A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare written sometime in the 1590s. It portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the Duke and Duchess of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta, and with fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world. It is not known exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but, on the basis of topical references and an allusion to Spenser's Epithalamion, it is usually dated in 1595 or 1596. Some have theorized that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding (numerous such weddings took place in 1596), while others suggest it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of St. John. However, no concrete evidence exists to support either theory. In any case, it would have been performed at The Theatre and, later, The Globe in... full article at wikipedia