Product Description

This new edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream is part of the established Cambridge School Shakespeare series and has been substantially updated with new and revised activities throughout. Remaining faithful to the series' active approach it treats the play as a script to be acted, explored and enjoyed. As well as the complete script of A Midsummer Night's Dream, you will find a variety of classroom-tested activities, an eight-page colour section and an enlarged selection of notes including information on characters, performance, history and language.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34586 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 172 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Traditionally seen as one of Shakespeare's more romantic and enchanting plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream has more recently been seen as a darker and more sinister play than generations of schoolchildren have ever imagined. The play has usually been seen as a comical tale and confused identities and the fickleness of youthful love, as the young lovers, Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena escape parental control and the "sharp Athenian law" of their elders by eloping into the forest outside the city. Unfortunately they stumble into civil war in fairyland, where King Oberon and Queen Titania fight over possession of a beautiful young Indian "changeling" boy. The appearance of the "rude mechanicals", a group of Athenian workers, including the weaver Nick Bottom, compounds the confusion. Chaos, confusion and "shaping fantasies" reign before the final settlement of the play, but underneath all the hilarity many critics have discerned more ambivalent attitudes towards coercive parental control, bestial sexuality and the destructive power of desire. These approaches in no way detract from the exquisite lyricism of many sections of the play, but make it a more complex and effective comedy than has often been appreciated. --Jerry Brotton

Customer Reviews

Excellent
As well as the great play itself, you get superb notes on the facing pages. This means that while you're reading a page, explanations, questions and snapshot photos are there to really enhance the experience.

I think this is the same paperback version that is used in schools, but it doesn't come across as stuffy or preachy. An excellent edition.

Excellent for lunatics,lovers and poets!
If you love this play and are thrillled by the stage history and staging minutiae, the this book will send you reeling! The historical reasearch is encyclopediac and captivating. Your rude sea will grow civil with its song.

ben parrish;review on the best Shakespeare play.
A Midsummer Nights Dream ,in my opinion,is the best play written by Shakespeare. It hosts love ,humour and myth with its four lovers,Work men and fairies. I find it amazing how all of these plots entwine with each other and have significance to each other.EG,the work men go to the forest where the fairies live and the lovers(Hermia,lysander,helena,demetrius)go there also. To me its the best Shakespeare play ever written.