A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's early "festive comedies," written around 1595-6. Despite the many thematic references to "dreams" and the fantastic setting of the Athenian forest, the play also contains a fair amount of commentary on Shakespeare's contemporary English world. The play's title, for instance, refers to an English holiday custom: on "Midsummer Eve," or the night of the summer solstice on June 23, English men and women would spend the night outdoors …showed first 75 words of 10221 total…

…showed last 75 words of 10221 total…we should fear, but instead something we should enjoy. After all, didn't the fairies see to it that the characters in the play eventually had a happy ending to their dreams? So, too, we the audience - willing victims of the enchantment that is theater - will be made happy if we allow ourselves submit to its magic. "Give me your hands if we be friends," Puck concludes, "And Robin shall restore amends."