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 vii
... productions, the actress playing Hippolyta has found it easy to cast doubt on the presumed tranquillity of this forthcoming marriage by a display of feminist impatience at Theseus's urbanely patriarchal ways. The reconciliation of ...
... productions, the actress playing Hippolyta has found it easy to cast doubt on the presumed tranquillity of this forthcoming marriage by a display of feminist impatience at Theseus's urbanely patriarchal ways. The reconciliation of ...
Page xvi
... production at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1816, provided music by Thomas Arne and others for its sixteen songs, eliminated the scene with I-Ielena in Act 1, transposed “Pyramus and Thisbe" to the forest as Betterton had done ...
... production at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1816, provided music by Thomas Arne and others for its sixteen songs, eliminated the scene with I-Ielena in Act 1, transposed “Pyramus and Thisbe" to the forest as Betterton had done ...
Page xvii
... production at the N eues Palais in Potsdam in 1843 (the overture having been written in 1826 and used first in England by Alfred Bunn in a production at Drury Lane in 1833). lt soon became standard fare, since it expressed so well, in ...
... production at the N eues Palais in Potsdam in 1843 (the overture having been written in 1826 and used first in England by Alfred Bunn in a production at Drury Lane in 1833). lt soon became standard fare, since it expressed so well, in ...
Page xviii
... production of 1883 flickered like fireflies through the shadowy mists. Frank Benson at the Globe Theatre in London in 1889 similarly had scampering fairies and glittering lights as well as a fight between a spider and a wasp. In 1900 ...
... production of 1883 flickered like fireflies through the shadowy mists. Frank Benson at the Globe Theatre in London in 1889 similarly had scampering fairies and glittering lights as well as a fight between a spider and a wasp. In 1900 ...
Page xix
... production. Peter Hall, in 1959, directed his young lovers to be foolish and clumsy, devoted to horseplay. Benjamin Britten's striking opera, performed at the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk in I960, invoked a forest full of eerie sounds ...
... production. Peter Hall, in 1959, directed his young lovers to be foolish and clumsy, devoted to horseplay. Benjamin Britten's striking opera, performed at the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk in I960, invoked a forest full of eerie sounds ...
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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