‘If We Shadows Have Offended’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) is the opening line of Puck’s closing speech from ‘The Dream’. In summary, the speech sees Puck (also known as Robin Goodfellow) seeking forgiveness from the audience if the fairies (including Puck himself) have ‘offended’ any of the audience with their antics. In other words: ‘If these fairies making mischief on the stage have offended any of you, then I suggest looking at it this way: what you have just watched is nothing but a dream, which you have witnessed while you slept here.’
Note that Puck’s speech is in tetrameter (four feet per line, rather than five as in the usual pentameter lines Shakespeare more often uses) and written using trochaic metre rather than the more usual iambic (i.e. ‘TUM-ti’ rather than ‘ti-TUM’). Trochaic metre is more commonly associated with song, and tetrameter (strictly, it’s trochaic tetrameter catalectic, since the last syllable of each line is missed off: ‘catalectic’ means ‘leaving off’) gives the lines a sing-song quality. The simplicity of the rhyming couplets reinforces this. It’s almost as if Puck is lulling us to sleep – or out of it, perhaps more accurately, since he’s claiming that we have been asleep and are now waking up at the end of the performance.
‘This light and trivial story we have presented before you had no more power than a dream.’ The play is full of magic and the supernatural, as the very existence of Puck himself – a sprite or fairy – attests, as does the presence of a number of other characters, including Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies. There’s potentially something mischievous (or, if you prefer, puckish) about Puck’s claim that the play is ‘no more yielding than a dream’: dreams can be extraordinarily powerful and vivid when we experience them, and although they are not real, they can leave their mark on our minds.
Puck now tells the audience that he means what he says, as he is honest. If the audience are more generous towards Puck and his fellows than they deserve, and agree not to kiss at the actors on the stage (like a snake), then he promises they will make up for the poor play soon. Puck concludes his speech by saying, essentially: ‘If we don’t make it up to you, you can call me a liar. So, good night everyone. Show your appreciation by clapping your hands, and I, Robin Goodfellow, will make it up to you in return for your applause.’
