A Midsummer Nights Dream

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A Midsummer Night's Dreamis a play byWilliam Shakespeare.It is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.It is unknown exactly whenA Midsummer Night's Dreamwas written or first performed, but on the basis of topical references and an allusion toEdmund Spenser's 'Epithalamion', it is usually dated 1594 or 1596.Though it is not a translation or adaptation of an earlier work, various sources such as Ovid'sMetamorphosesand Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" served as inspiration.[4]

A Midsummer Nights Dream takes place in the ancient city of Athens, Greece.This is not historical, but mythical Greece, with heroes, magic, and monsters.Most of the action of the play takes place in a magical forest outside of the city during a midsummers eve.

The main characters are four couples:King Theseus and his intended bride Hippolyta;King Oberon and Queen Titania of the woodland faeries;Lysander and Hermia, a pair of young lovers.And Demetrius and Helena, a frustrated pair of lovers.

Hermia and Lysander are in love.Hermias father, however, insists that she marry Demetrius.Hermias friend Helena loves Demetrius.Demetrius used to love Helena, until he met Hermia, and dumped Helena like a load of bricks.

HermiaLysanderHelenaDemetrius

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Important secondary characters include:The Mechanicals: a group of common workmen who are trying to put together a play for King Theseus's wedding celebration.Puck: a mischievous forest sprite, who causes everyone a lot of trouble with his pranks and mixups.

Much like a fairy tale, the story properly begins when our main characters enter the enchanted forest:Lysander & Hermia enter to secretly elopeDemetrius follows to stop them; Helena follows DemetriusThe Mechanicals are just looking for a quiet place to rehearse their play

Much of the action (and comedy) is the result of a powerful love potion, taken from a rare flower, which Oberon commands Puck to put into two peoples eyes: Queen Titania, who has angered Oberon, and whom he wants to punish, by making her fall in love with some ugly creature;Demetrius, because Oberon wants him to return Helenas love.

Puck gets the flower, allowing Oberon to put the love potion on Titanias eyes while shes sleeping, and causing her to fall in love with one of the Mechanicals, Bottom, whom Puck has jokingly transformed into a talking donkey!

But Puck fails in his second task; instead of putting love potion in Demetriuss eyes, he mistakenly puts it in Lysanders, who leaves his fianc Hermia, and immediately falls in love with Helena! (Whos still in love with Demetrius.)

Being a comedy, it all works out in the end, and the hopelessly inept Mechanicals perform their play for King Theseus and Queen Hippolytas wedding.Puck finishes off the night by telling the audience that perhaps we have all only been dreaming.

"Comedy", in its Elizabethan usage, had a very different meaning from modern comedy. A Shakespearean comedy is one that has a happy ending, usually involving marriages between the unmarried characters, and a tone and style that is more light-hearted than Shakespeare's other plays. Shakespearean comedies tend to also include:A greater emphasis on situations than characters (this numbs the audience's connection to the characters, so that when characters experience misfortune, the audience still finds it laughable)A struggle of young lovers to overcome difficulty, often presented by eldersSeparation and re-unificationDeception among characters (especially mistaken identity)A clever servantFights between characters, often within a familyMultiple, intertwining plotsUse of all styles of comedy (slapstick, puns, dry humour, earthy humour, witty banter, practical jokes)A Happy Ending, though this is a given, since by definition, anything without a happy ending can't be a comedy.

The course of true love never did run smooth.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1. 1Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;Brief as the lightning in the collied night.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1. 1So quick bright things come to confusion.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1. 1Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1. 2A sweet-face man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1. 2I'll put a girdle round about the earthIn forty minutes.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 2. 1A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3. 1Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art translated.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3. 1Lord, what fools these mortals be!A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3. 2Cupid is a knavish lad,Thus to make poor females mad.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3. 2My Oberon! what visions have I seen!Methought I was enamoured of an ass.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 4. 1The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 4. 1To show our simple skill,That is the true beginning of our end.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 5. 1If we shadows have offended,Think but this, and all is mended,That you have but slumbered hereWhile these visions did appear.A Midsummer Night's Dream, 5. 1

The pastoral setting and magical make-believe land that Midsummer Nights Dream inhabits has inspired many other artists.Over 30 movie adaptions have been made, the first one in 1909!Other notable films are:1935 with James Cagney and Mickey Rooney1968 with Helen Mirren and Diana Rigg.1981 BBC productionAn animated version for childrenA 1999 film with Kevin Kline and Christian Bale.And a British production performed entirely by children!

Before movies were made, several classical composers found inspiration in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream, including:Felix MendelssohnPeter TchaikovskySergei RachmaninovBenjamin BrittenThese composers wrote symphonies, ballets, operas and other works, all based on the magical world Shakespeare created with his Dream.

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Bibliographyhttp://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/a-midsummer-nights-dream/play-summary.htmlhttp://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/msnd/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Midsummer_Night's_Dreamhttp://www.allgreatquotes.com/shakespeare_midsummernightsdream.shtmlhttp://www.imdb.com/find?q=midsummer+night%27s+dream&s=all

MUSICElysian Fields Nancy Rumbel, Eric Tingstad; Acoustic Elegance, 2003.