A Midsummer Night's Dream
1600
A Midsummer Night's Dream
1600
In a moonlit Athenian forest, love becomes a kind of madness. Shakespeare stages a dazzling experiment: what happens when four young lovers and a troupe of bumbling actors stumble into a realm ruled by quarreling fairies with magical potions? The result is chaos both hilarious and unsettling. Puck, Oberon's mischievous sprite, sprays juice from a purple flower on the sleeping eyes of the wrong people, and suddenly men chase women who despise them, women pursue men who reject them, and everyone wakes up certain they've been dreaming. It sounds like a farce, and it is, but beneath the giggles lies something genuinely strange: love as involuntary compulsion, desire as something that happens to us rather than something we choose. The mechanicals rehearsing their play for the Duke's wedding mirror this theme of performed identity, while Titania's enchanted love for the donkey-headed Bottom remains one of the most bizarre and funny moments in literature. Shakespeare understood that love is ridiculous, that we're all a little bewitched, and that the forest is where we go to lose ourselves. Anyone who has ever been in love, or utterly confused by it, will recognize themselves here.
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“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.””
— William Shakespeare
“Though she be but little, she is fierce!””
— William Shakespeare
“The course of true love never did run smooth; But, either it was different in blood,O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low. Or else misgraffed in respect of years, O spite! too old to be engag’d to young. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,O hell! to choose love by another’s eye.””
— William Shakespeare
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!””
— William Shakespeare
“And yet,to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.””
— William Shakespeare
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends.The lunatic, the lover and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.””
— William Shakespeare
“My soul is in the sky.””
— William Shakespeare
“If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended,That you have but slumbered hereWhile these visions did appear.And this weak and idle theme,No more yielding but a dream,Gentles, do not reprehend:If you pardon, we will mend:And, as I am an honest Puck,If we have unearned luckNow to 'scape the serpent's tongue,We will make amends ere long;Else the Puck a liar call;So, good night unto you all.Give me your hands, if we be friends,And Robin shall restore amends.””
— William Shakespeare
“Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream””
— William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lex, lex-books.com/book/a-midsummer-night-s-dream-5a2fa31a-e406-480c-9985-08089651bc93.Shakespeare, W. (1600). A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-midsummer-night-s-dream-5a2fa31a-e406-480c-9985-08089651bc93Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-midsummer-night-s-dream-5a2fa31a-e406-480c-9985-08089651bc93.



































