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Cover of A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

  • Free to read
  • 1 hour to read
  • Reading level: 6th grade

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare is a comedy play written in about 1595 or 1596. Set in ancient Athens, the play weaves together multiple plots converging on a royal wedding celebration. Four young lovers flee into an enchanted forest, while amateur actors rehearse a play for the Duke's wedding. But the woodland realm belongs to feuding fairy rulers who possess magical powers to manipulate mortal hearts and minds. As moonlight bathes the forest, love potions, mistaken identities, and supernatural mischief intertwine in Shakespeare's most beloved comedy.

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  • Comedy plays
  • Courtship
  • Athens (Greece)
  • Fairy plays

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Executive Director's Notes:

In addition to the notes below, and so you will *NOT* think all the spelling errors introduced by the printers of the time have been corrected, here are the first few lines of Hamlet, as they are presented herein:

Barnardo. Who's there?
Fran. Nay answer me: Stand & vnfold
your selfe

Bar. Long liue the King

As I understand it, the printers often ran out of certain words or letters they had often packed into a "cliche". . .this is the original meaning of the term cliche. . .and thus, being unwilling to unpack the cliches, and thus you will see some substitutions that look very odd. . .such as the exchanges of u for v, v for u, above. . .and you may wonder why they did it this way, presuming Shakespeare did not actually write the play in this manner. . . .

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About this edition

This free edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #1113, released 1997-11-01. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Plays/Films/Dramas, Classics of Literature, British Literature.

Other editions: eBook #1514 (most read), eBook #1778, eBook #2242.

Summary provided by Project Gutenberg (automatically generated).

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