How A Midsummer Night’s Dream drew on The Canterbury Tales
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Geoffrey Chaucer’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer · c. 1400
MedievalThe influenced
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare · c. 1595
ShakespeareRelevance
6/10
On A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s page
- The Theseus-and-Hippolyta wedding that frames the whole play is Chaucer's — lifted from the opening of the Knight's Tale
- Read it first and you'll hear the medieval source under the moonlit comedy; Shakespeare keeps the conquering duke and his Amazon bride, then fills the woods around them with his own fairies
- The same Chaucerian well he'd return to for The Two Noble Kinsmen
On The Canterbury Tales’s page
- Chaucer's Knight's Tale opens with Theseus, Duke of Athens, home from conquering the Amazons and about to wed Hippolyta — the exact frame Shakespeare hangs his comedy on
- The play's Athens and its royal wedding come straight from Chaucer, whose language scholars hear echoing in the verse
- Not a one-off borrowing: Chaucer was also Shakespeare's direct source for The Two Noble Kinsmen