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 |
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Page viii
... comedy of Plautus and Terence (and in Shakespeare's Romeo and juliet). Indeed, the lovers' story is distantly derived from Roman comedy, which conventionally celebrated the triumph of young love over the machinations of age and wealth ...
... comedy of Plautus and Terence (and in Shakespeare's Romeo and juliet). Indeed, the lovers' story is distantly derived from Roman comedy, which conventionally celebrated the triumph of young love over the machinations of age and wealth ...
Page ix
... comedy in setting up the basic conflicts of his drama, he also introduces important modifications from the beginning. For example, he discards one conventional confrontation of classical and neoclassical comedy, in which the heroine ...
... comedy in setting up the basic conflicts of his drama, he also introduces important modifications from the beginning. For example, he discards one conventional confrontation of classical and neoclassical comedy, in which the heroine ...
Page xii
... comedy keeps such veiled threats safely at a distance in A Midsummer Nighfs Dream. Oberon and Titania, in their view of the relationship between gods and humans, reflect yet another aspect of the fairies' spiritual ancestry. The king ...
... comedy keeps such veiled threats safely at a distance in A Midsummer Nighfs Dream. Oberon and Titania, in their view of the relationship between gods and humans, reflect yet another aspect of the fairies' spiritual ancestry. The king ...
Page xix
... on drugs. In 1985, on a bloodred set at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Liviu Ciulei produced the play as a dark comedy of sexual strife and patriarchal abuse. The hallmark of modern. A MIDSUMMER NIGI-I'l"S DREAM ON STAGE xxi.
... on drugs. In 1985, on a bloodred set at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Liviu Ciulei produced the play as a dark comedy of sexual strife and patriarchal abuse. The hallmark of modern. A MIDSUMMER NIGI-I'l"S DREAM ON STAGE xxi.
Page xxix
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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