Puck’s Final Lines

415 PUCK: If we shadows have offended,
416 Think but this, and all is mended,
417 That you have but slumber’d here
418 While these visions did appear.
419 And this weak and idle theme,
420 No more yielding but a dream,
421 Gentles, do not reprehend:
422 if you pardon, we will mend:
423 And, as I am an honest Puck,
424 If we have unearned luck
425 Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
426 We will make amends ere long;
427 Else the Puck a liar call;
428 So, good night unto you all.
429 Give me your hands, if we be friends,
430 And Robin shall restore amends

These lines are spoken by Puck at the close of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and present Puck’s suggestion that the audience has been asleep and dreaming the things witnessed in the play. It seems that Shakespeare wrote most of these lines in a deliberately ambiguous meter. The first two lines of the speech are fairly clearly written in strict trochaic tetrameter, and the last two lines are written in iambic tetrameter. However, most of the lines in between contain only seven syllables. This allows the lines to be interpreted as either iambic or trochaic tetrameter. If the first syllable of the line is stressed, it can effectively be scanned either as a trochee or as a headless iamb. It can be difficult to judge which scansion is best, because although most of the play is written in iambs, these lines clearly begin with two trochees. These details could lend support to either interpretations. The lines do consist of rhyming couplets and seem to accord with the style of speech that we see Puck using throughout the play. Perhaps this ambiguous metering serves to highlight Puck’s joking nature and allows him to have one final laugh at the expense of perceptive readers or viewers who attempt to interpret the scansion of his lines. In that case, Puck’s speech may be somewhat ironic based on the final two lines of the play where he asks the audience to be his friends and promises to make amends.