A comedy by William
Shakespeare first performed c. 1596. The story is gathered from a
number of sources and amplified by Shakespeare’s own invention.
Theseus, Duke of Athens, is
to wed the Amazon queen, Hippolyta. Egeus asks for his judgement on his
daughter Hermia, who has refused his order to marry Demetrius. Theseus upholds
Egeus and the law, which requires that Hermia should obey her father or choose
between death and a nunnery. Hermia decides to elope with the man she loves,
Lysander, and confides her plans to Helena. Helena, who loves Demetrius, in turn
tells him, and the four young people arrive at various points of a wood near
Athens.
In this fairy wood, Oberon,
king of the fairies, quarrels with his queen, Titania, over the care of a
changeling boy. He punishes her by dropping in her eyes the juice of a magic
flower, which will make her love the first person she sees on waking. Later,
having overheard Helena pleading with Demetrius to love her, he instructs his
servant Puck to drop the juice into Demetrius’s eyes. But Puck confuses
Lysander with Demetrius, with the result that Lysander falls in love with
Helena, as does Demetrius when Oberon tries to correct Puck’s error.
Also in the wood are
several Athenian artisans, rehearsing the play of Pyramus and Thisbe, which
they hope to present at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. The dominant one,
a weaver called Bottom, is mischievously given an ass’s head by Puck, and it is
the ass-headed Bottom whom Titania first sees (and falls in love with) when she
wakes. Oberon’s magic eventually unravels all and, at the wedding
celebrations of Theseus and Hippolyta, Hermia is matched with her Lysander and
Helena with her Demetrius, while Bottom and his fellow actors perform their
play to the assembled nobles.
The most persistently
popular of all Shakespeare's comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is
much more than a piece of gentle fairy-fun. Its concern with illusion and
reality has been amply demonstrated by many critics as has its profound
exploration of the whole art of theatre.
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