Cliff’s Notes: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Contents appear as unread & unblemished in like wraps. Signed by Cliff Hillegass back of front flap. (Clifton K. Hillegass was the creator and publisher of CliffsNotes. CliffsNotes are study guides that assist college and high school students in their literature course work. CliffsNotes began in 1958 as $1 reprints of Canadian study guides for 16 plays by Shakespeare. At that time, Hillegass worked for a major distributor of college textbooks.)

These Notes present a clear discussion of the action and thought of the work under consideration and a concise interpretation of its artistic merits and its significance.

A Midsummer Night's Dream was written in a highly creative period in Shakespeare's career, when he was moving away from the shallow plots that characterized his earlier drama and discovering his more mature style. Most critics believe the play was written for and performed at an aristocratic wedding, with Queen Elizabeth I in attendance. Scholars estimate the play was written in 1595 or 1596 (when Shakespeare was 31 or 32 years old), at approximately the same time as Romeo and Juliet and Richard II. Obvious plot links exist between A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet, and critics disagree about which play was written first. Not only do both dramas emphasize the conflict between love and social convention, but the plot of "Pyramus and Thisbe," the play-within-the-play of A Midsummer Night's Dream, parallels that of Romeo and Juliet. Critics have wondered if Romeo and Juliet is a serious reinterpretation of the other play, or just the opposite: Perhaps Shakespeare is mocking his tragic love story through the burlesque of "Pyramus and Thisbe."

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