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Puck & Oberon in a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Puck & Oberon in a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Puck & Oberon in a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream @ Studio 58

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Puck is little character development in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and no true protagonist, critics generally point to Puck as the most important character in the play. The mischievous, quick-witted sprite sets many of the play’s events in motion with his magic, by means of both deliberate pranks on the human characters (transforming Bottom’s head into that of an ass) and unfortunate mistakes. More important, Puck’s capricious spirit, magical fancy, fun-loving humor, and lovely, evocative language permeate the atmosphere of the play. He is good-hearted but capable of cruel tricks. Indeed, another fairy mentions that some call Puck a “hobgoblin,” a term whose connotations are decidedly less glamorous than those of “fairy”

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Stefanelli Samuel, Bosco Pasquale, Moscato Roberto, Casini Andrea

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MAGIC

The fairies’ magic, which brings about many of the most bizarre and hilarious situations in the play, is another element central to the fantastic atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare uses magic both to embody the almost supernatural power of love (symbolized by the love potion) and to create a surreal world. Although the misuse of magic causes chaos, as when Puck mistakenly applies the love potion to Lysander’s eyelids, magic ultimately resolves the play’s tensions by restoring love to balance among the quartet of Athenian youths. Additionally, the ease with which Puck uses magic to his own ends, as when he reshapes Bottom’s head into that of an ass and recreates the voices of Lysander and Demetrius, stands in contrast to the laboriousness and gracelessness of the craftsmen’s attempt to stage their play

Dreams

As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; they are linked to the bizarre, magical mishaps in the forest. Hippolyta’s first words in the play evidence the prevalence of dreams (“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night, / Four nights will quickly dream away the time”), and various characters mention dreams throughout (I.i.7–8). The theme of dreaming recurs predominantly when characters attempt to explain bizarre events in which these characters are involved: “I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what / dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about t’expound this dream,” Bottom says, unable to fathom the magical happenings that have affected him as anything but the result of slumber.

Shakespeare is also interested in the actual workings of dreams, in how events occur without explanation, time loses its normal sense of flow, and the impossible occurs as a matter of course; he seeks to recreate this environment in the play through the intervention of the fairies in the magical forest. At the end of the play, Puck extends the idea of dreams to the audience members themselves, saying that, if they have been offended by the play, they should remember it as nothing more than a dream. This sense of illusion and gauzy fragility is crucial to the atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as it helps render the play a fantastical experience rather than a heavy drama.

Love’s Difficulty

The theme of love’s difficulty is often explored through the motif of love out of balance—that is, romantic situations in which a disparity or inequality interferes with the harmony of a relationship. The prime instance of this imbalance is the asymmetrical love among the four young Athenians: Hermia loves Lysander, Lysander loves Hermia, Helena loves Demetrius, and Demetrius loves Hermia instead of Helena—a simple numeric imbalance in which two men love the same woman, leaving one woman with too many suitors and one with too few. The play has strong potential for a traditional outcome, and the plot is in many ways based on a quest for internal balance; that is, when the lovers’ tangle resolves itself into symmetrical pairings, the traditional happy ending will have been achieved. Somewhat similarly, in the relationship between Titania and Oberon, an imbalance arises out of the fact that Oberon’s coveting of Titania’s Indian boy outweighs his love for her. Later, Titania’s passion for the ass-headed Bottom represents an imbalance of appearance and nature: Titania is beautiful and graceful, while Bottom is clumsy and grotesque.

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The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 8 October 1600 by the bookseller Thomas Fisher, who published the first quarto edition later that year. A second quarto was printed in 1619 by William Jaggard, as part of his so-called False Folio. The play next appeared in print in the First Folio of 1623. The title page of Q1 states that the play was "sundry times publickely acted" prior to 1600. The first performance known with certainty occurred at Court on 1 January 1605.

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It is unknown exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but on the basis of topical references and an allusion to Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion, it is usually dated 1595 or early 1596. Some have theorized that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding, while others suggest that it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of St. John. No concrete evidence exists to support this theory. In any case, it would have been performed at The Theatre and, later, The Globe. Though it is not a translation or adaptation of an earlier work, various sources such as Ovid's Meand Chaucer's "The king's tale" served as inspiration. According to John Twyning, the play's plot of four lovers undergoing a trial in the woods was intended as a "riff" on Der Busant, a Middle Hight German poem.

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 Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream summary

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 Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream summary

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Video SparkNotes: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream summary

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The play opens with Theseus and Hippolita talking about their wedding plans, wich will take place with the appareance of the new moon. Egeus then enters with his dougther Hernia, Lysander and Demetrius. Egeus is angry because he wants his doughter to marry Demetrius but she is in love with Lysander. Egeus tells Hernia she must obey her father or as accordance with Athenian law, be executed. Theseus, duke of Athens tells Hernia there is another alternative. She can live a convent isolated from men.
Lysander, who loves Hernia sugges they escape the law of Athens and go to his aunt’s house, wich is nearly a wood where they can marry. At this moment Hernia’s best friend, Helena enters, so Lysander and Hernia tell her of their escape plan. But hoping to win Demetrius Love, Helena tell him about the plan for young enter the wood where they heante the fair Oberon, king of the faries want to help Helana to win Demetrio’s Love and orders his chief fairy assistant Puck, tapply the twice of a magic flower to Demetrius eyes as lies slepping in the wood. The juice megeally makes people fall in love with the first person we see when they awake. But Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, so Lysander fslls passionally in love with Helena and abandone Hernia. When she sees the mistake obern the uses the magic juice on Demetrius to make him also love Helena. The two young womens angry and confused and the two men begin to fight thin then insted Puck to remove Lysander love for Helena and return it to the fair lovers love new in harmony, returns to Athens and one married at the same day as Duke Theseum.

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The title page from the first quarto, printed in 1600

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A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1597. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and Hippolhyta. These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.

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Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing