A Midsummer Night's Dream (Updated Edition)

by Shakespeare, William; Mowat, Dr. Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul

• ISBN13: 9781501146213
• ISBN10: 1501146211
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780307807717
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780393523164, 9780743482813, 9780812035841
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2016-07-12
• Publisher: INGRAM
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

The bestselling, authoritative Folger Shakespeare Library edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, featuring Shakespeare's complete original text, expert annotations, scene-by-scene summaries, and trusted scholarship for students, teachers, and general readers.

For more than seventy years, the Folger Shakespeare Library editions have been the standard classroom and reading editions of Shakespeare's plays. Used in high schools, colleges, universities, and theaters around the world, each volume combines the complete original text with expert editorial guidance that makes Shakespeare's language more accessible while preserving every nuance of the play.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare stages the workings of love. Theseus and Hippolyta, about to marry, are figures from mythology. In the woods outside Theseus’s Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves out into couples—but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another.

Also in the woods, the king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy; Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, whose head is temporarily transformed into that of a donkey by a hobgoblin or “puck,” Robin Goodfellow. Finally, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of “Pyramus and Thisbe.”

Whether you're reading A Midsummer Night's Dream for school, teaching it in the classroom, preparing for AP English Literature, studying Shakespeare in college, performing the play, or simply returning to one of the greatest works of English literature, this edition provides the context and guidance to help you read Shakespeare with confidence.

This Folger Shakespeare Library edition includes:

• Shakespeare's complete original text, carefully edited from the best early printed version of the play
• Clear explanatory notes conveniently placed on facing pages
• Scene-by-scene plot summaries for quick review and study
• An introduction to Shakespeare's language and dramatic style
• A guide to the play's most famous speeches, quotations, and memorable lines
• A scholarly introduction exploring the play's historical background, themes, characters, and enduring significance
• An essay by acclaimed Shakespeare scholar Catherine Belsey
• Illustrations and images from the Folger Shakespeare Library's world-renowned collections
• An annotated guide for further reading and study

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works and one of the world's leading centers for Shakespeare scholarship, performance, and education. Every Folger Shakespeare Library edition combines authoritative scholarship with practical classroom support, making it an ideal choice for students, educators, actors, book clubs, and anyone seeking an accessible, reliable edition of Shakespeare's original plays.

Author Biography

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

Barbara A. Mowat is Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and their editing.

Paul Werstine is Professor of English at the Graduate School and at King’s University College at Western University. He is a general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare and of many papers and articles on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays.