Bottom’s Role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Bottom’s Role in the Fairy Queens Play

Bottom plays a non-singing role in the Fairy Queens play. He assumes the role of a drunken poet in the woods. He features in the third act of the play where his head has been turned into that of a donkey.

Mocking and Teasing of Bottom

For this reason, people start to mock and torment him for pleasure. Bottom in return, trying to gain their favor decides to read the sonnets. This, however, does not work and they continue to tease him more until he falls asleep. Puck is the right-hand man of Oberon, the king of fairies. Puck together with the leader of Titania’s followers agrees that the King and Queen squabbles have been causing a lot of disturbances. The reason for their fights is disagreements on their adopted child.

Titania and Oberon’s Squabbles

Consequently, Titania and the King part and Titania move out with a broken heart. Oberon, the King in return, decides to look for a way to win her back. He, therefore, sends Puck to bring a flower that will make her fall to sleep and will make her fall in love with the first person she sees when she wakes up. They hide in the forest and charm Titania with the love potion. Titania falls asleep and wakes up at the same time with Bottom. Titania seduces Bottom, and they fall in love with each other much to the displeasure of Oberon. His plan with Puck fails terribly.

Bottom’s Comic Relief

Bottom is a weaver by trade. However, his role provides comic relief throughout the play. While on the woods, Bottom exits the stage to transform his head into a donkey’s. When he returns, his fellow actors run from him thinking they are haunted. He assumes they are playing a prank on him and so he isolates himself to the forest where he sings out aloud to show his fellow actors that he is not afraid of anything. The song awakens Titania who had fallen asleep following the charms from the love portion Oberon had given her. The first person Titania sees when she wakes up is Bottom with his music, and she immediately falls in love with him. Bottom thinks he fell asleep during rehearsals and before long realizes he had a rare vision.

Bottom’s Personality and Choices

Bottom’s physical acts enabled him to be a good poet who in turn helped him to win Titania. Bottom comes out as a weak person who could be tormented by other people, and there was barely anything he could do to help himself. The bottom is hated by the King hence his fate is shaky especially when Titania falls in love with him. The choices Bottom makes are appropriate and makes the plot of the story to be coherent. Bottoms role is unreplaceable and cannot be doubled up by another actor. His actions are not predictable since he comes out as a victim of circumstances. The events unfolding before him are beyond his understanding, and since he acts out of a clean and clear conscience, he had no intentions of infuriating the king. Bottoms role blends well with those of other actors in the play. He, however, takes center stage because of his engaging personality, contributed more by his humor and costume. I would have played that role correctly how Bottom played it if I were in his situation. In the end, the king returns Bottoms head to a human head from a donkeys head.