《仲夏夜之夢》是莎士比亞最富浪漫色彩的喜劇，故事主要描述在英國田野鄉間有一群仙女，在仲夏夜時分，如何戲弄和迷惑年輕人，以及長年居住鄉間的鄉下人，如何對仙女的出現產生幻想的故事。《仲夏夜之夢》是一部結合戲劇與童話的作品，莎翁運用豐富的想像力，創造出色彩繽紛的奇幻世界，全劇瀰漫在充滿了田園景色的綠色森林中，而它首次在倫敦上演時，更因為風趣的對白及誇張的肢體動作，為當時保守的英國寫下一個創新的註腳。
From the Royal Shakespeare Company -- a fresh new edition of Shakespeare's most loved comedy. 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. www.rscshakespeare.co.uk

作者簡介：

About the Author
JONATHAN BATE is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, University of Warwick, UK, and the editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge, and a Governor and Board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. A prominent critic, award-winning biographer and broadcaster, he is the author of several books on Shakespeare, including The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador), which was praised by Sir Peter Hall, founder of the RSC, as "the best modern book on Shakespeare." In June 2006 he was awarded a CBE by HM The Queen 'for services to Higher Education'. ERIC RASMUSSEN is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, USA, and the Textual Editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama and has edited volumes in both the Arden Shakespeare and Oxford World's Classics series. He is the General Textual Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project - one of the most visited Shakespeare websites in the world. For over nine years he has written the annual review of editions and textual studies for the Shakespeare Survey.