BTT: April Fools

Since it’s April Fool’s Day, I toyed with different ideas of questions for today.

• Who’s your favorite “fool” of a character, and why?
• What authors have fooled you? By a trick plot twist? By making you think their book was any good when it wasn’t?
• What covers have fooled you into reading books you hated … even though the covers were wonderful?
• What’s the best April Fool’s Day trick you’ve ever seen/heard about/done?

Immediately upon reading this I thought of Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare.  Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck, is King Oberon's jester.  Oh, and I should probably mention he's a sprite, or a fairy depending on how you look at it.  A couple of humans are running through Puck's Oberon's forest and in general making idiots of themselves, as humans are wont to do. 

You see, Hermia and Lysander are in love, but Hermia is engaged to Demetrius.  Hermia tells her friend, Helena, that she and Lysander plan to elope, but Helena is in love with Demetrius, who has jilted her, and so she tells Demetrius of the plan.  Demetrius goes into the woods to thwart Herm and Lys's plan; Helena like a lovesick puppy follows him. 

Next thing you know, Puck's squeezing some love juice onto men's eyes to make them fall in love with the right woman, but oops things get messed up when the men see and fall in love with the wrong women.  And of course we have Puck's fun with Titiana, the fairy queen, who after getting some love juice herself, falls in love with an uncouth actor who, thanks to Puck, has the head of an ass (as in donkey). Throughout all of this we have Puck's wonderfully clever and manipulative self running around and alternately increasing the madness and aiding the lovers.  The little tart even asks for forgiveness for his tricks at the end of the play.

I adore this play for its fun, light humor as well as its clever twists and turns, and no fool is more lovable than the one and only Puck.