A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1600

Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed around 1595 and published in 1600, in a quarto printed by Richard Bradock. This edition provides a photographic facsimile of this text taken from the Huntingdon Library copy, one of the eight which survive. In his introduction the editor, Thomas L. Berger, discusses the nature of the manuscript from which the printer worked, reconstructs the printing process, and assesses its impact on the text. Professor Berger also analyses the many interesting differences, in stage directions and the assignment of speeches, between the Quarto and Folio versions of the play, and considers the extent to which that may be the result of Shakespeare’s own revisons. The text reproduced here includes both Quarto and Folio through-line-numbering in the margin , and a table is appended which matches the Quarto pages and line numbers with the act, scene,and line numbers of the Riverside Shakespeare.