What period in which A Midsummer Night's Dream take place?

Answer 1

There is nothing in the play which would indicate a specific year for the setting, and indeed the elements out of which the play is created have such conflicting time references that it is impossible to even assign a general time setting to the play. The workmen are clearly contemporary Englishmen. Theseus is a character out of Greek legend, who supposedly lived in a time before history. However, he acts like a Duke from medieval or renaissance Europe.

In the nineteenth century especially there was a fad for staging Shakespeare's plays in a "historically accurate" way. This play illustrates the futility of such an effort with many of Shakespeare's plays, which had no historical context whatsoever for Shakespeare or his audiences.

Answer 2

The characters of Theseus and Hippolyta come from Ancient Greek legend, so you'd think that the setting is Mythic Greece. But the way the lovers behave is much more like contemporary England; fairies are an English, not a Greek folktale; Bottom and his pals are clearly English and contemporaneous with Shakespeare. So, in essence the time setting is ambiguous and (if you think about it) pretty much irrelevant. Only the law requiring Hermia to marry the man of her father's choice puts the story clearly in the past (unless, of course you choose to set it in modern India or the Islamic world).

Answer 3

it was set in the late 1500s, specifically 1594-1596

Answer 4

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" takes place during the summer in ancient Athens.

Answer 5

greek age