Book Club Guide

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare · 1600 · Classics

Key themes

Desire as irrational, uncontrollable and ultimately arbitrary
Art, performance and their relationship to dreaming
The social and natural world — and which one rules

About this book

In an enchanted forest outside Athens, four young lovers pursue and confuse each other under the influence of fairy magic while a troupe of artisans rehearse an absurd play. Shakespeare's most purely comic work is also a meditation on the unreliability of desire, the nature of dreams, and the relationship between art and illusion.

Written around 1595-96, A Midsummer Night's Dream is thought to have been composed for a courtly wedding. It is the Shakespeare play most frequently performed for children and school audiences worldwide.

Discussion questions

The lovers' affections are changed by magic and then restored. What does this suggest about the nature of desire — is the play saying that all love is, in some sense, irrational and arbitrary?
Bottom is given a donkey's head and becomes the object of Titania's enchanted love. What is Shakespeare doing with this transformation — is it purely comic, or does it say something about attraction and beauty?
The play-within-a-play — Pyramus and Thisbe — is a comic inversion of Romeo and Juliet. What is Shakespeare doing by staging a bad performance of tragic material?
The world of the fairies is entirely outside human moral codes. What does Shakespeare achieve by placing the fairies' world alongside the Athenian court?
A Midsummer Night's Dream ends with Puck suggesting the whole play might have been a dream. What does this invitation to dismiss everything you've witnessed say about the status of theatre itself?