A Midsummer Nights Dream, William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Nights Dream, William Shakespeare
6 Rating(s)
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
Fully Dramatized Audio Edition

Author: William Shakespeare

Narrator: Full Cast Dramatization

Unabridged: 2 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/05/2014

Categories: Fiction, Drama


Synopsis

FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY
The World’s Leading Center for Shakespeare Studies

The Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, brings A Midsummer Night’s Dream to life with this new full-length, full-cast dramatic recording of its definitive Folger Edition.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare stages the workings of love in unexpected ways. In the woods outside Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves into couples—but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another. The king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy. Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, in an effort to distract Titania from the custody battle. While all of this is going on, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of “Pyramus and Thisbe.”

This new full-cast recording—based on the most respected edition of Shakespeare’s classic—expertly produced by the Folger Theatre, is perfect for students, teachers, and the everyday listener.

About Full Cast Dramatization

The Folger Shakespeare Library is a world-renowned research center on Shakespeare and on the early modern age in the West. Its conservation lab is a leading innovator in the preservation of rare materials. Its well-known public programs include plays, concerts, literary readings, family activities, and exhibitions, as well as numerous programs for students and teachers. The Folger also publishes the illustrated, completely re-edited Folger Editions of Shakespeare's plays, award-winning exhibition catalogs, and the journal Shakespeare Quarterly. The Folger opened in 1932 as a gift to the American nation from Henry Clay Folger and his wife Emily Jordan Folger. It is administered by a Board of Governors under the auspices of Amherst College, Henry Folger’s alma mater.

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Anne on May 07, 2025

That Helena is a bitch. I know the big draw for this play is all the fairy goings-on, but upon re-reading/re-listening to it for the umpteenth time, I was more interested in the insane inner workings of Helena's mind. Ok. Get this. Hermia and Lysander are in love. But Hermia's dad wants her to marry D......more

Goodreads review by jessica on April 25, 2020

how to flirt, shakespeare style, a midsummer nights dream edition:- elope with your love in a fairy wood - follow your friends into the fairy wood with your ex-fiancé, who you still pine over even though he loves another woman - become entranced by magic flower juice and chase after the wrong girl unt......more

Goodreads review by Bill on July 21, 2021

Re-reading the play this time, I couldn't stop thinking about The Magic Flute. Like Mozart's opera, Shakespeare's play may have a silly plot composed of fanciful, seemingly arbitrary elements, yet, through the power of absolute artistic mastery, the framework of what might otherwise be nothing but a......more

Goodreads review by Emma on August 13, 2020

"And with her height, forsooth, she hath prevailed with him. How low am I? I am not yet so low But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes." i felt that Hermia......more

Goodreads review by Henry on February 06, 2021

One of Shakespeare's most popular comic plays though a figment of the imagination an illusion, a delusion in actuality that's the pity... such a delectable world to inhabit. Essentially a love story between two couples, a thin plot device in a mythical Athens which never was . Lysander loves his gir......more