A Midsummer Night's Dream

In the woods outside Athens, love turns to nonsense and nonsense becomes divine comedy. Shakespeare gives us four young lovers who flee the city only to find themselves in a forest teeming with fairies, where a mischievous sprite named Puck has free reign with a magical flower that makes people fall in love with the first creature they see. Hermia loves Lysander but her father demands Demetrius. Helena loves Demetrius who loves Hermia. Add Oberon and Titania, the warring King and Queen of the Fairies, and a group of bumbling amateur actors rehearsing a play for the Duke's wedding, and you have a comedy of errors where nothing stays straight and everyone ends up more confused than they began. The play captures something true about love: its irrationality, its tendency to make fools of the sensible, how quickly desire can curdle into obsession or flip into something else entirely. Bottom the weaver gets a donkey's head and the love of a fairy queen, and somehow this is the most logical thing that happens all night. Four centuries later, it remains Shakespeare's most joyous exploration of the beautiful absurdity at the heart of desire.