A Midsummer Night’s Dream Annotated

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595) was written around the same time Shakespeare whipped up his famous play about two “star-cross’d” lovers, Romeo and Juliet. In Dream, a group of craftsmen (the “Mechanicals”) bumble their way through a ridiculous performance of Pyramus and Thisbe (a story taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses). The Mechanicals’ play is widely considered to be Shakespeare’s light-hearted and silly mock-up of Romeo and Juliet.Girl meets boy. Girl falls in love with boy. Girl loses boy when mischievous fairy sprinkles love “juice” on boy’s eyelids, making him fall for another girl. Girl wins boy back (with the help of a little fairy magic).No, it’s not the latest romantic comedy to hit theaters near you; it’s a play that was dreamed up by William Shakespeare toward the end of the 16th century. Like the modern-day romantic comedy genre it’s helped to shape and influence, A Midsummer Night’s Dream features young lovers who fall comically in and out of love in a ridiculously brief period of time (over the course of a single, enchanted midsummer night).Over the years, there’s been a lot of speculation about the occasion for which Shakespeare might have written the play. Did he write Dream to be performed at a nobleman’s big, fancy wedding? Some scholars think so. This is a nice idea and it makes sense because plays were often commissioned for these kinds of fancy shindigs. (In the play itself, a group of amateur actors puts together a performance to celebrate the marriage of the Duke Theseus and Hippolyta.) It’s too bad there’s no real evidence to support the idea. Still, it’s fun to imagine that Shakespeare created the piece to help a couple of happy newlyweds “dream away the time” before their much-anticipated wedding night.