Simple and engaging on the surface, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is none the less a highly original and sophisticated work, remarkable for both its literary and its theatrical mastery. Peter Holland traces the material out of which Shakespeare constructs his world of night and shadows, and the strange but enchanting amalgam he makes of them. The commentary is admirably lucid and undogmatic on textual variants ... The introduction is of the kind that ponders and explores. Holland's method is to take each aspect or element of the play and consider it in the light of earlier traditions ... his critical position emerges unobtrusively but persuasively from the attested facts.