A Midsummer Night’s Dream

First performed around 1596, Shakespeare’s comic fantasy of four lovers who find themselves bewitched by fairies is a sly reckoning with love, jealousy and marriage. For centuries it’s been one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays. Read A Midsummer Night's Dream here, with side-by-side No Fear translations into modern English.

Act 1

Scene 1
Hermia and Lysander elope. Helena loves Demetrius, but Demetrius loves Hermia, so Helena decides to tell him that Hermia and Lysander have left the city, so that Helena can follow Demetrius and win back his love.

Scene 2
A group of craftsmen prepare to perform in the celebration leading up to Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding.

Act 2

Scene 1
Oberon and Titania argue over an Indian boy. Oberon, enlisting the help of Puck, decides to use a magical juice which causes a person to fall in love with the first thing they see upon waking up.

Scene 2
Oberon sees Demetrius and Helena in the forest, and decides to make Demetrius fall in love. Acting on Oberon’s orders, Puck applies the potion to Lysander’s eyelids, believing that he is Demetrius. Lysander wakes up and falls in love with Helena.

Act 3

Scene 1
Puck transforms Nick Bottom’s head into that of an ass. When Bottom’s friends flee in terror, Bottom chases after them and ends up in a glade with the sleeping Titania, who wakes and falls in love with Bottom because of Oberon's potion.

Scene 2
Puck and Oberon put the potion on Demetrius’s eyes while he sleeps, but he sees Helena upon waking and falls in love with her. Helena believes the men are making fun of her, while Hermia believes that Helena has stolen Lysander.

Act 4

Scene 1
Oberon removes the spell from Titania. Theseus and Hippolyta arrive and wake the young Athenians, but they dimly remember the previous night, only recalling that Demetrius and Helena love each other, as do Lysander and Hermia.

Scene 2
The craftsmen gather in Athens. Bottom arrives and shares that he has an incredible story from the night before, but there is no time now as they have to perform their play.

Act 5

Scene 1
The craftsmen perform their terrible play for the married couples, and after everyone exits, Oberon and Titania enter and bless the palace and its occupants.

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