A Midsummer Night's Dream

Book excerpt: This graphic novel adaptation of Shakespeare's famous comedy retains the original language while the charming illustrations make the text more accessible for readers being introduced to the great dramatist's works for the first time. A concise, highly enjoyable adaptation of the classic play; one of more than 85 titles Campfire has published since their introduction to North America in 2010. At the dawn of Western civilization in ancient Athens, a young lady named Hermia has threatened to upset the order of things by announcing that she will marry the man she loves, rather than the man that her father has chosen for her. Theseus, Duke of Athens, asks, “How shall we find the concord of this discord?” Join Shakespeare as he offers us a classically entertaining solution to this problem. Under pain of death, Hermia flees Athens and spends a mad Midsummer night along with her friends along with other city-dwellers in a nearby forest. Unbeknownst to the Athenians, the forest is inhabited by a legion of fairies and the mischievous hobgoblin Puck. The fairies’ misguided attempt to help out the humans with a magical herb leads to mayhem. As the buffoon Bottom says, the night in the forest becomes “a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was”.