How A Midsummer Night’s Dream drew on Plutarch's Lives
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Plutarch’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Plutarch's Lives
Plutarch · c. 110
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare · c. 1595
ShakespeareRelevance
6/10
On A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s page
- The Athenian frame — Duke Theseus, his bride-by-conquest Hippolyta, the wedding the whole night runs toward — comes from Plutarch's Life of Theseus
- Shakespeare worked from Thomas North's 1579 translation, and North's phrasing surfaces in the play, including the backstory Theseus names in the opening scene
- Plutarch is the historical floor under the fairy mischief — read the Life of Theseus and you meet the man before Shakespeare married him off
On Plutarch's Lives’s page
- Theseus and Hippolyta, who frame the whole comedy, walked into Shakespeare's play straight out of Plutarch's Life of Theseus
- Shakespeare read it in Thomas North's 1579 English translation — North's wording is echoed in the play, including the conqueror-and-captured-queen backstory named in the opening lines
- Plutarch's Lives was Shakespeare's standing source for the classical world; here it supplies the Athenian court the lovers wander out from