A midsummer night's dream.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's early "festive comedies," written around 1595-6. Despite the many thematic references to "dreams" and the fantastic setting of the Athenian forest, the play also contains a fair amount of commentary on Shakespeare's contemporary English world. The play's title, for instance, refers to an English holiday custom: on "Midsummer Eve," or the night of the summer solstice on June 23, English men and women would spend the night outdoors …

…we should fear, but instead something we should enjoy. After all, didn't the fairies see to it that the characters in the play eventually had a happy ending to their dreams? So, too, we the audience - willing victims of the enchantment that is theater - will be made happy if we allow ourselves submit to its magic. "Give me your hands if we be friends," Puck concludes, "And Robin shall restore amends."