Book Bearings
A Midsummer Night's Dream
- 124 pages · about 2 hours
- First published 1600
- 1,505 editions
- Free to read
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1 About this book
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy by William Shakespeare, written in the mid-1590s and set in Athens, around the wedding of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta. Hermia is ordered by her father to marry Demetrius, though she loves Lysander, and the two lovers run away into the woods, followed by Demetrius and by Helena, who loves him. In the same woods the king and queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania, are quarreling, and a group of amateur actors is rehearsing a play for the wedding. The fairies begin to meddle with the humans, and a night of confusion follows.
- Courtship
- Classics
- Fantasy
- Relationships
- Magic
- Historical
- Comics & graphic novels, fantasy
- Drama
2 What to expect
One of Shakespeare's lightest comedies: four young lovers, a band of amateur actors and a quarreling fairy king and queen spend a confused night in a wood outside Athens. Love, and how changeable and absurd it is, is the subject, treated through magic, mistaken affections and broad clowning. It is short, quick and full of lyrical verse, and the play the workmen finally stage is among the funniest scenes he wrote.
Good for readers who want: Shakespeare's comedy, fairies and magic, and a short, playful read.
3 Read it free, right here
A free scan from the Internet Archive opens right here on the page, with no sign-up.
Read it on the Internet Archive4 About William Shakespeare
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
5 More by William Shakespeare
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