Shakespeare's Major Works

After having studied the history plays which are clearly based on historical events, regardless of the fact that the events are shaped by Shakespeare to fit into a three hour drama, it may be surprising to learn that in some plays, Shakespeare pretty much made up the story himself. Such is the case with A Midsummer Night's Dream. Thus far, no one has come up with a clear analogue. Shakespeare did borrow parts of the story, for instance the opening comes from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. "The Knight's Tale" begins as follows:

Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,
Ther was a duc that highte Theseus:
Of Atthenes he was lord and governour,
And in his tyme swich a conquerour,
That gretter was ther noon under the sonne.

Chaucer goes ahead to say that among those he conquered was Hippolyta. Apart from the opening, there are no other similarities to Chaucer. I should add that Chaucer did not invent this story either; it is a part of that corpus of literature known as the Greek Myths.

It is clear that the story of Pyramus and Thisbe was also familiar to renaissance readers. It is also a classical story which Shakespeare may have read from Ovid's Metamorphoses, or he may have simply heard the story from others as it was so well known.

Other peculiar figures in this play, Puck (Robin Goodfellow), Oberon, Titania, Peasblossom and others, come from fairy lore which was common among the rural folk in England. Shakespeare would have been well acquainted with these superstitious beliefs.

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