A Midsummer Night's Dream

This is Shakespeare's most joyful comedy and his sharpest look at love's irrationality: lovers swap objects overnight, a queen falls for a donkey, and reason never stands a chance. Read it for the famous speeches on imagination and lunatic lovers, the hilarious play-within-a-play, and Puck's wink to the audience. Perfect for anyone who wants the Bard at his most playful, or a short, dense introduction to his craft.

1. 1

   Act 1

   Four Days to the Wedding

   Athens, four days before the new moon. Duke Theseus counts down to his wedding with Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, whom he conquered in battle: 'Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour / Draws on apace.' Egeus brings his daughter Hermia before Duke Theseus. She loves Lysander, but Egeus has chosen Demetrius, and Athenian law demands that she marry Demetrius on pain of death. Theseus tells her she must obey her father, marry Demetrius, or face death or life as a nun in a nunnery. Lysander tells Hermia the play's thesis in one line, 'The course of true love never did run smooth,' and proposes they flee Athens to his aunt's house, beyond the reach of Athenian law, to marry. Helena, who was Demetrius's fiancée before he transferred his affections to Hermia and now lovesick for him, decides to betray the plan to Demetrius, hoping to win back his favor. Meanwhile, a group of Athenian craftsmen, including Peter Quince (carpenter, who directs and assigns roles), Nick Bottom (weaver), Francis Flute, Tom Snout, Snug, and Robin Starveling, meet to rehearse 'The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe' for the Duke's wedding. Nick Bottom, a weaver, is assigned the lead role of Pyramus but confidently wants to play every part, including Thisbe and the Lion: 'Let me play the lion too.' Quince instructs the company to rehearse in the palace wood, a mile outside the town, the next moonlit night, where they can be private.

2. 2

   Act 2

   The Fairy Quarrel and the First Mistake

   The wood near Athens is already occupied. Puck (Robin Goodfellow), a mischievous fairy and Oberon's jester, meets a fairy servant of Titania's; Puck warns that Oberon is furious with Titania over the 'lovely boy stolen from an Indian king,' a changeling boy whom Titania refuses to give up as her henchman, and whom Oberon wants for his own retinue. When the fairy king and queen meet, Titania accuses Oberon of coming from Corin, where he spent the night with Amazonian Phillida; he accuses her of loving Theseus. Titania refuses to give the 'little changeling boy' to Oberon because his mother was her 'vot'ress' (devoted follower of her order), who died in childbirth; Titania has raised the boy and will not part with him, while Oberon wants him as a page. Titania explains that their quarrel has thrown nature into chaos—floods, diseases, and ruined harvests, seasons wearing the wrong colors, 'The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, / The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn / Hath rotted,' all because 'this same progeny of evils comes / From our debate, from our dissension.' Oberon sends Puck to fetch 'love-in-idleness,' a flower (purple with white veins) whose juice, when squeezed on a sleeper's eyelids, makes them fall madly in love with the first living creature they see upon waking; the flower was struck by Cupid's arrow, which missed a 'fair vestal throned by the west' (Queen Elizabeth I). Titania falls asleep in the wood, and Oberon squeezes the flower's juice onto her eyelids, saying, 'Wake when some vile thing is near.' Demetrius enters the wood searching for Hermia and Lysander, followed by the devoted Helena, whom he rejects with insults. Helena resolves to follow him anyway, saying, 'I am your spaniel.' Oberon, invisible, overhears Demetrius's cruelty to Helena and decides to use the flower's juice on Demetrius to make him love Helena, ordering Puck to anoint the eyes of 'a youth in Athenian garments' so he will love the lady being scorned. In another part of the wood, Lysander and Hermia, lost and exhausted, lie down to sleep; Hermia insists Lysander sleep apart to preserve her honor, and they sleep on the ground some distance apart; Puck, mistaking Lysander for Demetrius (both in Athenian garments), squeezes the love-juice on Lysander's eyes. Helena, still chasing Demetrius, stumbles over the sleeping Lysander and wakes him; under the spell, he immediately falls in love with her, renounces Hermia: 'Not Hermia but Helena I love: / Who will not change a raven for a dove?'

3. 3

   Act 3

   An Ass for a Queen

   Puck, watching the rehearsal, mischievously transforms Bottom's head into that of an ass; the other workmen flee in terror, but Bottom, unaware of the change, believes they are trying to frighten him and stays behind, singing. Titania, whose eyes Oberon has anointed with love-in-idleness while she slept, wakes to Bottom's song and falls in love with him: 'What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?' 'I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again: / Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note,' she purrs, and promises to kiss his 'fair large ears.' Titania has fairies Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed attend to Bottom, feeding him honey, hay, and dried oats; Bottom, with his ass-head, orders the fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and she takes him to her flowery bower. Puck reports to Oberon that Titania has fallen in love with the transformed Bottom, and Oberon is delighted. Meanwhile the lovers' tangle worsens. Oberon discovers Puck's mistake — Puck anointed the wrong Athenian (Lysander instead of Demetrius) — and, to fix it, applies the love-juice to the sleeping Demetrius's eyes; when Demetrius wakes and sees Helena, he too falls in love with her. So both Lysander and Demetrius now pursue Helena, who thinks they mock her: 'O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent / To set against me for your merriment.' Hermia, finding Lysander in love with Helena, turns on her friend, calling her a 'puppet' and 'thou painted maypole,' a jab at her height, and 'O me! you juggler! you canker-blossom! / You thief of love!' The two women quarrel, and Lysander and Demetrius go off to duel over Helena. Oberon orders Puck to lead the two men astray with mimicked voices in the foggy dark so they will exhaust themselves and fall asleep, then to apply an antidote herb to Lysander's eyes only, so he will love Hermia again. Puck imitates the voices of Lysander and Demetrius, leading each man through the dark wood until both collapse in exhaustion and sleep; Puck then applies the antidote to Lysander's eyes, saying, 'Jack shall have Jill; / Nought shall go ill.'

4. 4

   Act 4

   Dawn, Weddings, and a Play That Should Have Failed

   May Day morning. Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus, out hunting in the wood on May Day morning, discover the four sleeping lovers. The hunting horns wake Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena, and upon waking, the lovers explain their changed affections (Lysander explains his original intent to elope); Demetrius, whose love-juice is never removed, declares his renewed love for Helena, saying everything now seems 'harmony.' Theseus overrides Egeus's objection and declares the two couples (Lysander–Hermia and Demetrius–Helena) will be married alongside him and Hippolyta in Athens, all on the same day as his own wedding. Oberon, having obtained the changeling boy from Titania while she was doting on Bottom, releases her from the spell with an antidote (a different herb), saying, 'Be thou as thou wast wont to be; / See as thou wast wont to see'; Titania wakes and cries, 'My Oberon! what visions have I seen! / Methought I was enamoured of an ass,' and they are reconciled. Bottom wakes alone in the wood, his ass-head gone, and delivers a confused soliloquy trying to describe his dream... a garbled echo of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians: 'I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was,' and 'The 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.' Back in Athens, Quince, Flute, Snug, and Starveling mourn Bottom's disappearance, fearing their play is ruined; Bottom returns triumphant, his head restored, and the company prepares to perform for the Duke. In Theseus's palace in Athens, the three newlywed couples gather for their wedding feast; Theseus dismisses the 'Bacchanals' and 'Antic fables' of poets and chooses the workmen's play, the 'tedious brief scene of young Pyramus / And his love Thisbe,' for evening entertainment, over Hippolyta's objection that it is a silly tale, despite Philostrate's warning that it is 'tedious brief.' Theseus delivers a famous speech on the imagination: 'The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact,' explaining how each 'sees' more than cold reason can comprehend. The workmen perform 'Pyramus and Thisbe,' a tragicomedy of two lovers separated by a wall, with Bottom as Pyramus, Flute as Thisbe, Snug as the Lion, Snout as the Wall, and Starveling as Moonshine; the performance is bad — with clumsy acting, wrong words, and a talking lion — and the audience constantly interrupts with witty commentary, finding it comic; Snug, as the lion, reassures the ladies, 'I am not a lion, nor a lion's whelp; / I am Snug the joiner.' In the play-within-a-play, Pyramus finds Thisbe's bloodstained mantle, believes a lion has killed her, and stabs himself, saying, 'Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. / Now am I dead.'; Thisbe, finding Pyramus dying, kills herself with his dagger. After the play, Theseus orders the lovers to bed, saying, 'Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.'; the fairies (Oberon and Titania with their train) enter the palace at midnight to bless the three married couples' houses, ensuring their children will be free of birth defects and curses — Oberon declares, 'Now, until the break of day, / Through this house each fairy stray. / To the best bride-bed will we, / Which by us shall blessed be,' and 'And the blots of Nature's hand / Shall not in their issue stand.' Puck enters to sweep the stage and addresses the audience directly with the epilogue: 'If we shadows have offended, / Think but this, and all is mended, / That you have but slumber'd here / While these visions did appear,' concluding, 'Give me your hands, if we be friends, / And Robin shall restore amends.'

• HHermiaA short, defiant Athenian heiress who would rather die or take nun's vows than marry the man her father chose. She elopes with Lysander, loses him overnight to a flower's juice, and nearly brawls with her best friend before the spells are undone.
• LLysanderHermia's devoted suitor, author of the line that true love never runs smooth. One drop of love-juice on the wrong eyelids turns him into Helena's ardent pursuer until the antidote restores him.
• HHelenaDemetrius's jilted fiancée, tall and self-loathing, who betrays Hermia's elopement to win him back and follows him into the wood calling herself his spaniel. Two enchanted suitors and one insulted friend convince her the whole world mocks her.
• DDemetriusEgeus's chosen son-in-law, cruel to Helena until Oberon's juice rewrites his heart. He is the only lover whose spell is never removed, and he likes the result.
• NNick BottomA weaver with boundless confidence who wants every part in the play and gets an ass's head instead. The enchanted Titania dotes on him; he alone keeps his composure, orders fairies around, and wakes unsure whether his night was a dream.
• PPeter QuinceThe carpenter who directs the workmen's Pyramus and Thisbe, assigns the roles, and tries in vain to rein in Bottom. He mourns his lost lead actor, then stages the worst play ever performed at a royal wedding.
• OOberonThe fairy king, jealous over a changeling boy and vengeful toward his wife. He weaponizes love-juice to get the child, fixes Puck's mistake, and ends the night blessing mortal marriages.
• TTitaniaThe fairy queen who refuses to surrender the orphaned Indian boy her dead vot'ress left her. Her quarrel with Oberon rots the seasons; her enchanted night with Bottom costs her the boy and wins her peace.
• PPuckOberon's mischievous jester, also called Robin Goodfellow. He anoints the wrong Athenian, gives a weaver a donkey's head, mimics voices in the fog, and closes the play asking the audience for applause.
• TTheseusDuke of Athens, marrying the Amazon queen he conquered. He enforces the law against Hermia, then mercifully overrules it, and delivers the famous speech on lunatics, lovers, and poets.
• HHippolytaQueen of the Amazons, won by Theseus in battle, counting the days to a wedding she did not choose. She objects that Pyramus and Thisbe is a silly tale, and sits through it anyway.
• EEgeusHermia's father, who demands her marriage to Demetrius on pain of death. His authority is overridden by the Duke at the end, and he gets no say in the happy ending.

Love-in-idleness

The purple-and-white flower struck by Cupid's stray arrow stands for love's arbitrariness: its juice makes anyone love the first creature seen on waking. It lands on the wrong eyelids, causes nearly every disaster in the wood, and its antidote, applied selectively, decides who ends up with whom. A flower, not a heart, picks the spouses.

Bottom's ass's head

The donkey head marks Bottom as the play's fool in both senses: comic and desired. That Titania falls for him while wearing it shows love's blindness literally embodied. When the head vanishes at dawn, the enchantment's absurdity is exposed, and Bottom is left with a dream he cannot describe.

The changeling boy

The Indian boy is the whole plot's cause and its least visible figure: he never speaks. He stands for possession and grief, since Titania keeps him for his dead mother's sake while Oberon wants him as a page. His transfer settles the fairy war and restores the natural world, a child traded for a harvest.

The wall and Moonshine

In Pyramus and Thisbe, Snout plays the Wall and Starveling plays Moonshine, personifying the obstacles and darkness that separate lovers. The audience's laughter at these crude devices underlines how thin the barriers in the main plot really are: a flower's juice, a fog, a mistaken identity, all equally easy to walk through once someone decides to.

The new moon and May Day

The play opens four days before the new moon, the deadline for Hermia's choice, and ends with a May Day morning hunt that wakes the lovers. Moonlight is the medium of enchantment, the rehearsal scheduled 'the next moonlit night,' and the wedding fixed for the moon's change. Its cycle frames the story: darkness for mischief, dawn for settlements.

The ending does two things at once: it settles the plot and it dissolves the play. The three weddings are a comic resolution, but they are built on an unresolved cheat, since Demetrius's enchantment is never lifted and he will love Helena forever for no reason he knows. Shakespeare lets the happy ending stand on a spell, which is either a joke about marriage or an honest account of it. Then the fairies enter the palace at midnight to bless the bride-beds, promising children free of Nature's blots, so the fairy world that caused the chaos now underwrites the future. Puck's epilogue goes further, asking the audience to treat everything they watched as a slumber and to applaud if they 'be friends.' Some readers find this a charming curtain call; others hear a dare, since calling the play a dream also excuses its cruelties, the threats of death and nunneries, the mockery of Helena, the theft of a child. The ending lands because it refuses to choose: the dream is over, the blessings are real, and your hands decide whether to forgive it.

1. 1.Demetrius's love-juice is never removed, so his happy marriage rests on a permanent enchantment. Does the play endorse or satirize the idea that arranged affection can become real love?
2. 2.Titania claims her quarrel with Oberon causes floods, plagues, and rotten harvests. What does it mean for the play's cosmology that human welfare depends on the sex life of fairies?
3. 3.Theseus says the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are all compacted of imagination, yet he is the one who chooses the entertainment and overrules the law. Is the duke a poet despite himself, or the play's one truly rational man?

Anyone who wants Shakespeare at his funniest and most accessible, since the play is short, the plot is simple, and the jokes still land. Readers interested in how theater comments on itself, or in love as a force that defies reason, will find the richest version of both here.

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