive for Iago's actions is envy towards Desdemona, Cassio and Othello; Iago sees them as more noble, generous and, in the case of Cassio, more handsome than he is.” (Williams, Shakespeare) The thing that gives Iago’s character so much depth is the fact that Othello is based off of a real tale from 1565, titled, “Un Capitano Moro.” At the end of the tale, “The

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