Reading Order
Midsummer Night's DreamA Midsummer Night's Dream Reading Order
A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595–1596) by William Shakespeare is the most beloved of Shakespeare's comedies and one of the most frequently performed plays in the world — the story of four Athenian lovers (Hermia, Lysander, Helena, Demetrius) whose relationships are scrambled by fairy magic in the woods outside Athens, running alongside the story of Titania and Oberon's quarrel over a changeling boy and the 'mechanicals' (Bottom and his friends) rehearsing a play for the Duke's wedding. The love potion applied by Puck to the wrong eyes creates a comic tangle of misplaced desire; Bottom the weaver is given an ass's head and becomes the object of Titania's enchanted love. The play is Shakespeare's most sustained meditation on the nature of imagination, dreaming, and theatrical illusion — the final speech by Puck ('If we shadows have offended') is his most explicit statement about the relationship between art and reality. Bottom's 'dream' (which he cannot tell, because 'it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom') is the play's most profound moment: a man touching the infinite and unable to articulate it. The play has been set to music by Mendelssohn (the most famous incidental music in Shakespeare) and Benjamin Britten (whose 1960 opera is the most important musical adaptation).
Where to start
A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595–1596) — any good edition; the Oxford or Arden Second Series editions are standard. Best reading order: read the play straight through in one sitting, then watch a production; Peter Brook's 1970 RSC production (available on film) transformed how the play is performed; Benjamin Britten's 1960 opera is the most important musical adaptation.
Complete Midsummer Night's Dream Book List
- 1Buy
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare (Arden Second Series, ed. Harold Brooks)·1979·The standard scholarly edition — Brooks's Arden Second Series text is the most comprehensive single-volume edition with full commentary - 2Buy
The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen·1835·The fairy tale tradition that A Midsummer Night's Dream draws on and transmits — Andersen's tales inhabit the same world of enchantment, transformation, and the dangerous beauty of the fairy world - 3Buy
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Susanna Clarke·2004·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 - 4Buy
Lysistrata
Aristophanes·-411·The ancient Greek comic tradition that Shakespeare is partly in dialogue with — Aristophanes' comic plots about marital negotiation and the reversal of social order are the classical predecessors of the Midsummer Night's Dream's comic world - 5Buy
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman·2013·The contemporary fantasy in the tradition of A Midsummer Night's Dream's English enchantment — Gaiman's novella shares the play's vision of a parallel world of supernatural beings whose encounter with the human world is beautiful and dangerous - 6Buy
Stardust
Neil Gaiman·1999·Gaiman's fairy romance that inherits the Shakespearean vision of the fairy world — the story of a young man who crosses the wall into Faerie and falls in love with a fallen star draws on the same English fairy tradition that the Dream inhabits
Midsummer Night's Dream — Frequently Asked Questions
What is A Midsummer Night's Dream about?
A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595–1596) by William Shakespeare runs three plots simultaneously. Four Athenian lovers (Hermia loves Lysander but is ordered to marry Demetrius; Helena loves Demetrius) flee to the woods, where Puck applies a love potion to the wrong eyes, scrambling all their relationships before Puck corrects the mistake. Simultaneously, the fairy king Oberon and queen Titania quarrel over a changeling boy; Oberon sends Puck to enchant Titania so she falls in love with the first creature she sees — which turns out to be Bottom the weaver, who has been given an ass's head. The 'mechanicals' (Bottom and friends) rehearse a play for the Duke's wedding. All three plots are resolved at the court wedding where Bottom and company perform 'Pyramus and Thisbe' as a tragicomedy.
Why is A Midsummer Night's Dream so popular?
A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the most performed plays in the world because of its combination of comic invention, visual spectacle, and extraordinary poetry. It works on multiple levels: as a comedy of romantic confusion (the four lovers plot), as a fantasy of enchantment (the fairy world), and as a self-reflexive meditation on theatre and imagination (the mechanicals' play within the play). Puck's final speech ('If we shadows have offended') is Shakespeare's most explicit statement about the nature of theatrical illusion. Bottom is one of Shakespeare's most beloved comic creations. The play has inspired music by Mendelssohn and Britten, films from Max Reinhardt (1935) to Peter Hall (1968) to Michael Hoffman (1999), and more theatrical productions than any Shakespeare play except Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.
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