Midsummer Night's Dream

The 1600 First Quarto edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream is the only text of the play to have been printed in Shakespeare's lifetime and has served...more

The 1600 First Quarto edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream is the only text of the play to have been printed in Shakespeare's lifetime and has served as the source for virtually all subsequent editions. It has many features suggesting that it was printed from Shakespeare's 'foul papers' - his manuscript draft - and that this draft had undergone revision before reaching the publishing house. The First Quarto text is a full and coherent version of the play, close to that with which modern readers and theatre-goers are familiar. Its differences from other early texts, particularly that on the 1623 First Folio, are relatively slight, but they raise important questions about the stability of dramatic texts as they are transmitted through time, and about the authority of their authors - even an author as 'iconic' as William Shakespeare.   less