Recommendations
Books Like A Midsummer Night's Dream
Best books to read after A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
Readers who love A Midsummer Night's Dream are drawn to its combination of the most beloved of Shakespeare's comedies, the fairy world of Oberon and Titania, Bottom's transformation and his beautiful 'dream,' and Puck's final speech about theatrical illusion. They want works that deal with the English fairy tradition, the comedy of misplaced desire, and the tradition of writers who have built on Shakespeare's vision of enchantment.
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Buy on AmazonJonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
The contemporary novel most fully in the tradition of A Midsummer Night's Dream's English fairy world — Clarke's alternate history of English magic shares the play's vision of fairies as powerful, amoral, and entirely indifferent to human welfare; the best modern rendering of the English fairy tradition.
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Buy on AmazonThe Ocean at the End of the Lane
by Neil Gaiman
Gaiman's novella in the tradition of the Dream's English enchantment — a middle-aged man remembers a childhood encounter with a family of ancient beings who live at the end of a lane; shares the play's vision of a parallel supernatural world that intersects briefly and dangerously with ordinary life.
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Buy on AmazonStardust
by Neil Gaiman
Gaiman's fairy romance inheriting the Shakespearean vision — a young man who crosses the wall into Faerie draws on the same English tradition of the fairy world as beautiful, dangerous, and entirely other that A Midsummer Night's Dream inhabits.
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Buy on AmazonThe Ladies of Grace Adieu
by Susanna Clarke
Clarke's short story collection in the tradition of the Dream's fairy England — these stories of English magic, featuring some of the characters from Jonathan Strange, are the closest contemporary parallel to the world of Oberon and Titania.
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Buy on AmazonLysistrata
by Aristophanes
The classical comedy that Shakespeare is partly in dialogue with — Aristophanes' plot of sexual negotiation and social reversal is the ancient ancestor of the Dream's comedy; reading both reveals what Shakespeare inherited and what he transformed.
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Buy on AmazonThe Fairy Queen
by Henry Purcell
Purcell's semi-opera based on A Midsummer Night's Dream (1692) — the most important musical response to the play before Mendelssohn, and the first work to take the fairy world of the play into music; essential for understanding the play's musical afterlife.
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Buy on AmazonTwelfth Night
by William Shakespeare
The companion comedy that shares the Dream's world of misplaced desire and comic confusion — Viola and Orsino's tangle is the most similar to the four lovers' confusion; reading both together reveals the full range of Shakespeare's romantic comedy.
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Buy on AmazonThe Enchanted April
by Elizabeth von Arnim
The novel in the spirit of the Dream's transformation-through-enchantment — four mismatched women rent an Italian castle for April and find themselves changed by the beauty of the place; shares the Dream's conviction that beauty and enchantment can transform unhappy people.
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