A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare Essay -- othello, lago puck

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 â€Å"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 from A Midsummer Night’s Dream; he is clever, reckless, and very mischievous, these characteristics tend to get him into trouble. 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, â€Å" 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 al e./The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,/Sometime for three-f... ...e Moor is arrested, transported from Cyprus to Venice, and tortured, but refuses to admit his guilt. He is condemned to exile; Desdemona's relatives eventually execute him. The ensign escapes any prosecution in Desdemona's death, but engages in other crimes and dies after being tortured.† (Bevington, David and Kate) Although Iago, King Claudius, and Puck are the work of pure imagination, Shakespeare teaches us something very important about whom we are as a being. Human nature is back stabbing, conniving, greedy, and jealous; all those things that you can say are bad when looking at another, but can justify in yourself. One tends to validate their wrong doing as necessary or not as bad as something that another has done. Shakespeare is playing a game with his audience through his villains. By showing their faults, he, in turn, makes us see the faults in ourselves.