A Midsummer Night's DreamMagic, love spells, and an enchanted wood provide the materials for one of Shakespeare’s most delightful comedies. When four young lovers, fleeing the Athenian law and their own mismatched rivalries, take to the forest of Athens, their lives become entangled with a feud between the King and Queen of the Fairies. Some Athenian tradesmen, rehearsing a play for the forthcoming wedding of Duke Theseus and his bride, Hippolyta, unintentionally add to the hilarity. The result is a marvelous mix-up of desire and enchantment, merriment and farce, all touched by Shakespeare’s inimitable vision of the intriguing relationship between art and life, dreams and the waking world. Each Edition Includes: • Comprehensive explanatory notes • Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship • Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English • Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories • An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography |
From inside the book
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Page i
... actor and already known as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referred to him as “an upstart crow, beautiiied with ... actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays ...
... actor and already known as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referred to him as “an upstart crow, beautiiied with ... actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays ...
Page vi
... actors. Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for the play evokes the contrasting textures of the various groups: Theseus's hunting horns and ceremonial wedding marches, the lovers' soaring and throbbing melodies, the fairies' pianissimo ...
... actors. Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for the play evokes the contrasting textures of the various groups: Theseus's hunting horns and ceremonial wedding marches, the lovers' soaring and throbbing melodies, the fairies' pianissimo ...
Page xiv
... actors in our play. Their sarcasms render them less sympathetic in our eyes; we see that their kind of sophistication is as restrictive as it is illuminating. Bottom and his friends have conceived moonshine and lion as they did because ...
... actors in our play. Their sarcasms render them less sympathetic in our eyes; we see that their kind of sophistication is as restrictive as it is illuminating. Bottom and his friends have conceived moonshine and lion as they did because ...
Page xvi
... acting companies into one made possible the large cast and resources needed to mount so lavish a display. David Garrick's The Fairies, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1755, continued the musical tradition, its prologue ...
... acting companies into one made possible the large cast and resources needed to mount so lavish a display. David Garrick's The Fairies, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1755, continued the musical tradition, its prologue ...
Page xix
... actors. The production reveled in exposing its stage devices. The actors of Oberon and Titania not only doubled as Theseus and Hippolyta in order to explore a sense in which the fairy king and queen act out the aggressions of their ...
... actors. The production reveled in exposing its stage devices. The actors of Oberon and Titania not only doubled as Theseus and Hippolyta in order to explore a sense in which the fairy king and queen act out the aggressions of their ...
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Common terms and phrases
actors appear Athenian Athens bear blood BOTTOM Cobweb comedy comes court dance dark dead dear death Demetrius desire director doth draw Egeus Elizabethan Enter Exeunt Exit experience eyes face fair fairies fall fear flower FLUTE follow forest four friends gentle give gone grace hand hast hate hath head hear heart Helena Hermia Hippolyta hold human imagination Italy kill kind King lady leave light lion live look lord lovers Lysander means meet Midsummer Night's Dream moon never night noble Oberon once performance perhaps play present production Puck Pyramus and Thisbe Queen QUINCE rest Robin seems sense Shakespeare sleep Snout speak spirit stage stand stay story sweet tell theater thee Theseus Theseus's things thou thought Titania tongue tradition transformed translated true turn wall wonder wood young