Shakespeare in his Midsummer Night's Dream has given Puck an individual character, and it no longer seems natural to talk, as Robert Burton does in The Anatomie of Melancholy, of a puck instead of 'Puck', nor, like Langland, equate Puck with the Devil and call Hell 'Pouk's Pinfold'.

Shakespeare's Puck is the epitome of the hobgoblin, with the by-name of Robin Goodfellow. In folk tradition emphasis is perhaps most laid on Puck as a misleader, and 'Pouk-ledden' is a commoner phrase than 'Hobberdy's Lantern'. Shakespeare's Puck plays all the pranks described in the Life of Robin Goodfellow. His selfdescriptive speech to Titania's fairy could not be bettered as the description of a hobgoblin:

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:

And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,

In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And when she drinks, against her lips I bob

And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.

The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,

Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;

Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,

And "tailor" cries, and falls into a cough;

And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,

And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.

Human follies are his perpetual entertainment, but, like all hobgoblins, he has his softer moments, his indignation is always raised against scornful
lovers and he feels real compassion for Hermia, scorned and deserted by the man with whom she had fled. Puck in Drayton's account of
Diminutive Fairies in Nimphidia shows many of the same characteristics.

For the rest, we shall find that Puck's traits correspond with those to be found in the Celtic parts of these islands, in the pwca, phouka and pixies. Like all hobgoblins, he is a shape-shifter, but he also performs brownie labours for humans, and like a brownie he is laid by a gift of clothing.

Shakespeare's Puck differs in one thing from ordinary pucks of tradition: he belongs to the fairy court and cannot be called a solitary fairy.

[Motifs: F234.0.2; F381.3; F399.4; F402.1.1; F482.5.4]