"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is perhaps the best-loved of Shakespeare's plays. Simple and engaging on the surface, it is none the less a highly original and sophisticated work, remarkable for both its literary and theatrical mastery. The fact that it is one of the very few of Shakespeare's plays not to draw on a narrative source suggests the degree to which it reflects his deepest imaginative concerns. In his introduction to this new edition of the text, Peter Holland traces the material out of which Shakespeare constructed his world of night and shadows, and the strange but enchanting amalgam he made of them.