Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream portrays the…
July 1596 CE
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta.
These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, who are manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set.
The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is today widely performed across the world.
It is unknown exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but on the basis of topical references and an allusion to Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion, it is usually dated 1594 or 1596.
Some have theorized that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding (numerous such weddings took place in 1596), while others suggest that it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of St. John.
No concrete evidence exists to support either theory.
In any case, it would have been performed at The Theatre and, later, The Globe.