From the Royal Shakespeare Company – a fresh new edition of Shakespeare's most loved comedy.
This book includes:
* An introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream by award-winning scholar Jonathan Bate
* The play – with clear explanatory notes on each page
* A scene-by-scene analysis
* An introduction to Shakespeare's career and the Elizabethan theatre
* A rich exploration of approaches to staging the play
The most enjoyable way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or participate in it. This book presents a historical overview of A Midsummer Night's Dream in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with three leading Directors – Michael Boyd, Gregory Doran and Tim Supple – so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible - a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after his death.
