Dream, the fairy king Oberon wants an Indian boy to be his henchman, but the fairy queen Titania will not give him the boy. They argue about it and Titania simply leaves. "Well; go thy way. Thou shalt not from this grove till I torment thee for this injury," (II.ii.146-147). Oberon has trickery on his mind. He enlists the help of Puck to find a magical love potion that resides in a flower. He will use the potion to make Titania fall in love with the first thing she see when she awakens, then before he takes the spell off, he will talk her out of her Indian boy. The beauty of this plotline is that Shakespeare overlaps the trickery of Puck with the trickery of Oberon. Puck turns the head of Bottom into a horses head, just for fun. When Titania wakes up, the first thing she sees is Bottom with the horses head, and falls in love with him. Oberon likes the way this works out, for the original intent was to get the boy, which he does, and to get revenge, which he also does. For the rest of the play, Puck runs amuck with trickery and deceit for his own amusement, and succeeds.In The Merchant of Venice, Portia is a very intelligent lady left at the mercy of her father's dying wishes concerning marriage. She knows that all of her suitors are not good enough for her. She does love Bassanio and wishes to be his wife, which does happen. Dawson Page 3Yet she can not bring herself to trust him, so she sets upon her path of deceit to try and get a ring away from Bassanio that he had promised he would not take off for anything, and at the same time let Bassanio know that even though she doesn't mind that he has friends, she has to be number one in his life. She dresses up like a man and comes to the aid of Bassanio's friend, Antonio. She saves Antonio from the Jew scoundrel and devil Shylock, then wants the ring as payment. Bassanio at first says no, but then relents (with a little push from his friend Antonio) and gives it to her, all the while not k...
