[Priestley identifies Bottom as "the most substantial figure" in A Midsummer Night's Dream , describing him as earthy, quick-witted, and emphasizing his ability to laugh at the inhabitants of the fairy world. Bottom's humor, Priestley asserts, is not fully conscious; rather, he symbolizes a peculiarly English variety of a man of the people: ignorant, uncouth, but a brilliantly perceptive and profound humorist, ever ready to castigate the foibles of his fellow human beings, or, for that matter, supernatural creatures. Bottom, the critic remarks, is also a kind of comical everyman, a character symbolizing the irrepressible comical genius of humankind Finally, he is also a poet, "wearing the head of an ass (as we all must do at such moments), the beloved of an exquisite immortal. . . coming to an hour's enchantment while the moon climbs a hand's breadth up the sky-and then, all 'stolen hence,' the dream done...