title: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare Made Clear)
author:  William Shakespeare 
description: Arguably the greatest English-language playwright, William Shakespeare was a seventeenth-century writer and dramatist, and is known as the Bard of Avon. Under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I, he penned more than 30 plays, 154 sonnets, and numerous narrative poems and short verses. Equally accomplished in histories, tragedies, comedy, and romance, Shakespeare s most famous works include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, and As You Like It.
zlib_text:  
   
   
  A Midsummer Night’s 
  Dream 
   
  A Play By 
   
  William Shakespeare 
   
  
  ACT I 
  SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS. 
  Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, and Attendants  
  THESEUS  
  Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour 
  Draws on apace; four happy days bring in 
  Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow 
  This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, 
  Like to a step-dame or a dowager 
  Long withering out a young man revenue. 
  HIPPOLYTA  
  Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; 
  Four nights will quickly dream away the time; 
  And then the moon, like to a silver bow 
  New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night 
  Of our solemnities. 
  THESEUS  
  Go, Philostrate, 
  Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; 
  Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth; 
  Turn melancholy forth to funerals; 
  The pale companion is not for our pomp. 
  Exit PHILOSTRATE 
  Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword, 
  And won thy love, doing thee injuries; 
  But I will wed thee in another key, 
  With pomp, with triumph an