Puck (A Midsummer Night's Dream) The audience is introduced to Puck in Act 2 Scene 1 when one of Titania's fairies encounters Puck: <poem> FAIRY Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he That frights the maidens of the villagery; Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern And bootless make the breathless housewife churn; And sometime make the drink to bear no barm; Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck: Are
A Midsummer Night's Dream he extracted Bottom and his companions and acted the rest, in an adaptation called "The Fairies." Frederic Reynolds produced an operatic version in 1816. In 1840, Madame Vestris at Covent Garden returned the play to the stage with a relatively full text, adding musical sequences and balletic dances. Vestris took the role of Oberon, and for the next seventy years, Oberon and Puck would always be played by women. After the success of Madame Vestris' production, 19th-century theatre continued to stage the "Dream" as a spectacle, often with a cast numbering nearly one hundred. Detailed sets were created for the