A Midsummer Nights Dream By: Nadine and Megan

Out of the many plays Shakespeare had written, A Midsummer Nights Dream is a more popular one that is known worldwide. The comedy that is believed to have been produced sometime between 1590 and 1596 was first portrayed in The Theatre, just outside the City of London, and is today preformed internationally. The story consists of supernatural characters, as well as Athenians, but the main events revolve around Theseus, the Duke of Athens, Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, and the four young, Athenian lovers, Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia and Helena. The Fairies in the drama also play a large role, and throughout the story, different relations are created between the characters. A Midsummer Nights Dream is a tale of magic, love and adventure that is told in the famous Shakespearean tone, and written uniquely from the Elizabethan period. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the play was almost never enacted completely, but was instead adapted into musicals. In 1840, the original play was brought back to stage, and had more music and dancing added to it. During the twentieth century, many things began changing about the drama, and ever since, a variety of directors from around the world created films and plays based on how they interpreted A Midsummer Nights Dream. Some major themes of the comedy are love, loss of individual identity, ambiguous sexuality and feminism. These are taken in from most of the different film, dance, and musical adaptations of the story.