In 1935 the late Mickey Rooney played Puck in Max Reinhardt's movie of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Critical opinion was mixed – as it was for the audacious casting of James Cagney as Bottom. But, in his indomitable way, Rooney captured the manic mischief of a character who has one of the Bard's great lines – "Lord, what fools these mortals be" – and who should be taken more seriously than he sometimes is. Shakespeare's is only the most famous incarnation of one of English folklore's great creations, "the oldest Old Thing in England" as Kipling's Puck describes himself. As Puck, the Hobgoblin or Robin Goodfellow, the laughing sprite is a great subversive, as Karl Marx recognised when he wrote about "our brave friend, Robin Goodfellow, the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy pioneer – the Revolution". It's not often you get Mickey Rooney and Karl Marx in the same sentence, but Puck makes all things possible.