A Midsummer Night's Dream
A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by William Shakespeare.
There are broken hearts and kisses and then weddings, so this is a story about love. There are actors who are funny because they cannot act, so it is also a story that makes people laugh. And there are fairies, spirits of the night, so it is a story about mischief and magic too. What happens when love and laughter come together with magic in an Athenian forest? A Midsummer Night's Dream was written in about 1596 and is one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. It has been retold for Bookworms, not as a play, but as a story.
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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
‘True love is never easy,’ says Lysander. The four young Athenians in this story – Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena – find this out. And so, looking for answers to their difficulties, they run away to the forest outside Athens.
But Shakespeare’s forest is a place where wildly impossible things happen … The young people chase each other around the forest, but who is in love with whom, and why does love change so quickly? And they are not the only people in the forest that night. A group of workmen from the city are meeting to rehearse their play for the Duke of Athens. What extraordinary thing happens to one of the workmen? Why do his friends run from him in fear?
Because on this midsummer night, there are also fairies in the forest, spirits of the night, unseen by human eyes. They are everywhere – watching, laughing, singing, dancing, arguing. Where there are fairies, there is magic. And where there is magic, anything can happen …
Or perhaps everything that happens is just a dream – a wonderful, midsummer night’s dream …
PEOPLE IN THIS STORY
THE ATHENIANS
Theseus, Duke of Athens
Hippolyta, soon to become Theseus’s wife and Duchess of Athens
Egeus, an Athenian lord
Hermia, Egeus’s daughter, in love with Lysander
Lysander, in love with Hermia
Demetrius, in love with Hermia
Helena, in love with Demetrius
THE ACTORS
Peter Quince, who reads the Prologue
Nick Bottom, who plays Pyramus
Francis Flute, who plays Thisbe
Tom Snout, who plays Wall
Snug, who plays Lion
Robin Starveling, who plays Moonshine
THE FAIRIES
Oberon, the fairy King
Titania, the fairy Queen
Puck, fairy servant to Oberon
CHAPTER 1
Young love
Athens, on a summer night. The air is soft and warm. In the sky the moon shines, throwing its bright silvery light over the old city and the dark forest beyond. There are faces at a window in the great palace on top of the hill. It is Theseus, Duke of Athens, and the beautiful Hippolyta, looking up at the moon …
‘Hippolyta, my love,’ said the Duke, ‘our wedding day comes closer. In four happy days there will be a new moon.’ He took Hippolyta’s hand and pulled her towards him. ‘But how slow this old moon is!’ He sighed. ‘Why can’t it hurry away and bring our wedding day faster.’ He kissed Hippolyta’s hand, and she laughed.
‘Four days will quickly end in nights,’ she said softly, ‘and four nights will quickly pass in dreams. And then the new moon will shine on our celebrations.’
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