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.