A Midsummer Night's Dream

William Shakespeare

Oxford Bookworms LibraryLevel 3

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by William Shakespeare.

There are broken hearts and kisses and then weddings, so this is a story about love. There are actors who are funny because they cannot act, so it is also a story that makes people laugh. And there are fairies, spirits of the night, so it is a story about mischief and magic too. What happens when love and laughter come together with magic in an Athenian forest? A Midsummer Night's Dream was written in about 1596 and is one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. It has been retold for Bookworms, not as a play, but as a story.

William Shakespeare’s

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

�True love is never easy,’ says Lysander. The four young Athenians in this story – Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena – find this out. And so, looking for answers to their difficulties, they run away to the forest outside Athens.

But Shakespeare’s forest is a place where wildly impossible things happen … The young people chase each other around the forest, but who is in love with whom, and why does love change so quickly? And they are not the only people in the forest that night. A group of workmen from the city are meeting to rehearse their play for the Duke of Athens. What extraordinary thing happens to one of the workmen? Why do his friends run from him in fear?

Because on this midsummer night, there are also fairies in the forest, spirits of the night, unseen by human eyes. They are everywhere – watching, laughing, singing, dancing, arguing. Where there are fairies, there is magic. And where there is magic, anything can happen …

Or perhaps everything that happens is just a dream – a wonderful, midsummer night’s dream …

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

This simplified edition В© Oxford University Press 2014

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First published in Oxford Bookworms 2014

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

No unauthorized photocopying

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work

ISBN: 978 0 19 478613 3

A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is available in an audio pack ISBN: 978 0 19 478597 6

Printed in China

Word count (main text): 11,167

For more information on the Oxford Bookworms Library,

visit www.oup.com/elt/gradedreaderswww.oup.com/elt/gradedreaders (http://www.oup.com/elt/gradedreaders)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Illustrations by: Fausto Bianchi/Beehive Illustration

e-Book ISBN 978 0 19 463028 3

e-Book first published 2014

PEOPLE IN THIS STORY

THE ATHENIANS

Theseus, Duke of Athens

Hippolyta, soon to become Theseus’s wife and Duchess of Athens

Egeus, an Athenian lord

Hermia, Egeus’s daughter, in love with Lysander

Lysander, in love with Hermi