A Midsummer Night's Dream
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Literary enthusiasts new to Shakespeare who wish to start with his comedies
- Researchers interested in Renaissance literature and dramatic structure
- Readers who enjoy stories interweaving love themes with fantastical elements
- Those seeking a reading experience of beautiful language, rich in poetry and wisdom
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting strict historical documentary or modern realist fiction
- Readers impatient with the language rhythm and poetic dialogue of classical literature
Reading tips
- While reading, note the symbolic significance of the two spaces: the city of Athens representing 'order' and the forest representing 'chaos'
- Consider the clever device of the 'play within a play' and its mirroring and satirical effect on the theme of love
- It is recommended to imagine the vivid scenes of its stage performance in light of the play's comic nature, to better appreciate the charm of the dialogue
About the publisher
The Commercial Press is a publisher known for classic works and academic publishing, with titles spanning Eastern philosophy, foreign literature, world history, social culture, and applied psychology. Its list includes classical commentaries such as Zhu Xi's Collected Commentaries on the Analects and Wang Bi's Commentary on the Zhouyi, as well as modern annotated translations like Zhuangzi with Modern Notes and Translation. In foreign literature it offers War and Peace and Crime and Punishment, while in world history it carries Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Applied psychology is represented by Irvin D. Yalom's Existential Psychotherapy, and ethical texts include a Greek-Chinese-English edition of the Nicomachean Ethics. Its authors and translators include Zhu Xi, Wang Bi, Yalom, Braudel, and translators such as Huang Zheng, Zhang Yiling, Shen Dongyu, and Tang Jialong, balancing the editing of original texts with academic translation.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 剧中人物
- 第一幕
- 第一场 雅典。特修斯公爵宫中。
- 第二场 雅典昆斯家中
- 第二幕
- 第一场 雅典附近树林中
- 第二场 雅典另一树林中
- 第三幕
- 第一场 同前。荻太娅未醒。
- 第二场 雅典另一树林中
- 第四幕
- 第一场 树林中
- 第二场 雅典。昆斯家中。
- 第五幕
- 第一场 雅典。特修斯公爵府。
- 译后记
FAQ
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About the author
William Shakespeare was an English playwright and poet of the Renaissance, born and also buried in Stratford. His works span tragedy, comedy and history plays, with representative works including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, as well as 154 sonnets. His plays are notable for portraying character psychology and fate through the development of plot, and his language combines poetic quality with a strong sense of the stage, while his comedies and history plays each have a distinct character. This library holds 77 of his works, covering categories such as folk literature, foreign literature and classic works, including individual plays, full-color illustrated editions and multi-volume history plays. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the history of Western literature, and his works are still read, performed and studied worldwide.
Xu Yuanchong (1921–2021) was a native of Nanchang, Jiangxi, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of Peking University, and a renowned translator. He devoted more than eighty years to literary translation, with translations spanning Chinese, English, and French. He was especially known for translating classical Chinese poetry into English and developed a method and theory of rendering poetry in rhyme, earning him the reputation of being the only person to translate poetry among English, French, and Chinese. Among the 72 works in our collection, his translations include foreign literary works such as Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest, Antony and Cleopatra, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and The Taming of the Shrew, mostly classified under foreign literature. In 2014, he received the Aurora Borealis Prize for Outstanding Translation of Literature from the international translation community.
