One of my favorites and the first play I read aloud to my children years ago, sitting outside in lawn chairs one midsummer week.

And now those days come back to me every time I read it again. I especially remember the laughter of my oldest in all the right places.

And then there is the well-known C.S. Lewis joke about seeing the play put on by an all-girls school: "It was the first time I saw a female Bottom." In these days of potty humor this still makes me giggle.

2017 Update:
Part of my Arkangel project to listen to all of Shakespeare's plays on audio. This is the play I am most familiar with and yet, I still loved the recording. So much fun!!

2022 Update: Watched the 1981 BBC production for my goal of now watching all the plays. It was clean and fairly well done. Helen Mirren was Titania and her lines were done exquistely as would be expected. My favorite video is still the 1935 movie wih Olivia de Haviland, James Cagney, and Mickey Rooney using Mendelssohn's lovely score.

It's still as awesome as I remember. Though, unfortunately, causes me some initial irritation with The Iron King.

Robbie Goodfellow is a wicked spirit running around having fun and pulling ridiculous pranks. He's not a serious teenage boy who is dramatic and suspenseful or mysterious or sexy.

Why do we have to turn everything into sexy these days? Why does every male character have to suddenly fit the romantic male archetype?

Why are mythological creatures becoming obsessed with teenage girls?

Gonna tell people Nick Bottom is my stage name

This was the first Shakespeare I read outside of school, and I truly adored it! Everything you’d want in a play is here; humor, beautiful imagery, quotable lines, and a perfect touch of magic. I loved all the different storylines and the juxtaposition between them was so hilarious, I’m really glad I picked this up and can’t wait to get more into Shakespeare!

YouTube kanalımda Shakespeare'in hayatı, mutlaka okunması gereken kitapları ve kronolojik okuma sırası hakkında bilgi edinebilirsiniz: https://youtu.be/rGxh2RVjmNU

Bir gün 1564 yılında Shakespeare diye bir adam doğmuş ve bir gün 1927 yılında Gabriel Garcia Marquez diye de bir adam doğmuş. Bu iki adam bir masaya oturup konuşmaya başlamışlar. Masa da masaymış ha, adamlar yaşama sevinci içinde masaya kitaplarını koymuş, masa bana mısın dememiş bu kadar yüke. Shakespeare çıkarmış, benim Romeo ve Juliet'im, Hırçın Kız'ım ve Hamlet'im var demiş. Vay sen misin öyle diyen... Marquez çıkarmış, benim Yüzyıllık Yalnızlık'ım, Kırmızı Pazartesi'm ve Yaprak Fırtınası kitabım var, ayık ol demiş. Bu kapışmanın Çiçek Abbas ve Şakir'in "Aşıksan vur saza, şoförsen bas gaza" kapışmasına dönmemesi için Shakespeare ile Marquez aralarında bir karar almışlar. Edebiyat adında herkesin oynamak istediği bir kumar oyununa başlamışlar. Shakespeare, insan ilişkileri ve kadın-erkek arasındaki çıkmazları masaya bahis olarak koymuş. Marquez ise bahis yükseltip fantastik ve gerçek olayların karışımını büyülü bir gerçekçilik ile anlatmayı ve tuhaf olanın artık normalleşmesini masaya koymuş. Bahisler yükselmiş de yükselmiş. Masa da masaymış ha, ikisi de orada dünya üzerinde iki kişinin kazandığı tek kumarı oynamış. Ardından oynadıkları bu kumarın adını Bir Yaz Gecesi Rüyası koymuşlar.

While it is generally true that plays should be seen and not just read, this is even more true of Midsummer Night's Dream.

It is a popular play to be performed and I have seen it several times but struggled with the reading. Still, it is a brilliant work by Shakespeare, and very entertaining. Like so many of his works, this one has been very influential on so many romantic comedies that have come since.

Shakespeare may have tried to recreate or even improve on the fairie ideal with Ariel from The Tempest, but Puck may well be his perfect impish creation.

No ha estado del todo mal, es cortito, hay algunos enredos entre los enamorados y los no enamorados y el travieso Puck.
Sinopsis: Durante la boda de Teseo e Hipólita tiene lugar una obra plagada de fantasía, sueños, amor y magia que se entremezclan en las historias de amor de dos parejas nobles, de unos cómicos despreocupados y un grupo de miembros del mundo de las hadas.
Valoración: 5/10

The best film version is the RWC 1968 one. My favourite character being the beautiful Diana Rigg as Helena bur Judy Dench as Titania was also gorgeous! Ian Holm played a delightful Puck and Helen Mirren made a cute Hermia. And those little children who played the fairies - absolutely adorable.

PS: Saw a production of this play again this summer, one of those picnic on the lawn outdoor productions, kinda punky, kinda funky, and where the boys are bewitched to be with girls but when they are unbewitched they get together with their Truly and Fated Intendeds, boys with boys and girls with girls. The most gender fluid of any production of this play I have ever seen, which totally makes sense with all the messing around with gender/sexuality. Billy Boy, again, ahead of his time.

“My Oberon, what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamored of an ass”--Titania

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s early plays, written around 1595-96, what appears to be the tenth by the actor-turned-playwright, but considered his best at that point, and certainly one of his best loved plays ever. I read it this time because I have just reread Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Volume 4, which includes his Eisner-award-winning fantasy tale about a production of that play with some speculation about a deal the young Will made with Dream of the Endless, to have Shakespeare write this play and The Tempest. Great comics fantasy back story.

I report on my reading in mid-summer 2020, where some of my fellow country people are locking down and some are partying their little heinies off, convinced the whole thing is a hoax:

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

I won’t give you a synopsis, since you are either familiar with it or won’t care, but there are several plots and subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. So right, it’s a romantic comedy, so it has to be about love and weddings and hookups and flirtations and rejections and delusions, not necessarily in that order. One subplot revolves around a conflict between four Athenian lovers, Hermia and Lysander, another about a group of six amateur actors, Peter Quince, Nick Bottom, Francis Flute, Robin Starveling, Tom Snout and Snug who have to act out their interpretation of the play "Pyramus and Thisbe" at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta.
In a parallel plot line, Oberon, king of the fairies, and Titania, his queen, have come to the forest outside Athens. The trickster character Robin Goodfellow, or Puck, is much involved in the playful mayhem involving love potions and other machinations. So there’s a play within a play, one commenting on the other, though we might ask: Did anything happen here, or is it all a dream within a dream?

“Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream.”

Though surely no one at first read or viewing can claim they know what in the heck is going on with any certainty. But who cares, it's about fantasy and fun!

Themes include, duh, the vagaries of love--I love her and she ignores me but loves him, who loves another who ignores him, which is central to the comedy, of course:

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

It becomes clear:

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.”

More themes include dreaming, play, theater, art, Invention! The idea of performing a part or one’s identity. There are fluid sexual identities, silly jokes, and the blurring of reality and fantasy. And the supernatural. And nature is central to this romantic comedy and its sensuality:

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

So, yeah, it has lovely poetry!

And humor. Death, and grief are central to Shakspeare’s tragedies, but in the plays actors obviously “pretend” these scenarios, so in this play we have the traveling actors make fun of that process in the play within a play:

“Thus I die. Thus, thus, thus.
Now I am dead,
Now I am fled,
My soul is in the sky.
Tongue, lose thy light.
Moon take thy flight.
Now die, die, die, die.”

And there’s also some raucous, baccanalian humor. Way fun!

But if you aren’t all that literary, take the word of Samuel Pepys, who said of it in his Diary that it was "the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life,” though he admitted it had "some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure."

Най-любимата ми Шекспирова творба (поне до момента) е „Сън в лятна нощ“! Тази чудесна комедия е изпълнена със страшно много въображение и чувство за хумор…


„Ако ние, сенки леки,
сме дотегнали на всеки,
помислете, че сте спали,
ний додето сме играли;
че били са тези сцени
с разни роли разменени,
само сънна бъркотия
в мозъчната ви кутия.
Да, така си помислете:
сън един, сънуван лете,
сън с отворени очи.
И ако не прозвучи
змийска свирка в тази зала
или някой за похвала
сбърка да изръкоплеска,
зарад този опит днеска,
с други опит по-търпим
ний ще ви се отплатим.
Обещавам ви го аз,
а кажете ми: от вас,
драги господа и дами,
кой е чувал Пък да мами?“

превод: Валери Петров

Personally I think this was a good start for my reintroduction to Shakespeare. It is quite sad that I have forgotten of such a mastermind Playwright since my school days.

There is no introduction needed for a book great as this and as my review continues, I hope the readers take it with a grain of salt. This is completely based on my personal opinions regarding the play. As far as comedy goes this play does fall in the upper tier in my list and that is without doubt due to the pure wit that Shakespeare managed to incorporate in just a few pages. Plays itself generally bore me and it is with a heavy heart I look back on how most of plays of this era has lost its charm. But with comparison to the utter tragedy that books and movies have takes, the plays are still surviving and holding fast somewhat better.

Comparing masterpieces to contemporary pieces is a shame in reality. The audience and the following plays such as these have gotten has made lot of us not look at its flaws. Even myself right now would be blind to them as I have nothing to say about it too. The manner that the story has something in relation to contemporary structures too is astonishing. I’m sure we can find forlorn lovers like Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius in the 21st century too.

Now that I have read my comedy, I am ready to dive into a tragedy of Shakespeare. I shall steel my heart and go forward this.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595/96.

It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, the former queen of the Amazons.

These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (the mechanical's) 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.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز پنجم ماه جولای سال 2007میلادی

عنوان: رویا در شب نیمه تابستان؛ نویسنده: ویلیام شکسپیر؛ مترجم: مسعود فرزاد؛ تهران، انتشارات ناهید؛ چاپ چهارم 1390؛ در 185ص؛ شابک 9789646205468؛ موضوع: نمایشنامه های نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 16م

موضوع نمایش‌نامه اینکه عشق را با عقل کاری نیست،‌ بلکه همانند شاعری و دیوانگی، تابع خیال است؛ همراه خیال به وجود می‌آید، شدت یا ضعف پیدا می‌کند، و از میان می‌رود؛ دکتر «جرج براندس، دانمارکی»، در ضمن انتقاد از این درام، در تایید همین باور مینویسند: «بشر دست‌خوش غرایز، و رویاهای خویش است، و مدام یا خودش را گول می‌زند، و یا کسی دیگر او را فریب می‌دهد»؛

چکیده: «تسوس، دوک آتن»، قرار است ماه آینده، چله ی تابستان، در شبی که ماه قرص کامل است، با «هیپولیتا» ازدواج کند؛ بنابراین «تسوس» به «فیلوسترانه» رئیس تشریفات و جشن و سرورهای خود، فرمان می‌دهد، برنامه ‌ای بریزد، تا آن شب، جوانان «آتنی» واقعاً به عیش و نوش بپردازند؛ اما همگی جوانان «آتنی»، از این موضوع خوشحال نیستند؛ «لیساندر» و «دیمیتریوس»، که از کودکی با هم دوست بوده ‌اند، هردو عاشق «هرمیای» زیبا، و ریزه میزه، دختر همسایه ی ‌خویش هستند، و مشکل پیچیده ای دارند؛ «اژئوس» پدر «هرمیا»، دو پا را در یک کفش کرده، که دخترش باید شب عروسی «دوک»، و در حضور «دوک»، با «دیمیتریوس» ازدواج کند، وگرنه «هرمیا» را می‌کشد، یا به معبد کاهنان می‌فرستد، که تا پایان زندگی، همان‌جا ترشیده بماند، حال آنکه کسی در آن محله ی «آتن» نیست، که نداند «هرمیا»، از بچگی عاشق «لیساندر» بوده ‌است…؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 23/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 05/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی