Written most likely during the winter of 1595-96, just before or immediately after 'Romeo and Juliet' (most tend to favor the latter version), 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is undoubtedly the pinnacle work of Shakespeare's early period and one of the most accomplished within the Shakespearean canon overall.

Very few works in the international repertoire, even those by Shakespeare himself, can stand alongside 'The Dream' and compete with it in the perfection of its construction, its originality, its dramatic cleverness, and its inventiveness. Likewise, few poetic texts since then have managed to rise to the level of 'The Dream' or repeat the poetic tonalities it invents.

And very few works have managed to mix and combine so many disparate materials into a seamless whole without flaw, to subsume so many discrepancies into a complex harmonic scale, or - since we are discussing a work that centers on a professional weaver - to interweave such different threads into a brilliant performance where its playful simplicity is never deceiving.

Four different worlds, each representing distinct fields of reference, intertwine in 'The Dream': The world of ancient mythology (Theseus and Hippolyta); the world of the four lovers, who, although characteristically Renaissance in their ways and customs of romantic communication, are presented as timeless and universal; the world of fairies, as it emerges from its medieval origins and the folk traditions of the English countryside; and the world of the craftsmen, the Elizabethan society of provincial workers, as Shakespeare would have closely known them in his birthplace Stratford.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream is a joyful comedy,' wrote A. D. Natal, adding, 'It performs the deterrence of the violent mythology from which it draws. However, the deterrence is never complete.' 'The Dream' is a festive comedy, in the broader anthropological sense of the word, whatever this may mean for theater.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]