• THESEUS, Duke of Athens
  EGEUS, Father to Hermia
  LYSANDER, in love with Hermia
  DEMETRIUS, in love with Hermia
  PHILOSTRATE, Master of the Revels to Theseus
  QUINCE, the Carpenter
  SNUG, the Joiner
  BOTTOM, the Weaver
  FLUTE, the Bellows-mender
  SNOUT, the Tinker
  STARVELING, the Tailor

  
  

  HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons, bethrothed to Theseus
  HERMIA, daughter to Egeus, in love with Lysander
  HELENA, in love with Demetrius
  
  

  OBERON, King of the Fairies
  TITANIA, Queen of the Fairies
  PUCK, or ROBIN GOODFELLOW, a Fairy
  PEASBLOSSOM, Fairy
  COBWEB, Fairy
  MOTH, Fairy
  MUSTARDSEED, Fairy
  
  

  PYRAMUS, THISBE, WALL, MOONSHINE, LION; Characters in the Interlude performed by the Clowns
  
  

  Other Fairies attending their King and Queen
  Attendants on Theseus and Hippolyta
  

Notes on Stage Directions:

Many share the belief that Shakespeare's stagecraft went hand-in-hand with his wordcraft. For that reason, we believe it is important for the reader to know which stage directions are modern and which derive from Shakespeare's earliest text—the single-play Quartos or the Folio, the first collected works (1623). All stage directions appear in italics, but the brackets enclose modern additions to the stage directions. Readers may assume that the unbracketed stage directions appear in the Quarto and/or Folio versions of the play.

Notes on Scene Locations:

Shakespeare imagined his play, first and foremost, on the stage of his outdoor or indoor theatre. The original printed versions of the plays do not give imaginary scene locations, except when they are occasionally mentioned in the dialogue. As an aid to the reader, this edition does include scene locations at the beginning of each scene, but puts all such locations in brackets to remind the reader that this is not what Shakespeare envisioned and only possibly what he imagined.