Probably composed in 1595 or 1596, A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's early comedies, but can be distinguished from his other works in this group by describing it specifically as the Bard's original wedding play. Most scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream as a light entertainment to accompany a marriage celebration, and while the identity of the historical couple for whom it was meant has never been conclusively established, there is good textual and background evidence available to support this claim. At the same time, unlike the vast majority of his works (including all of his comedies), in concocting this story, Shakespeare did not rely directly upon existing plays, narrative poetry, historical chronicles or any other primary source materials, making it a truly original piece. Most critics agree that if a youthful Shakespeare was not at his best in this play, he certainly enjoyed himself in writing it (Kehler, 21).
A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most-performed plays: a delightful comedy, but full of enough potential tragedy to avoid becoming saccharine. Much of that tragic possibility comes from Shakespeare's sources, as he directly acknowledges in Act V. The entertainments Philostrate proposes, all stories taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, show the unhappy endings all too likely to spring from tales like that of the four lovers of Shakespeare's play, or the strife-torn fairy rulers (Kehler, 22).
The main plot of Midsummer is a complex contraption that involves two sets of couples (Hermia & Lysander and Helena & Demetrius) whose romantic cross-purposes are complicated still further by their entrance into the play's fairyland woods where the King and Queen of the Fairies (Oberon & Titania) preside and the impish folk character of Puck or Robin Good fellow plies his trade. Less subplot than a brilliant satirical device,
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