First act

The play is lyrical in tone and masquelike in movement. It lacks the graver undertones that are audible in Shakespeare's later comedies : it is a dream, a jest, a presentation of the comic irresponsibility of young love. The play opens with Theseus and Hippolyta, two aristocrats living in Athens, who are going to get married at the end of the play, four days after, together with two other couples, Hermia an Lysander and Helena and Demetrius. While Oberon and Titania make peace. In the first scene, which takes place in Athens, there are Theseus and Hermia ; he wants to convince to marry Demetrius, Helena's beloved, Nedar's daughter, but Hermia prefers Lysander. The most important dialogue of the scene is between Helena and Hermia : the former asks the latter for the way in which he has fallen in love with her ; Hermia goes on refusing him because Lysander braver and more generous than Demetrius. Hermia goes out of the scene. In the second scene Quince and Bottom speak about the theatrical comedy and the comedy "Piramus and Tisbe" which has got to be plays during Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding.

Second act

In the second act appears on the scene the Puck's ure, a sprite that serves Oberon. Also appears Titania that quarrels with Oberon ; he talks of a magical essence that he is going to pour to Titania's eyes while she's sleeping to fall in love with the first man that she's going to see when she wakes up. Oberon's purpose is to have the e as a present from Titania, Demetrius appears followed by Helena and they start speaking. Helena is actually in love with him, but he rejects her and threatens to kill her.

Third act

In the second part of the act there are the rehearsals of the comedy for Theseus an Hippolyta's marriage. When these rehearsals are taking place a sprite, called Puck, who moves between the human and the fairy world, Oberon's servant, turns by joke Bottom, the leading actor into a donkey. He does that in order to show Oberon, Titania's husband, that the previous spell to his wife had been effective. The other comics run away whereas Titania courts insistently the unwilling Bottom : this is the end of the first scene.

In the second one Puck comes back to Oberon for disclosing the result about this second spell but he finds out that the goal of his mission wasn't that. A quarrel between Hermia and Helena, two big friends, starts because both Lysander, Hermia's lover, and Demetrius love Helena for this reason Helena fells the victim of a conspiracy. The second scene ends with Puck's spell, aimed at correcting his fault. In the background is the fairy world, centering on Oberon and Titania and their quarrel, which involves, though they do not know it, the human lovers.