A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy by William Shakespeare, written between about 1594 and 1596 and published in 1600. It is set in Athens, but most of the action takes place in a forest inhabited by fairies, under the light of the moon. Its central theme is love and its confusions, and through its tangled plots it explores the blurring of fantasy and reality.

The play interweaves several storylines. The main one centres on the wedding of Duke Theseus to Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. Alongside it, four young Athenians become entangled in a romantic conflict: Hermia is betrothed to Demetrius at her father's insistence, yet she loves Lysander, while Helena, unrequited in her love for Demetrius, tries to win him back. They flee into the woods, where they become caught up in the quarrel of the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania, who argue over an Indian boy the queen refuses to hand over. Oberon has Puck apply a magic juice to the eyes of the young lovers and of Titania, with comic results: the queen falls in love with a donkey, and the lovers are mismatched until matters are set right.

A second thread follows a group of amateur craftsmen, the so-called mechanicals, who prepare a performance of the tragic tale of Pyramus and Thisbe for the wedding. Their rehearsals in the forest, and Bottom's transformation into an ass, provide humour and a parody of the theatre of the period.

The play has been read in many ways. Some critics see it as a festive celebration of aristocratic life tied to a royal wedding, while others stress its dark side: the way love can distort judgement and erase individual identity. Its chronology is also debated, since Theseus speaks of four days until the wedding and the forest scene takes place on a moonless night, which has led to interpretations of a liminal period of lunar darkness. Its influence has been immense, inspiring music such as Felix Mendelssohn's famous overture, Benjamin Britten's opera of 1960, and numerous film adaptations.

The usual Spanish title is an imprecise translation. Midsummer Night refers to the feast of Saint John, the summer solstice, so a more faithful rendering would be "Sueño de una noche de San Juan". The traditional title, however, has become established in common use.