The Dream of a Summer Night: a Fantasy Play in Three Acts

In this 1886 French adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Paul Meurice (1818-1905) focuses on the hilarious portion of the Bard's play in which the would-be actor, Bottom, is transformed into a ludicrous ass whom the fairy queen Titania is forced by enchantment to love. Meurice's version of Dream is a particularly smooth, timeless, and relatively modern rewrite of the original in prose. Meurice did more adaptations of Shakespeare than any of the other French Romantics, working with Alexandre Dumas, Père on a version of Hamlet, and with Auguste Vacquerie on Falstaff. First Translation into English.