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Nick Bottom


Nick Bottom is a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream who provides comic relief throughout the play. A weaver by trade, he is famously known for getting his head transformed into that of a donkey by the elusive Puck. Bottom and Puck are the only two characters who converse with and progress the three central stories in the whole play. Puck is first introduced in the fairies' story and creates the drama of the lovers' story by messing up who loves whom, and places the donkey head on Bottom's in his story. Similarly, Bottom is performing in a play in his story intending it to be presented in the lovers' story, as well as interacting with Titania in the fairies' story.

While they are in the woods rehearsing, the fairy Puck, a mischievous sprite and minion of Oberon, king of the fairies, happens upon their rehearsal. He decides to have some fun with them, carrying out part of Oberon's orders in the process, and when Bottom (as Pyramus) exits the stage, he transforms his head into a donkey's. When Bottom returns, unaware of his own transformation, his fellow actors run away from him with Quince screaming, "We are haunted!" Bottom believes they are playing a prank on him, proclaiming, "This is to make an ass of me, to fright me if they could." So he stays in the forest by himself and sings loudly to show them he is not afraid. The Fairy Queen Titania is awakened by Bottom's song. She has been enchanted by a love potion, which will cause her to fall in love with the first living thing that she sees when she wakes (no matter who, or what it is), made from the juice of a rare flower, once hit by Cupid's arrow, that her husband, Oberon, King of the Fairies, spread on her eyes in an act of jealous rage. During his enchantment over her, he utters "Wake when some vile thing is near." The first thing she sees when she wakes is the transformed Bottom, and she immediately falls in love with him. She even commands her fairy minions to serve and wait upon him. Later, Oberon finally releases Titania from her enchantment. After being confronted with the reality that her romantic interlude with the transformed Bottom was not just a dream, she is disgusted with the very image of him and also seems very suspicious of how "these things came to pass." After Oberon instructs Puck to return Bottom's head to his human state, which Puck reluctantly does, the fairies leave him sleeping in the woods, nearby the four Athenian lovers, Demetrius, Helena, Hermia, and Lysander.


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