Puck

A Midsummer’s Night Dream

Puck

I wasn’t born.  I just was.  One moment, nothing, the next, Robin Goodfellow.  Me.  An ageless spirit.  Oberon and Titania too.  Our existence is not biography but episodes, stories, some connected, most not.  One thing is not much more important than the next.  Oberon is King and lord over the realm but we other spirits are free spirits.  I am with Oberon because it amuses me to amuse him.

As for this man, Will Shakespeare, humans may think he is a creative genius and for them I suppose he is but we know that the spirit of genius is really ours.  I jest to Shakespeare and make him smile when I play a prank in his head, sometimes when he is lying with a lovely female creature—and this takes his mind off the fair sex and makes him limp.  And then I laugh with mirth as he tries to swat me away.  Alas, Will loves us for the wit we give him and the credit the humans give him for it; so, we spirits are rarely in exile from him.  And, in truth, he loves his Puck best of all.  When not playing with the beautiful faeries or with Oberon or causing mischief with the general  population of humans, I often sit on Will’s left shoulder—and spill ink on his pages.

Robin Goodfellow