A Midsummer Night's Dream

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare stages the workings of love. Theseus and Hippolyta, about to marry, are figures from mythology. In the woods outside Theseus' Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves out into couples—but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another.

Also in the woods, the king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy; Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, whose head is temporarily transformed into a donkey by a hobgoblin or "puck," Robin Goodfellow. Finally, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of "Pyramus and Thisbe."

Shakespeare probably wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s. The play was published as a quarto in 1600. The main plot has no obvious sources, but sources for Pyramus and Thisbe include Ovid's Metamorphoses. Shakespeare may also have drawn on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Sir Thomas North's English translation of Plutarch's Lives.

Productions at the Folger

• A Midsummer Night's Dream: In Concert (2014)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (Folger Theatre, 2006)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, 2001)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, 1997)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, 1993)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (The Traveling Shakespeare Company, 1993)

Early editions

First Folio

LUNA: First Folio: N1r - O3v

Hamnet: STC 22273 Fo. 1 no. 68

Second Folio

LUNA: Second Folio: N1r - O3v

Hamnet: STC 22274 Fo. 2 no. 07

First Quarto

LUNA: First Quarto

Hamnet: STC 22302

Second Quarto

LUNA: Second Quarto

Hamnet: STC 22303 Copy 1

Modern editions

A Midsummer Night's Dream can be read online with Folger Digital Texts and purchased from Simon and Schuster. The play can also be purchased in Three Comedies, a collection that also includes The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night.

The Folger Luminary Shakespeare App can be purchased on iTunes.

Hamnet link to Folger Edition: PR2753 .M6 2004 copy 2 v.25

Notes

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