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Midsummer Night's Dream (Arden Shakespeare)

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There are many reasons for the popularity of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", not the least among them is the almost unique joining of the humorous misuse of language (by the tradesman actors) and the utter beauty of language and expression (by Puck, Oberon, and Titania). One usually gets a farce of language or an attempt at the sublime. Here the music of the two enriches both.

How can one put together these four disparate plotlines into such a wonderful whole? The quartet of lovers and their mixed and varied attentions forms the basis of the plot in the comedy and it is a delightful enough farce. The squabble of Demitrius and Lysander over Hermia while Helena pines over Demitrius, Oberon and Titania's argument over one of her servants and Oberon's use of Puck to manipulate Titania's affections including Puck's mistaken application of Oberon's potion to Lysander's eyes, the pending marriage of Thesus and Hippolyta, and the wonderfully, magically awful play being put on by the tradesman for the nobles. Putting all this into a wonderful whole is an achievement that I believe is unmatched.

I do want to say that this play has suffered a great deal in our sex obsessed age. We have foisted on this play an eroticism that it does not claim for itself nor display. While the "adult" couples (Thesus & Hippolyta, Oberon & Titania) interact and talk in ways that include that aspect of their lives, the youthful couples always talk and act in ways that are concerned with propriety and modesty. Bottom is hardly the lust blinded brute depicted in modern productions. He is much more interested in eating and chatting with his Fairy friends than Titania. It is Titania who is under the influence of the magic flower who is infatuated with Bottom while he remains quite oblivious to her desires.

In any case, this is a fine edition of the work with many helps for the reader. Almost half the book is filled with introductory essays that provide background on the play and its text. The play itself is full of notes to help the reader understand idioms and definitions of words that are obscure, unique to Shakespeare, or that have changed meaning since 1596. There are four Appendices that cover source materials for the play, realigned text that the editors believe were corrupted in the sources we have for the play and the last one is the prologue to the play that Peter Quince butchers to the amusement of the nobles. The appendix provides us with the prologue with correct punctuation, as Quince should have read it.

All the background material is interesting and enriches our understanding of the play. But it is the play that matters and is so much fun to read.

Anyone who has read this play will say that it was a riot. What's even better than reading it, though, is seeing it performed live. My face hurt because I was laughing so hard! But if you do read it, and you have that problem about understanding what it's saying, not a big deal! The flavorful but easy to read dialouge makes it simple to understand what's going on. But, you can always get the New Folger edition that has explanations of certain parts on the opposite page (very helpful for when Shakespeare makes a joke that doesn't make any sense to us now). This play is laugh-out-loud funny and almost anyone can enjoy it.

The Arden series was requested as a gift and by someone who knows it well. Shakespearean students will appreciate this publication.

It's neither the best nor worst of Shakespeare's many comedies, but "A Midsummer Night's Dream" definitely holds one honor -- it's the most fantastical of his works. This airy little comedy is filled with fairies, spells, love potions and romantic mixups, with only the bland human lovers making things a little confusing (who's in love with whom again?).

As Athens prepares for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, the fusty Egeus is demanding that his daughter Hermia marry the man he's chosen for her, Demetrius. Her only other options are death or nunhood.

Since she's in love with a young man named Lysander (no, we never learn why her dad hates Lysander), Hermia refuses, and the two of them plot to escape Athens and marry elsewhere. But Helena, a girl who has been kicked to the curb by Demetrius, tips him off about their plans; he chases Hermia and Lysander into the woods, with Helena following him all the way. Are you confused yet?

But on this same night, the fairy king Oberon and his queen Titania are feuding over a little Indian boy. Oberon decides to use a magical "love juice" from a flower to cause some trouble for Titania by making her fall in love with some random weaver named Nick Bottom (whom his henchman Puck has turned into a donkey-headed man). He also decides to have Puck iron out the four lovers' romantic troubles with the same potion. But of course, hijinks ensue.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is another one of Shakespeare's plays that REALLY needs to be seen before it's read. Not only is it meant to be seen rather than read, but the tangle of romantic problems and hijinks are a little difficult to follow... okay, scratch that. They can be VERY difficult to follow, especially if you need to keep the four lovers straight.

But despite those small flaws, Shakespeare is in rare form here -- the story floats along in an enchanted haze of fairy magic, forest groves, and a love square that twists in on itself. And Shakespeare's lush, haunting poetry is absolutely lovely here ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight...").

But he also packs it with plenty of hilarity -- not only is it funny to read about the haughty fairy queen fawning over a guy with a donkey head (Nick Bottom = "ass's head", get it?), but there's plenty of funny moments in the dialogue ("Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet...").

The four main lovers are relatively bland and interchangeable, and we never find out much about them except that Helena is kind of stalkerish and not too bright (she tips off the guy she likes that the girl HE likes is eloping so he can stop her?). The real draws are the fairy creatures -- Titania and Oberon are proud alien creatures filled with both cruelty and kindness, and Puck is delightfully mischievous and.... puckish.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a shimmering little concoction of magic, romantic mayhem and fairy squabbling. Absolutely stunning.

We attend an annual Shakespeare festival. Needless-to-say, Shakespeare is best enjoyed if you have prepared in advance by reading and interpreting each play before seeing it. Without doing so, you'll definitely miss an amount of humor, sexual innuendo and subtle points of dialogue. Arden Shakespeare Series presents excellent one-volume documents to preapre for any play. Critical commentary, interpretation and background are extensive and, most of all, scholarly. The Arden Series quantity of offered information is such that an Arden book can be read every time you see any particular play and still provide an increasing level of preparation.

Our intent is to collect the Arden version of each Shakespeare play. Our Festival will ultimately present every single one, but timely purchase of some plays for reading and research can become difficult. Try, for example, finding Coriolanus, Troilus and Cresssida or Timon of Athens - either new or used - in your local bookstore; major cities excepted.

Be ready to alow plenty of time to enjoy every Arden Shakespeare book; and a lot of time flipping back from text to reference sections.

_A Midsummer Night's Dream_ is by far Shakespeare's most lighthearted tale, and one of his best. I may be prejudiced, this being the first Shakespearian play I was exposed to, but I really adore it. The theme is love, and while just about every character is involved with some romantic entanglement, this is not sentimental fluff, nor do the fairies provide only mindless fantasy. Instead, we see how, and why, "the course of true love never did run smooth"- mostly because, as Shakespeare makes amusingly obvious, love is awkward, silly, and ridiculous, and yet somehow the most a beautiful and worthwhile pursuit- no matter how humiating the pursuit may be. And humiliating it is, in this wonderful, lushly written literary masterpiece. I've seen almost all of the screen adaptations, and I strongly recommend the most recent, which stunningly portrays this work.

Once again, Shakespeare weaves an intricate tale of love, magic, and just plain silliness. Any of Shakespeare's works is worth the read, but "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is by far the best!!!!!

I disagree with the reader who said there is no substance in this play. Certainly, all works of good literature have substance, espcially this one. One of the great aspects of A Midsummer Night's Dream is the fantasy that the characters are led to believe. Compare this to As You Like It, where the only fantasy is the fantasy that characters want to believe.

This is one of my favorite, if not my VERY favorite of Shakespeare's works. It is certainly my favorite of the comedies and I do not hesitate to rank this as one of the greatest works of literature of all-time. By the way, I LOVE this play. Oh yeah, have I mentioned that...well enough of that. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is one of the funniest plays of all-time. I was literally laughing out loud during the performance of "The Most Lamentable Comedy..." at the play's end. The "dream" world within the forest is a magical fantasy world in which the humans are manipulated by faries to fall in or out of love. Within this world, in which most of the play occurs, the powers of the imagination are heightened and the characters are helpless against their imaginations, which guide everything they do and say. This is one of the play's major themes: the imagination. Even out of the "dream world" the characters are guided by their imaginations. Duke Theseus (the plays strongest critic of such a notion) even admits that in order to enjoy such a performance (as the one put on by the unforgettable Bottom, and his comrades-in-folly), one must use one's imagination. I honestly believe that this is Shakespeare at his best. I would recommend this work to anyone!

This was truely one of Shakespear's best plays. The way it was put into a movie was absolutely brilliant. I've seen few of his plays on film. But I bet even if I saw them all, A Midsummer Nights Dream would be my favorite along with Taming of the Shrew.