Oxford School Shakespeare: Midsummer Night's Dream - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198328664 ISBN 13: 9780198328667

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2009

Synopsis

Oxford School Shakespeare is an acclaimed edition especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations, clear background information, and rigorous but accessible scholarly credentials. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the most popular texts for study by secondary students the world over. This edition includes illustrations, preliminary notes, reading lists (including websites) and classroom notes.
This title is suitable for all exam boards and for the most recent AS/A level specifications.

About this title

Review:

Traditionally seen as one of Shakespeare's more romantic and enchanting plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream has more recently been seen as a darker and more sinister play than generations of schoolchildren have ever imagined. The play has usually been seen as a comical tale with confused identities and the fickleness of youthful love, as the young lovers, Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena escape parental control and the "sharp Athenian law" of their elders by eloping into the forest outside the city. Unfortunately they stumble into civil war in fairyland, where King Oberon and Queen Titania fight over possession of a beautiful young Indian "changeling" boy. The appearance of the "rude mechanicals", a group of Athenian workers, including the weaver Nick Bottom, compounds the confusion. Chaos, confusion and "shaping fantasies" reign before the final settlement of the play, but underneath all the hilarity many critics have discerned more ambivalent attitudes towards coercive parental control, bestial sexuality and the destructive power of desire. These approaches in no way detract from the exquisite lyricism of many sections of the play, but make it a more complex and effective comedy than has often been appreciated. --Jerry Brotton

Review:

Brilliant! I wanted an edition with 'fairly' detailed notes and this edition provided it. Notes are written on the same page as the text for ease of reference. Good intro too. Recommended. (5 star Amazon review)

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0198328664
• ISBN 13: 9780198328667
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128