“In the pure poetry and intoxication of words, Shakespeare never rose higher than he rises in this play.” —G. K. Chesterton This Norton Critical Edition includes: • Shakespeare’s most popular comedy—with its unforgettable love triangles, woodland fairies, and magic—based on Grace Ioppolo’s conflated text (Q1 with F1 variants) and accompanied by her introduction, note on the text, and explanatory annotations. • Five illustrations. • Seven sources for the play, including those by Geoffrey Chaucer, Plutarch, and Lucius Apuleius. • Fifteen wide-ranging critical assessments, including ones by Jan Kott, Margo Hendricks, and Peter Brook. • Adaptations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Robert Cox and Henry Purcell and Elkanah Settle. • A Selected Bibliography. About the Series Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format—annotated text, contexts, and criticism—helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

“In the pure poetry and intoxication of words, Shakespeare never rose higher than he rises in this play.” —G. K. Chesterton This Norton Critical Edition includes: • Shakespeare’s most popular comedy—with its unforgettable love triangles, woodland fairies, and magic—based on Grace Ioppolo’s conflated text (Q1 with F1 variants) and accompanied by her introduction, note on the text, and explanatory annotations. • Five illustrations. • Seven sources for the play, including those by Geoffrey Chaucer, Plutarch, and Lucius Apuleius. • Fifteen wide-ranging critical assessments, including ones by Jan Kott, Margo Hendricks, and Peter Brook. • Adaptations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Robert Cox and Henry Purcell and Elkanah Settle. • A Selected Bibliography. About the Series Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format—annotated text, contexts, and criticism—helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595/96. The play consists of multiple subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta.

This volume traces the modern critical and performance history of this play, one of Shakespeare's most-loved and most-performed comedies. The essay focus on such modern concerns as feminism, deconstruction, textual theory, and queer theory.

"In the pure poetry and intoxication of words, Shakespeare never rose higher than he rises in this play." --G. K. Chesterton

"An original critical study of the major plays of Shakespeare." --

A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps the best loved of Shakepeare's plays. It brings together aristocrats, workers, and fairies in a wood outside Athens, and from there the enchantment begins. Simple and engaging on the surface, it is none the less a highly original and sophisticated work, remarkable for both its literary and its theatrical mastery. It is one of the very few of Shakespeare's plays which do not draw on narrative sources, which suggests that it reflects his deepest imaginative concerns to an unusual degree. In his introduction Peter Holland pays particular attention to dreams and dreamers, and to Shakespeare's construction of a world of night and shadows. Both here and in his commentary he explores the play's extensive performance history to illustrate the wide range of interpretations of which it is capable. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.