A Midsummer Night’s Dream
After Duke Theseus rejects their marriage prospects, four Athenians run to the forest seeking their beloveds. Unbeknownst to them, Oberon, King of the Fairies, is grappling with his own marriage troubles. When Oberon schemes to use a love potion on Queen Titania, hilarious disaster ensues when the mischievous fae, Puck, decides to help the lovesick Athenians.
At a Glance
Love • Magic • Supernatural
After Duke Theseus rejects their marriage prospects, four Athenians run to the forest seeking their beloveds.
Unbeknownst to them, Oberon, King of the Fairies, is grappling with his own marriage troubles. When Oberon schemes to use a love potion on Queen Titania, hilarious disaster ensues when the mischievous Puck decides to help the lovesick Athenians.
Translator Jeffrey Whitty hopes “that my translation will lift audience spirits as a supplement to Shakespeare’s indelible original. While the language is sometimes mine, the architecture is all Shakespeare, as fresh as anything on the boards these days.”
Play On Podcasts
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Translation by Jeffrey Whitty
Directed by Catherine Eaton
Tony Award–winning and Oscar-nominated storyteller Jeffrey Whitty offers his adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mindfully adapted into modern language. Matching the Bard line for line, rhyme for rhyme, Whitty illuminates Shakespeare’s meaning for modern audiences while maintaining the play’s storytelling architecture, emotional texture, and freewheeling humor. Designed to supplement, not supplant, the original, Whitty’s Midsummer cuts through the centuries to bring audiences a fresh, moment-by-moment take, designed to flow as effortlessly for modern audiences as Shakespeare’s beloved classic played to the Elizabethans.
Paperback & eBooks
A Midsummer Night's Dream
By William Shakespeare
Translation by Jeffrey Whitty
Shakespeare’s most spirited play, adapted for new audiences by Jeffrey Whitty.
This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
Production History
May 8, 2020
FIRST READS: An Online Educational Series
A livestreamed exploration of Midsummer featuring actors from across the country under the direction of Sara Bruner with dramaturgy by Philippa Kelly.
June 4, 2019
Play On! Festival NYC
Rehearsal and Staged Reading directed by Jeff Whitty with full cast as part of the Play On! Translation Festival in NYC.
Produced by:
Play On! / Classic Stage / Oregon Shakespeare Festival
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