"This edition of A Midsummer Night-s Dream takes the comedy seriously. Like my previous Hackett editions, it gives full weight to Shakespeare-s dramatic setting, which other editors (and scholars) almost always ignore or at least fail adequately to consider. Ancient Athens is the core, not the mere background, of Midsummer-Night's-Dream. As we shall see, Shakespeare focuses, in particular, on the love of the beautiful and the triumph of learning and art, along with the rise of democracy, which, as Pericles- famously claims, are the hallmarks of Athens. 'We are lovers of the beautiful with thrift, and lovers of wisdom without softness' (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.40.1). [-] ---Failure to consider classical Athens as central to Midsummer-Night's Dream will cause a reader to miss not only the play-s remarkable substance, but much of its sparkling comedy as well. Far from impeding the play-s humor, focusing on Athens helps to bring out multi-layers of comedy that Shakespeare put
