ISBN:
0743477545
Title: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Folger Shakespeare Library) Pdf
Author: William Shakespeare
Published Date: 2003-12-23
Page: 256
William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.Barbara A. Mowat is Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and their editing.Paul Werstine is Professor of English at the Graduate School and at King’s University College at Western University. He is a general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare and of many papers and articles on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays. William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare stages the workings of love. Theseus and Hippolyta, about to marry, are figures from mythology. In the woods outside Theseus’s Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves out into couples—but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another.
Also in the woods, the king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy; Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, whose head is temporarily transformed into that of a donkey by a hobgoblin or “puck,” Robin Goodfellow. Finally, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of “Pyramus and Thisbe.”
The authoritative edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:
-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading
Essay by Catherine Belsey
The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.
If you haven't read it... do it now When looking at classics this is one of the first one many people read. And for good reason. Shakespeare wrote a great tale of a love triangle, a fun-loving fae, and fae-king in love, and one night of errors ending well. Although I'm of the opinion that what happens off-page is a little dirtier than what happens on page :-PI know a lot of people who started with Romeo and Juliet and got turned off... I wish they'd give it another shot. This play is fantastic.Excellent scholarship/background; TERRIBLE Functionality This edition provides an outstanding preface and an excellent introduction into the historical background of the work. All the scholarship expected from Arden. BUT to the actual experience - with this edition you CONSTANTLY lose your place. The text of the play contain links which direct you to the glossary at the back for further info, which is great. But half the time when you hit the arrow back to go to the spot where you left, the Kindle simply exits out of the book altogether and goes back to the home screen of the Kindle device - you lose your spot. You can click back in, but it takes you - you guessed it - back to the glossary. It's tedious and frustrating having to then navigate the table of contents and find your way back. Having all of that supplemental information is great but when you're constantly losing your place what's the point?This edition is honestly really disappointing because of that quirky glitch that ruins the otherwise outstanding content presented to the reader. None of my other purchases lose their spot like that, at least not as consistenly as this does for whatever reason. Disappointed.Terrible introduction So far, in the last year and a half, I have read 15 of the Arden Shakespeare Collection and 'A Midsummer's Night's Dream' has the worst introduction of them all. The writer spends so much time with the history of the play's productions that the work itself suffers. In an introduction the work is the key, not its history. Analysis of plot, character development, metaphysics, key phrases, the characters' relationships to one another and to the text, motives, etc, are crucial, for me, before I read the play. I have nor seen that many of Shakespeare's plays, but I find reading them rewarding and exciting. But first, before I get started reading the text, I need a warm-up that smoothes me into the play. The writer of this intro, Chaudhuri, holds the key components of Dream at a distance, while going on and on about where it was produced, who produced it, the actors who played certain characters, its translation into movies, TV, opera, while staying completely away from the text. I want to know about the characters in the play and their interrelationships with one another, an analysis of crucial scenes and how they move the plot forward, how key phrases reveal the inner depths of the characters' motives; in short, a body of knowledge that helps me along as I read the play. Its production history should be in the last few pages of the introduction, not take up more than half of it. I have gone ahead with the reading of Dream without the aid of a good intro and it is moving along nicely but an in-depth intro would have been so helpful.
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