A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

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’s 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 that of a donkey by a hobgoblin or “puck,” Robin Goodfellow. Finally, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of “Pyramus and Thisbe.”This edition includes:Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the playFull explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the playScene-by-scene plot summariesA key to the play’s famous lines and phrasesAn introduction to reading Shakespeare’s languageAn essay by a leading…