Set in an enchanted forest, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the ideal subject for artist Marcel Dzama, whose work frequently references dreams, fairy tales, and mythical worlds. Inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s celebrated romantic comedy intertwines multiple narratives under the influence of transformation and witchcraft. The play is often staged with actors wearing animal masks, an aspect which appeals particularly to Dzama, whose work is characterized by the fusion of human and animal, fantasy and reality. The second title in David Zwirner Books’s Seeing Shakespeare series revisits the ultimate fairy tale through the eyes of a contemporary artist who feels a special affinity for its imagery.

"This edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream takes the comedy seriously. Like my previous Hackett editions, it gives full weight to Shakespeare's dramatic setting, which other editors (and scholars) almost always ignore or at least fail adequately to consider. Ancient Athens is the core, not the mere background, of Midsummer Night's Dream. As we shall see, Shakespeare focuses, in particular, on the love of the beautiful and the triumph of learning and art, along with the rise of democracy, which, as Pericles' famously claims, are the hallmarks of Athens. 'We are lovers of the beautiful with thrift, and lovers of wisdom without softness' (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.40.1). [...] Failure to consider classical Athens as central to Midsummer Night's Dream will cause a reader to miss not only the play's remarkable substance, but much of its sparkling comedy as well. Far from impeding the play's humor, focusing on Athens helps to bring out multi-layers of comedy that Shakespeare put there."

Shakespeare's sonnets and poems are perhaps the most precious words of poetry in English. With the finest lines ever written about love and desire, they have shaped the way emotions are expressed. This edition of sonnets and poems includes the narrative poems "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece," which established Shakespeare's reputation when they appeared in 1593 and 1594. Next is the short poem "The Phoenix and the Turtle," which appeared alongside the work of others in the 1601 collection Love's Martyr. The sonnets, all included here, were published in 1609, as was the last poem, "A Lover's Complaint." The dazzling cover design is by White's Books' own David Pearson, one of "Britain's Top 50 Designers" as selected by the Guardian.

DIVAmong the most popular of Shakespeare's comedies, this enchanting play humorously celebrates the vagaries of love as it focuses upon the intertwined romances of several pairs of lovers. Explanatory footnotes. /div