Puck In A Midsummer Night's Dream

1928 Words8 Pages

Shakespeare´s plays seem to appeal to all parts of society through all centuries. Ben Jonson´s acknowledges this in his poem “To the memory of my beloved The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare: And what he hath left us”. In it, he claims Shakespeare is the “Soul of the age!” (Jonson 2001, 83) while not being “[…] of an age but for all time!” (Jonson 2001, 84). Jonson with these few verses claims that Shakespeare chooses themes and conflicts that are universally applicable to human life while he has created characters whom people in Shakespeare´s time were able to identify with just as much as people today. In life Shakespeare´s plays, entertained well-educated, upper classes and lower classes simultaneously (cf. Gurr, 2004, p. 85ff). Therefore, …show more content…

This essay, will therefore compare Barney Stinson in the first season of How I met your Mother and Puck in Shakespeare´s A Midsummer Night´s Dream to prove that updated versions of Shakespeare´s characters are present in modern entertainment. The most obvious difference between characters is very often their visual appearance. Therefore, as a first step, visual differences and similarities between Puck and Barney Stinson shall be discussed. The origin of Puck in A Midsummer Night´s Dream is the folkloric figure, Robin Goodfellow, who appears in traditional fairy tales (cf. Karim-Cooper 2008, p. 1). He is usually described as a “ […] child-sized […]” (Karim-Cooper 2008, p. 1) figure, carrying “[…] a broom or threshing flail […]” (Karim-Cooper 2008, p. 1)“[…] who would sweep doorways in exchange for a bowl of cream” (Karim-Cooper 2008, p. 1). “Popular ballads written well into the 17th century depicted him wearing animal skins and headgear (antlers, animal ears etc.) that invoked festive rituals.” (Karim-Cooper 2008, p. 1). Since Shakespeare does not include information on Puck´s visual appearance in his writing, I