Images of Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck, depict the folklore about playful spirits common to England and neighboring countries such as Wales. Earlier, more sexual images such as the title page of Robin Good-Fellow, show Puck as a kind of satyr, with cloven hooves and an erect penis. The broom he holds may be associated with a Celtic marriage ceremony called handfasting where the hands of a man and woman were tied together to symbolize the bond between a husband and wife. Puck holding the broom may indicate his role in being a matchmaker to the key characters found in Shakespeare’s . Arthur Rackham’s early 20th century illustration show a childlike Puck, but he also holds a broom of sorts.

Puck’s Name

The meaning for the name Puck derives from various languages and lore. For example, in Icelandic his name is puki which means wee devil or imp. According to Thomas Keightly, who explored this topic in the late 19th century in a book called , some Welsh people have claimed that Shakespeare’s Puck originated from their folklore of the Pwka (pooka). He notes that pookas are described as being wicked-minded, black looking, bad things that would come in the form of wild coltsThey did great hurt to benighted travelers. William Bell, another 19th century folklore researcher, also published a three-volume series that explores Puck’s origins, , in 1852.

Puck in Early Modern Drama

19th century Shakespeare enthusiast (and forger) John Payne Collier reprinted a pamphlet about Robin Goodfellow in 1841. He notes that Shakespeare’s , in which Robin Good-fellow figures under the name of Puck (although his other designations are all given) was first printed in 1600, and probably it was not acted much before that year: at what- ever date it was brought out, it is evident that Shakespeare was acquainted with the tract entitled ‘Robin Good-fellow his mad Prankes and merry Jests. Collier goes on to note that other writers of the time, such as the comic actor Richard Tarleton, who worked with Shakespeare early in his career, published a work including Robin Goodfellow in 1588 and the writer Henry Chettle was paid by theater impresario Philip Henslowe in 1602 for a play with the title . The first lines of the pamphlet contain this verse about Puck: I’de wish you for to reade this booke, If you his Pranks would know. But first I will declare his birth, And what his Mother was, And then how Robin merrily Did bring his knacks to passe. In time of old, when Fayries us’d To wander in the night, And through key-holes swiftly glide, Now marke my story right, Among these pretty fairy Elves Was Oberon, their King, Who us’d to keepe them company Still at their revelling.

As Collier and these other scholars explore, Puck was a folk figure whose image and antics circulated widely in the popular imagination of the early modern period. William Shakespere’s version of the character absorbs and adapts many folk traditions as he entertains audiences in .

Key Print Sources Blount, Dale M. . vol. 9, 1984, pp. 1–13. Button, Anne. . . Oxford University Press, 2001. p. 393. Schleiner, Winifried. . vol. 36, no. 1, Apr. 1985, pp. 65–68.

Key Online Sources Best, Michael. . . . University of Victoria, 11 Jan. 2004. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/ideas/the%20supernatural/folklore.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. . . 21 Apr. 2016. https://www.britannica.com/topic/puck-fairy. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024. Collier, John Payne. . . https://archive.org/stream/madpranksmerryje00colluoft/madpranksmerryje00colluoft_djvu.txt. Accessed 2 Jul. 2024. Keightley, Thomas. . London, G. Bell, 1892. . 2012. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41006/41006-h/41006-h.htm.