A magical love potion that puts beauty in the eye of the beholder will split true love, reunite what was sundered, and put the lowest beast of burden in the arms of the noblest of Fairykind.
The action centres around a battle of wills between the King and Queen of the Fairies and it’s unintended consequences on the mortals wandering in the woods: both the two pairs of lovers who flit between each other interchangeably; and the local plebs who provide most of the comedy.

I wasn’t sure how I’d like the play as those I’d read before have all been tragedies.
AMND is quite short – only 80 pages – and takes place over three consecutive days in and near Classical Athens. It is a tale of love almost lost, diverted, discovered in strange places and then found again.
It’s funny but it seems to me to be less ‘legible’ than other works of Shakespeare, i.e. that the comedic value lies more in the performance rather than the inherent language, so sometimes the humour is somewhat more flat on the page.

The rest of the language is lyrical, especially when describing the hidden beauties of the wood, or the lovers’ increasingly desperately amorous couplets – but less of this seems to have passed into popular mythos than of his other works, which is hard to understand.

Still, it was very accessible – it’s been a while since I’d read Elizabethan English and I still had no troubles.
An enjoyable read, all in all – but you’ll want to see it properly afterward.

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