History Theatre / AMidSummerNightsDream

* PantheraAwesome

* SirensAreMermaids

* StealthPun / HilariousInHindsight : A man whose name is ''Bottom'' gets giver the head of an ''ass''. There's some debate over whether "ass" was in common usage at the time, or if the play itself popularized the euphemism, or it evolved later.

* KarmaHoudini: Oberon humiliates his wife for an extremely petty reason, and gets exactly what he wanted out of it.

* MythologyGag: ''Pyramus and Thisbe'' can be considered a spot on lampoon of Shakespeare's other famous play RomeoAndJuliet, complete with StarCrossedLovers, spoilerific prologue, and sudden DownerEnding.

* ShowWithinAShow: ''Pyramus and Thisbe'', from [[Literature/TheMetamorphoses the myth]] told by {{Ovid}}.

** Productions of the show are still sometimes done using TheFairFolk model instead of the Victorian bowdlerization. When they do, you realize what the fairies are [[NotSoHarmless actually saying]].

* DoubleEntendre: See entry for BesHerToBedHer, below.

* MST3KMantra: Puck's epilogue. If the story offended you, remind yourself it was nothing but a dream.

* DoubleEntendre: See entry for TheRedSonja, below.

* TheRedSonja: Hippolyta: Theseus "wooed her with his sword"

* YourOtherLeft: "And this the cranny is, ''right and sinister..."''

* {{Tsundere}}: Hermia Type A. The only one she's tender with is her love interest given he has a certain problem with love potions she gets a little irritated.

* LoveatFirstSight: The magic flower juice causes this. The consequences are hilarious.

* Our Fairies Are Different: Many contemporary productions of this play portray the fairies with some variation of this. In fact the original play used this trope by making the fairies actually less sinister than they were commonly portrayed at the time.

* FridgeHorror: Sure, the play is all lovely and funny and such but then you walk out of the theater and you suddenly realize that this whole conflict was about which crazy, sociopathic faerie monarch is going to get that mortal child they kidnapped.
** It's a little unsettling to think that Demetrius goes the rest of his life never realizing that his "love" for Helena is just a fairy charm.

* SirensAreMermaids

* ViewersAreMorons: What Bottom thinks that the audience of his SoBadItsGood play is and takes things too literally, because he thinks that they don't have a WillingSuspensionofDisbelief

In 1993, Baz Luhrmann(known for ''MoulanRouge'' and ''WilliamShakespearesRomeoAndJuliet'') produced a critically acclaimed opera based on the play, set in colonial India. His version of the fairies' dance [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBomv_Rs2cg (Now Until the Break of Day)]] was featured in his album "Something For Everybody"

FelixMendelssohn wrote incidental music for the play, including setting the fairies' song to music. And the [[LohengrinAndMendelssohn Wedding March]].

* AuthorsSavingThrow: Played with in the epilogue, which coyly "apologizes" to anyone who didn't like the play. This was more or less formula for the period, and shows again in TheTempest, among other places.

* HotAmazon: Hippolyta.

* TheLostWoods

* {{Tsundere}}: Hermia

* Our Fairies Are Different: Many contemporary productions of this play do the Faries in this manner. In fact the original play actually used this trope by making the fairies less sinister than they were commonly portrayed at the time.

* Our Faries Are Dfferent: While not required many productions of this play do the Faries in this manner. In fact the original play was a version of this by making actually less sinister than they were commonly portrayed.

* OurFariesAreDfferent: While not required many productions of this play do the Faries in this manner. In fact the original play was a version of this by making them LESS sinister

** It's also a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramus_and_Thisbe real myth]], [[TheMetamorphoses told by Ovid]]. Shakespeare based RomeoAndJuliet on ''Pyramus and Thisbe'', [[OlderThanTheyThink not the other way around.]]

* ShowWithinAShow: ''Pyramus and Thisbe'', from [[TheMetamorphoses the myth]] told by {{Ovid}}.

* AllJustADream: At the end of the play, the couples and Nick Bottom decide, with the help of TheFairFolk, that the night's events were just a dream, and in the epilogue spoken by Puck, he [[NoFourthWall advises the audiences]] that if they were offended by the play, they should consider the play "[[MST3KMantra no more yielding, but a dream]]."

This is the play that that kid killed himself over in ''DeadPoetsSociety''. Like most of Shakespeare's famous plays, it's been adapted to film several times, most recently a 1999 Hollywood production set in 19th Century Italy: despite a star-studded cast (including Calista Flockhart, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christian Bale and several others) and high production values, it met with mixed reviews at best. There's also a version from the '30s in which [[WTHCastingAgency James Cagney plays Bottom]] and a tweenish MickeyRooney plays Puck, as well as a British production from 1968 that's notable mostly for dressing the fairies in its cast in [[{{Stripperiffic}} vines and green body paint]]. The fairies feature largely in PoulAnderson's ''AMidsummerTempest''.

This is the play that that kid killed himself over in ''DeadPoetsSociety''. Like most of Shakespeare's famous plays, it's been adapted to film several times, most recently a 1999 Hollywood production set in 19th Century Italy: despite a star-studded cast (including Calista Flockhart, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christian Bale and several others) and high production values, it met with mixed reviews at best. There's also a version from the '30s in which [[WTHCastingAgency James Cagney plays Bottom]], as well as a British production from 1968 that's notable mostly for dressing the fairies in its cast in [[{{Stripperiffic}} vines and green body paint]]. The fairies feature largely in PoulAnderson's ''AMidsummerTempest''.