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    A Midsummer Night's Dream
    A Midsummer Night's Dream
    A Midsummer Night's Dream
    Ebook131 pages39 minutes

    A Midsummer Night's Dream

    By William Shakespeare

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    A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, suggested by "The Knight's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written around 1594 to 1596. It portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the Duke and Duchess of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta, and with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTyché
    Release dateMay 20, 2016
    ISBN9788892505384
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare (1564-1616) es uno de los más grandes autores de todos los tiempos. Dramaturgo, actor y poeta, escribió casi cuarenta obras de teatro agrupadas generalmente según tres categorías: tragedias, comedias y obras históricas. Piezas como Romeo y Julieta, El mercader de Venecia, Hamlet, El rey Lear, Antonio y Cleopatra y Macbeth, por nombrar algunas de ellas, son aún a día de hoy estudiadas y representadas en todo el mundo. Su obra poética incluye, entre otros, tres poemas narrativos y ciento cincuenta y cuatro sonetos.

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      Book preview

      A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare

      A Midsummer Night's Dream

      William Shakespeare

      About Shakespeare:

      William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the Bard of Avon (or simply The Bard). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623 two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called bardolatry. In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world. 

      Act I

      SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS.

      Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, and Attendants

      THESEUS

      Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour

      Draws on apace; four happy days bring in

      Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow

      This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,

      Like to a step-dame or a dowager

      Long withering out a young man revenue.

      HIPPOLYTA

      Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;

      Four nights will quickly dream away the time;

      And then the moon, like to a silver bow

      New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night

      Of our solemnities.

      THESEUS

      Go, Philostrate,

      Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;

      Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;

      Turn melancholy forth to funerals;

      The pale companion is not for our pomp.

      Exit PHILOSTRATE

      Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,

      And won thy love, doing thee injuries;

      But I will wed thee in another key,

      With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.

      Enter EGEUS, HERMIA, LYSANDER, and DEMETRIUS

      EGEUS

      Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke!

      THESEUS

      Thanks, good Egeus: what's the news with thee?

      EGEUS

      Full of vexation come I, with complaint

      Against my child, my daughter Hermia.

      Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,

      This man hath my consent to marry her.

      Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke,

      This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child;

      Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,

      And interchanged love-tokens with my child:

      Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,

      With feigning voice verses of feigning love,

      And stolen the impression of her fantasy

      With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,

      Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers

      Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth:

      With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart,

      Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me,

      To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke,

      Be it so she; will not here before your grace

      Consent to marry with Demetrius,

      I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,

      As she is mine, I may dispose of her:

      Which shall be either to this gentleman

      Or to her death, according to our law

      Immediately provided in that case.

      THESEUS

      What say you, Hermia? be advised fair maid:

      To you your father should be as a god;

      One that composed your beauties, yea, and one

      To whom you are but as a form in wax

      By him imprinted and within his power

      To leave the figure or disfigure it.

      Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

      HERMIA

      So is Lysander.

      THESEUS

      In himself he is;

      But in this kind, wanting your father's voice,

      The other must be held the worthier.

      HERMIA

      I would my father look'd but with my eyes.

      THESEUS

      Rather your eyes must with his

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