A Midsummer Night’s Dream

by William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of our most recommended Shakespeare plays. “It’s delicate, it’s charming, but also a deeply serious play because Shakespeare is concerned as much with the art of theatre, as with the work of the imaginative artist: whether the artist is a writer or an actor.”

Recommendations from our site

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream has always been a great favourite of mine, ever since my school days. I was introduced to it at school when I was about 11 or 12. I’ve seen many productions of it. It’s the first play I edited, for the New Penguin Shakespeare, in 1967. I very much enjoyed writing about it then. It’s a play about imagination, about Shakespeare’s own heart, in many ways. The Mechanicals’ scenes, as they’re called, in which Shakespeare portrays amateur actors putting on the play of Pyramus and Thisbe, actually tell us an awful lot about Shakespeare’s attitude towards the theatre and the acting profession. They’re also wonderfully playable. It’s a play that appeals very much to young people. I’m speaking now from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust at Stratford-Upon-Avon and we have what’s called ‘Shakespeare Week,’ when we engage with over 10,000 primary schools. The Royal Shakespeare Company put on a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which uses amateur actors, including schoolchildren.” Read more...

Stanley Wells recommends the best of Shakespeare’s Plays

Stanley Wells, Literary Scholar