When William Shakespeare wrote the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream is debated among scholars, but many agree that it was first printed in 1598. Who is Nick Bottom? Nick Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream is an important character in the play.
The setting of the play is Athens. The subplots of the play center around the marriage between Duke Theseus and the Amazon queen, Hippolyta. Four days prior to the wedding, a nobleman named Egeus confronts Theseus. His daughter, Hermia, is arranged to be married to Demetrius. However, Hermia is in love with another, Lysander. She does not want to marry Demetrius, and he does want to marry her. Theseus gives Hermia a choice between marrying Demetrius, becoming a nun, or death.
Hermia decides she does not like any of those options, so she and Lysander resolve to elope to his aunt's house in the forest. Hermia tells her best friend Helena of their plan. Helena, who is in love with Demetrius, tells him about Hermia and Lysander's elopement. Demetrius follows them into the forest with Helena following behind him.
Some laborers decide to perform a play that they hope Theseus and Hippolyta will allow them to present at the wedding. Nick Bottom is introduced, who is ambitious and overconfident from the beginning. He is given the lead role but is overly enthusiastic and believes he can and should play multiple roles. While his fellow players will not allow him to play multiple roles, they do allow him to continue on with his disillusionment uninterrupted.
Meanwhile, in a parallel plotline the king of the fairies, Oberon, and his queen, Titania, have arrived for the wedding and are in the forest just outside of Athens. They are at odds with each other because Titania refuses to give Oberon her changeling child. Oberon decides that Titania needs to be punished for her insubordination and enlists one of his sprites, Puck, to help him make a potion from a magical flower. Once the potion is applied to the eyelids of a person who is sleeping, once that person awakens they will fall in love with the first living thing they see. He hopes to humiliate Titania and get the changeling child for himself.
Oberon also instructs Puck to use the magic potion on Demetrius. Oberon sees how cruel Demetrius is to Helena who continually rejects her advances. However, Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius and uses the potion on him instead. Helena stumbles on the sleeping Lysander, and not knowing if he is dead or alive, wakes him up. Helena is the first person he sees, so he falls instantly in love with her and chases her farther into the forest. A short time later, Hermia awakens and notices that Lysander is missing and goes off looking for him.
Nick Bottom and his actor friends go into the forest to practice and rehearse because their play is accepted as entertainment for Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. While practicing, Puck sees Bottom and changes his head into that of an ass. The other actors are frightened by what they see and run away. Bottom is confused by their actions and decides to wait around for them to return. He sings a song to himself while he is waiting.
While Puck is off doing Oberon's bidding and turning Nick Bottom's head into that of a donkey's, Oberon uses the same potion on Titania. She is awakened by Bottom's singing, and since he is the first thing that she sees, she falls madly in love with him. She devotes all her attention to him, a distraction that gives Oberon the chance to take the changeling boy from Titania. Soon afterward, he releases Titania from the potion's effects and has Puck change Bottom's head back to that of a human.
Oberon also notices the mistake that Puck made because Demetrius is still looking for Hermia. The mistake angers Oberon, who has Puck help him fix the error. Then, all the fairies disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta happen upon the group of four people while out hunting. When the group wakes up, the two men end up betrothed to the correct women, and everything that happened seems like a dream to them.
After everyone leaves, Nick Bottom wakes up in the woods. He gives a soliloquy and surmises that he was dreaming as well.
Nick Bottom and his acting group perform for all three now married couples at the wedding. The acting is so poor that the audience thinks it is a farce and laughs. Once everyone goes to bed, the fairies return and bless the whole house with good fortune. Then the fairies leave as well, except for Puck, who stays and delivers a final monologue suggesting everything was just a dream to the audience.
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