This edition, edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex, forms part of the Wordsworth Classics’ Shakespeare Series, launched alongside Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and The Merchant of Venice as its inaugural volumes – a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare’s works whose textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. A Midsummer Night’s Dream owes its long-standing popularity to its lyricism, its comedy both broad and subtle, and its magical transformations, in which the supernatural and the mundane, the illusory and the substantial, blend shimmeringly together and love appears by turns tragic, poignant, absurd and farcical. ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’, jeers Robin Goodfellow – though the joke may fall on him and on his master Oberon once Bottom the weaver, his head turned into that of an ass, finds himself embraced by the voluptuously amorous Titania. Recent stage productions have leaned into the enchanting, spectacular, ambiguous and erotically joyous sides of this magical drama, which builds to a multiple celebration of marriage.
ISBN 13: 9781853260308
Author: William Shakespeare
