A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps the best loved of Shakespeare's plays. It brings together aristocrats, workers, and fairies in a wood outside Athens, and from there the enchantment begins. In the introduction to this edition, Peter Holland pays particular attention to dreams and dreamers, and to Shakespeare's construction of a world of night and shadows. Both here and in his commentary he explores the play's extensive performance history to illustrate the wide range of interpretations of which it is capable.