A Midsummer Night's Dream: Fully Dramatized Audio Edition

By: William Shakespeare

Narrated by: full cast

Folger Shakespeare Library, The World’s Leading Center for Shakespeare Studies

The Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world's largest Shakespeare collection, brings A Midsummer Night's Dream to life with this new full-length, full-cast dramatic recording of its definitive Folger Edition.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare stages the workings of love in unexpected ways. In the woods outside Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves into couples - but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another. The king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy. Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, in an effort to distract Titania from the custody battle. While all of this is going on, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of "Pyramus and Thisbe".

This new full-cast recording - based on the most respected edition of Shakespeare’s classic - expertly produced by the Folger Theatre, is perfect for students, teachers, and the everyday listener.

Public Domain (P)Simon & Schuster

Surprisingly Entertaining

I had to read for an assingment and did not expect to like it but actually really enjoyed it. The actors were really good and the reading brought to life and helped me pay attention

A Mid Summer Nights Dream

Was tremendous. The readers were great and very professional. A great play to listen to and see. Tks

Perfect for audio

Shakespeare was obviously written for the stage so audio-only is a tall order, especially on text which is already so difficult to parse. This performance does a great job!

Memories from college

As an English major, I was instantly enamoured by Shakespeare. A lovely afternoon spent reading a great classic!

Portable theatre inside your head!

I loved it! best experience ever! The acting is fenomenal, so is the casting.
i bought it as a way to celebrate my graduation, and it was worth it. I have seen this play in the theatre many times, and listening to it bought it back in flashbacks.
The actors brought their own flare to it, and also I have to give a shout out to the sound effects, because they were amazing. Puck is the best!
I am hoping to get my hands on the other plays soon!
10/10

Amazing performance

Not my favorite Shakespeare play—the sub-plots are kind of distracting, but I enjoy the light-heartedness of it. As usual, Shakespeare deals with interesting themes like love, time, the nature of reality, the esoteric—it’s just not my favorite play! The performance was impeccable though.

wow! just wow!

to listen to, to read along, and understand was what made this happen. great audio!

Great for Reading along to the Folger edition!

I got this dramatization because I figured it would help me read this great play if I had some people performing it while I read along. While it definitely isn't a perfect representation of what it might sound like on a stage it gives a perfect sense of the characters and humor. Recommended!

Very good

Cast is excellent and the performance is true to the text. I use this version with my high school students as we study the play.

This is fun and funny.

This was one of the most enjoyable ways to spend a couple of hours I have come across. You do need a good command of older English, but if you can read the King James Bible, this won’t be that mysterious. When the peasant characters are talking, part of the humor is that they are seriously misusing almost every long word they use.