A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the ten most popular titles from the best-selling Cambridge School Shakespeare series now available in a new edition. The new edition includes new and revised activities throughout, new black and white photos from the widest selection of stage and film interpretations of the plays, and a larger glossary providing extra support with the language of Shakespeare. In addition, expanded sections on characters, language, and performance history offer the best support for the KS3 SATs and GCSE coursework. The new edition also includes exciting new features to bring the play to life such as a visually stunning eight-page section packed with full-colour production photographs and a striking new cover design. The new edition remains faithful to the Cambridge School Shakespeare active approach, which treats the play as theatre and the text as a script to be acted, explored and enjoyed.

Table of Contents

List of characters; A Midsummer Night's Dream; What is the play about?; Characters; The language of A Midsummer Night's Dream; A Midsummer night's Dream in performance; William Shakespeare.

Reviews

Gr 2 Up‘Surely Nolan has created the most appealing Puck since Mickey Rooney. The wise hobgoblin piping on the cover and laughing on the title page is an irresistible lure into the story. Throughout, the artist's muted watercolors enrich the retelling. The cast of characters (except for Oberon's and Titania's elf-sized bands) look to be straight out of a high-school drama club production. Bottom is definitely the football captain who got roped into doing the play. The effect is delightfully fresh and youthful. The lush settings are perfect, from the blue Mediterranean and marble steps of Athens to the ancient magic of an enchanted forest full of huge gnarled trees with delicate sprites nestled among the vines and roots. Coville's aim, as in his version of William Shakepeare's The Tempest (Doubleday, 1994), is to tell the story in an uncomplicated manner and he does it quite smoothly, integrating Shakespeare's words into the simplified retelling, which is never so modern that the original rhythms are lost. The focus is on the two pairs of young lovers. The foolish antics of Bottom and the rustics, wonderfully slapstick and arguably the most readily accessible to young audiences of any of Shakespeare's clowning, are introduced but not elaborated upon. A Midsummer Night's Dream has been retold well in collections, but this individual treatment, verbally and visually true to the spirit of the play, will reach a new audience while delighting the old.‘Sally Margolis, formerly at Deerfield Public Library, IL

Coville follows up his version of The Tempest (see p. 84) with a retelling of another of Shakespeare's most popular plays. The fundamental story of magic, mischief and the trials and tribulations of love is preserved through well-chosen use of the original language and Coville's heady prose ("The queen... saw the ass-headed monstrosity through magic-drenched eyes"). Major plot lines are clearly and concisely rendered, but it is the portrayal of the various levels of humor-from Bottom's buffoonery to Puck's gleeful magic-making-that really captures the essence of the play. Nolan's (Dinosaur Dream) sumptuous, painterly watercolors highlight the theatrical setting of the spellbound wood. Gnarled, mossy trees provide the backdrop for a cast of unusually youthful lovers, gossamer-winged fairies (which nod at Rackham's famous interpretations) and a truly puckish Puck. A first-rate entrée to the Bard. Ages 7-up. (Oct.)