A Midsummer Night's Dreamthe whole play in modern English, scene by scene
Four young lovers run into a wood, a fairy king meddles with the wrong eyes, and a weaver is given a donkey's head. Shakespeare's most-performed comedy. Every scene below shows Shakespeare's original text and a plain modern English translation side by side — free, printable, no account, no paywall.
Act 1
- Scene 1Duke Theseus is preparing to marry Hippolyta when Egeus interrupts to demand that his daughter Hermia marry Demetrius, invoking an Athenian law that lets him have her executed if she refuses.
- Scene 2Six Athenian tradesmen — Peter Quince the carpenter, Nick Bottom the weaver, Flute, Snout, Snug and Starveling — meet to cast a play, "Pyramus and Thisbe," which they hope to perform at Duke Theseus's wedding.
Act 2
- Scene 1In the wood outside Athens, Puck explains that Oberon and Titania are at war over a stolen Indian boy, and their quarrel has thrown the weather and the seasons into chaos.
- Scene 2Titania's fairies sing her to sleep in her bower, and Oberon steals in and squeezes the love-juice onto her eyelids.
Act 3
- Scene 1Quince's company gather in the wood to rehearse "Pyramus and Thisbe," fretting that the sword-fight and the lion will frighten the ladies and inventing prologues to reassure them.
- Scene 2Puck reports to Oberon that Titania has fallen for a man with an ass's head, but Oberon discovers Puck charmed the wrong Athenian and orders him to fetch Helena.
Act 4
- Scene 1Titania fusses over Bottom in her bower until they fall asleep together, and Oberon — having got the Indian boy from her while she was besotted — takes pity and lifts the spell.
- Scene 2Back in Athens, Quince, Flute, Snout, Starveling and Snug despair: Bottom has vanished, and without him "Pyramus and Thisbe" cannot be performed for the Duke — costing them all the pension they had hoped for.
Act 5
Famous lines
- “The course of true love never did run smooth.” — Act 1, Scene 1
- “Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,” — Act 1, Scene 1
- “I will roar you as gently as any sucking / dove; I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale.” — Act 1, Scene 2
- “Marry, our play is _The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of / Pyramus and Thisbe_.” — Act 1, Scene 2
- “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.” — Act 2, Scene 1
- “I’ll put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes.” — Act 2, Scene 1
- “One turf shall serve as pillow for us both; / One heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth.” — Act 2, Scene 2
- “Who will not change a raven for a dove?” — Act 2, Scene 2
- “Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! Thou art translated.” — Act 3, Scene 1
- “reason and love keep little company together nowadays.” — Act 3, Scene 1
A free No Fear Shakespeare alternative
If you came here looking for a No Fear Shakespeare–style A Midsummer Night's Dream, this is the same idea without the wall: SparkNotes now puts most of each play behind a subscription, while every scene here is free — the original text and a plain modern English translation side by side, phone-friendly, printable, and downloadable as a full-play PDF. We're not affiliated with SparkNotes; our translations are written in-house from the public-domain text, and you can paste any line from any edition to translate it.
Want to read Shakespeare unassisted? The Shakespearean English course teaches the grammar and vocabulary behind these lines — or paste anything into the Shakespearean English translator.