Nick Bottom is a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream who provides comic relief throughout the play, and is famously known for getting his head transformed into that of an ass by the elusive Puck within the play. Bottom and Puck are the only two characters who interact and progress the three central stories in the whole play, Puck is the one who is first introduced in the fairies story and creates the drama of the lover's story by messing up who loves who, as well as placing the ass on Bottom's head in his story. Similarly Bottom is performing in a play in his story intending it to be presented in the lover's story as well as interacting with Titania in the fairies' story.
Read more about Nick Bottom: Overview, Analysis, Scholarly Debates, Notable Interpretations, Cultural Depictions
Famous quotes containing the words nick and/or bottom:
“In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than your humble servant, at the bottom of a challenge is; they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (16941773)