A Midsummer Nights Dream

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Midsummer Night's Dream, A, a comedy by Shakespeare, written probably about 1595 or 1596, printed in quarto in 1600 and 1619. It has no single major source, but Shakespeare drew, among other authors, on Chaucer, Golding's translation of Ovid, and Apuleius' Golden Ass.

Hermia, ordered by her father Egeus to marry Demetrius, refuses, because she loves Lysander, while Demetrius has formerly professed love for her friend Helena, and Helena loves Demetrius. Under the law of Athens, Theseus, the duke, gives Hermia four days in which to obey her father; else she must suffer death or enter a nunnery. Hermia and Lysander agree to leave Athens secretly in order to be married where the Athenian law cannot pursue them, and to meet in a wood a few miles from the city. Hermia tells Helena of the project, and the latter tells Demetrius. Demetrius pursues Hermia to the wood, and Helena Demetrius, so that all four are that night in the wood. This wood is the favourite haunt of the fairies.

Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, have quarrelled, because Titania refuses to give up to him a little changeling boy for a page. Oberon tells Puck, a mischievous sprite, to fetch him a certain magic flower, of which he will press the juice on the eyes of Titania while she sleeps, so that she may fall in love with what she first sees when she wakes. Overhearing Demetrius in the wood reproaching Helena for following him, and desirous to reconcile them, Oberon orders Puck to place some of the love-juice on Demetrius' eyes, but so that Helena shall be near him when he does it. Puck, mistaking Lysander for Demetrius, applies the charm to him, and as Helena is the first person Lysander sees he at once woos her, enraging her because she thinks she is being made a jest of. Oberon, discovering Puck's mistake, now places some of the juice on Demetrius' eyes; he on waking also first sees Helena, so that both Lysander and Demetrius are now wooing her. The ladies begin to abuse one another and the men go off to fight for Helena.

Meanwhile Oberon has placed the love-juice on Titania's eyelids, who wakes to find Bottom the weaver near her, wearing an ass's head (Bottom and a company of Athenian tradesmen are in the wood to rehearse a play for the duke's wedding, and Puck has put an ass's head on Bottom); Titania at once becomes enamoured of him, and toys with his ‘amiable cheeks’ and ‘fair large ears’. Oberon, finding them together, reproaches Titania for bestowing her love on an ass, and again demands the changeling boy, whom she in her confusion surrenders; whereupon Oberon releases her from the charm. Puck at Oberon's orders throws a thick fog about the human lovers, and brings them all together, unknown to one another, and they fall asleep. He applies a remedy to their eyes, so that when they awake they return to their former loves. Theseus and Egeus appear on the scene, the runaways are forgiven, and the couples married. The play ends with the ‘play’ of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, comically acted by Bottom and his fellow tradesmen, to grace these nuptials and those of Theseus and Hippolyta.

Midsummer Night's Dream, A. Play (1593–4) by Shakespeare which has attracted several composers.

1. The Fairy Queen, 1691, adaptation (by E. Settle?) of Shakespeare for which Purcell wrote incidental mus. Shakespeare's text is not quoted.

2. Mendelssohn composed an Ov. in E major, Op.26, in 1826 when he was 17, adding additional items of incidental mus., Op.61, for a prod. of the play at Potsdam in Oct. 1843, these being: 1. Scherzo (entr'acte after Act 1). 2. Melodrama. 2a. Fairy March (Act 2). 3. You spotted snakes (2 sop. and ch.) (Act 2). 4. Melodrama (Act 2). 5. Intermezzo (entr'acte after Act 2). 6. Melodrama (Act 3). 7. Nocturne (entr'acte after Act 3). 8. Melodrama (Act 4). 9. Wedding March (after end of Act 4). 10. Melodrama. 10a. Funeral March (Act 5). 11. Bergomask Dance (Act 5). 12. Melodrama. 12a. Finale (Act 5).

3. Incidental mus. by Orff commissioned by Nazis when Mendelssohn's mus. was banned. 1st version 1939 (f.p. Frankfurt 1939; withdrawn), 2nd version 1944 (withdrawn), 3rd version 1952 (f.p. Darmstadt 1952), 4th version 1964 (f.p. Stuttgart 1964).

4. Opera in 3 acts by Britten to lib. ( Shakespeare's text) abbreviated by composer and Peter Pears. Comp. 1959–60. Prod. Aldeburgh 1960, S. Francisco and CG 1961, NY 1963, Glyndebourne 1981.