A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Wordsworth Classic Shakespeare series,with romeo and juliet,henry V and the merchant of venice as its inaugural volumes,presents a newly-edited sequence of william shakespeare`s works.The textual editing takes a account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappreisal.Its lyricism,comedy (both broad and subtle) and magical transformations have long made A Midsummer Night`s Dream one of the most popular of shakespeare`s works.The supernatural and the mundane,theillusory and the substantial,are allshimmeringly blended.Love is treated as tragic,poignant,absurd and farcical.`Lord,what fools these mortals be`!,jeers Robin Goodfellow;but the joke may be on him and his master Oberon when Bottom the weaver,his head transformed into that of an ass,is embraced by the voluptuously amorous titania.Recent stage-productions of A Midsummer Night`s Dream have emphasised the enchanting,spectacular,ambiguous and erotically jouous aspects of thes magical drama which culminates in a multiple celebration of marriage.