The Elizabethan popular audience had a natural love of clowning slapstick and the mayhem that was released when the rules of society were relaxed broken or subverted. A play set on Midsummer Night and structured as a dream was going to be fun and full of the resonances associated with a festal day that had age old overtones of love marriage misrule and jolllity. Midsummer was traditionally celebrated with dancing and feasting and always involved secret assignations in the woods later when it was dark. Indeed A Midsummer Nights Dream is a play with a bit of everything magic moonlight mayhem loves mad entanglements fairies mistakes mechanicals as mummers all set in the spookiness of the woods at midnight and all of it provoking laughter. The business of comedy was more important and serious than simply raising a laugh. It has always served a much graver purpose than mere humorous entertainment but has also been regarded by religious moral and cultural guardians as a lesser form than tragedy and a morally questionable one. In a world where society was strictly stratified even the arts had hierarchies. In painting devotional studies Annunciations Nativities Crucifixions were thought to be the highest endeavour and historical subjects were thought superior to landscape and portraiture. Grotesque topics of common life cardplaying village dances tavern scenes were thought of as very low art. In literature the epic poem tragic drama religious poetry history plays even lyrics and love verses were thought of as higher forms than mere comedy. Though the plays of Terence and Plautus were studied translated and performed by schoolboys and undergraduates and the satires of Juvenal and Horace were similarly on educational syllabuses comedy was regarded with suspicion. It was thought to be a too vulgar form too associated with the bourgeoisie and the commoners too concerned with trickery knavery and sex. It would not be amiss to retitle the play A Midsummer Nights Nightmare for t