A Midsummer Night’s Dream
When was A Midsummer Night’s Dream written and published?
What is the main plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
Who are the main characters involved in the lovers’ conflict?
What role does magic play in the story?
What are some notable adaptations of the play?
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, comedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written about 1595–96 and published in 1600 in a quarto edition from the author’s manuscript, in which there are some minor inconsistencies. The version published in the First Folio of 1623 was taken from a second quarto edition, with some reference to a promptbook. One of the “great” or “middle” comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its multilayered examination of love and its vagaries, has long been one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays.
Scholars suggest that Shakespeare composed A Midsummer Night’s Dream about 1595–96, based on the play’s style and historical references. It is mentioned in Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia (1598), a literary anthology praising contemporary writers, confirming it was performed by that year.
Plot
The lovers’ conflict in Athens (Act I)
Theseus, duke of Athens, has conquered Hippolyta, the Amazon queen, and is about to wed her. Meanwhile, two lovers, Hermia and Lysander, seek refuge in the forest near Athens when Hermia’s father demands that she marry Demetrius. Hoping to win Demetrius’s favor, Helena tells him their whereabouts and follows him to the forest, where he goes in search of Hermia.
Fairy world and the magic flower (Acts II–III)
The forest is also full of fairies who have come for the duke’s wedding. Oberon, the king of the fairies, quarrels with his queen, Titania, and bids his mischievous servant Puck to drop magic juice into her eyes as she sleeps:
Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once.
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
His intent is to punish her for her disobedience by causing her to fall hopelessly in love with whatever person or creature she happens to see when she awakes. Noting that the human lovers in the forest are also at odds, he orders Puck to drop the love juice into Demetrius’s eyes so that Demetrius’s one-time affection for Helena will be restored.
A sweet Athenian lady is in love
With a disdainful youth. Anoint his eyes,
But do it when the next thing he espies
May be the lady.
Since the two young Athenian men look much alike, Puck mistakenly administers the love juice to Lysander, who then happens to see Helena when he awakes. He falls hopelessly in love with her. Now both young men are in love with Helena and neither with the poor deserted Hermia. This situation does not make Helena any happier, though. She comes to the conclusion that they are all making fun of her. Hermia and Helena fall out over this contretemps, while the young men have become fierce and even would-be murderous rivals of one another for Helena. All is at sixes and sevens.
The mechanicals and the play within the play (Acts I, III–V)
Scholars point out that Shakespeare was familiar with an incident from August 1594 at the baptismal celebrations for Prince Henry, son of James VI of Scotland. During these festivities, a planned pageant involving a lion was altered out of concern that the animal might frighten or harm attendees. Instead, a human performer dressed as a blackamoor (a common figure from a European decorative art style depicting stylized, ornate figures of dark-skinned, usually male individuals) was substituted to safely pull the ceremonial carriage. Shakespeare humorously mirrors this cautious approach in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act III, scene 1), where the artisans staging the playlet “Pyramus and Thisbe” anxiously debate how to portray their lion without alarming the ladies in their audience.
In the same woods a group of artisans are rehearsing an entertainment for the duke’s wedding. One of them, Nick Bottom, is especially eager to show off his imagined theatrical skill, offering to play several roles and proposing elaborate ways to explain the action to the audience. Ever playful, Puck gives him an ass’s head; when Titania awakens, she falls in love with Bottom and exclaims:
What angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed?
After much general confusion and comic misunderstanding, Oberon’s magic restores Titania and the four lovers to their original states:
And the country proverb known,
That every man should take his own,
In your waking shall be shown.
Jack shall have Jill;
Naught shall go ill;
The duke invites the two couples to join him and Hippolyta in a triple wedding. The wedding celebration features Bottom’s troupe in a comically inept performance of their play, The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe, which turns out to be a parody of the perilous encounters the various lovers have experienced in the forest and somehow managed to survive. Reflecting on the strange adventures recounted by the lovers, Theseus observes:
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
For a discussion of this play within the context of Shakespeare’s entire corpus, see William Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s plays and poems.
Notable adaptations
Max Reinhardt’s 1934 Hollywood Bowl production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was one of the Bowl’s first fully staged Shakespeare plays and one of its most ambitious theatrical events. It featured a cast of more than 400, including dancers and musicians, and transformed the amphitheater’s setting with a wooded glen built into the hillside behind the shell (the Bowl’s curved stage enclosure, designed to project sound toward the audience). The production drew more than 100,000 people over the course of eight performances. It directly led to a 1935 film adaptation by the film studio Warner Brothers, which Reinhardt codirected.
Peter Hall’s 1968 film, produced with the Royal Shakespeare Company (a leading British theater company specializing in Shakespearean productions), featured Judi Dench as Titania and Ian Holm as Puck. Filmed in a woodland setting, the production is noted for its fidelity to Shakespeare’s text and its clear, stage-informed performances.
Benjamin Britten’s 1960 opera, first staged at the Aldeburgh Festival, features a libretto by Britten and Peter Pears adapted from Shakespeare’s text. While much of the original language is retained, it is selectively condensed and rearranged for musical structure. The score distinguishes between the play’s three groups—fairies, lovers, and rustics, or “the mechanicals”—through contrasting musical styles, and Oberon is written for a countertenor voice.
Michael Hoffman’s 1999 film relocated the play to a fictional Tuscan setting in the 19th century. With a cast including Michelle Pfeiffer (Titania), Rupert Everett (Oberon), Stanley Tucci (Puck), Kevin Kline (Bottom), and Christian Bale (Demetrius), the adaptation is noted for its rich visuals and romantic tone.