Why Does Puck Sweep?: Fairylore, Merry Wives, and Social Struggle

Abstract

Why does puck sweep? At the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon and his troupe of fairies enter the Athenian palace to bless the aristocratic newlyweds as they set out to consummate their marriages. After waxing lyrical about screeching predators and demonic spirits, Puck describes his nocturnal mission as an oddly mundane hallowing: "I am sent with broom before, / To sweep the dust behind the door" (5.1.389-90). 1 When the fairies saunter casually into the ducal palace, the magic that had been located specifically within the forest is unleashed onto Theseus's domestic, if hyperrational, human sphere. In this moment, class tensions and marital disputes are also overshadowed by the play's culminating interest in aristocratic reproduction. But why in helping to achieve this closure does the mischievous Puck play the role of housewife? Why does the reproduction of the social world, a goal at the very heart of romantic comedy, rest on a task usually too banal for representation--disposing of dirt left in domestic corners? Why introduce a homey image in a play concerned with the grand affairs of state or the chaotic force of the imagination, one situated, albeit loosely, in the remote world of classical Athens?