Midsummer's Night Dream
Written: 1595; Texts: Quartos 1600, 1619, First Folio 1623 (Comedy)
Source: Perhaps influenced by: Theseus and Hippolyta; Plutarch (c.46-120). Lives (Thomas North's translation in 1579); Chaucer, Geoffrey (c.1340-1400). The Canterbury Tales “The Knight's Tale” (1400); The story of “Pyramus and Thisbe” and the name of Titania; Ovid (43 BC- AD18). Metamorphoses (Arthur Golding's English translation in 1567); Oberon; Huon of Bordeau, a 13th-century French adventure tale translated by Lord Berners (1534)
Characters: Helena, Oberon, Theseus Duke of Athens, Puck, Lysander, Hermia, Titania, Demetrius, Bottom, Quince, Flute, Egeus
Setting: Athens
Time: Undetermined
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Notes on Midsummer's Night Dream
Video: Lo! She is one of this confederacy
Read the NoteFrom Peter Hall’s film (January 30, 1968) of A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring Michael Jayston, Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg, and David Warner.
Town and Country
Read the NoteIn Cymbeline, Belarius advises his two adoptive sons to embrace the idyllic life in the country rather than the political life at court:
“O, this life
Is nobler than attending for a check;
Richer than doing nothing for a bable;
Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk:
Such gain the cap of him that makes him fine,
… continue reading this note
Quotes from Midsummer's Night Dream
Ay me! For aught that I could ever read
Read the QuoteAy me! For aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.
… continue reading this quote
How happy some o’er other some can be!
Read the QuoteHow happy some o’er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know;
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities.
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes,
… continue reading this quote
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
Read the QuoteAnd the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are undistinguishable.
… continue reading this quote
And this same progeny of evils comes
Read the QuoteAnd this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
… continue reading this quote
And thorough this distemperature
Read the QuoteAnd thorough this distemperature, we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set; the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,
By their increase,
… continue reading this quote
How now, spirit? Whither wander you?
Read the QuoteRobin
How now, spirit? Whither wander you?
Fairy
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire;
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere.
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
… continue reading this quote
These are the forgeries of jealousy
Read the QuoteThese are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
… continue reading this quote
Come, now a roundel and a fairy song
Read the QuoteTitania
Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence—
Some to kill cankers in the muskrose buds,
Some war with reremice for their leathern wings
To make my small elves coats, and some keep back
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits.
… continue reading this quote
And yet, to say the truth
Read the QuoteAnd yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.
… continue reading this quote
Dark night, that from the eye his function takes
Read the QuoteDark night, that from the eye his function takes,
The ear more quick of apprehension makes;
Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,
It pays the hearing double recompense.
… continue reading this quote