The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare

• The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare
• About
• Get help in the Literature Group

A Fairy Tale

Fairy Tale, A,
a two-act adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream hurriedly abbreviated by George Colman the elder at Drury Lane from a full-length version of the play which, prepared in association with David Garrick, proved a disastrous failure in November 1763. A Fairy Tale opened only three days after the longer version closed, and makes something of a hasty mess of the original's structure: Theseus, Hippolyta, and the lovers disappear, leaving only the fairies and the mechanicals, who rehearse Pyramus and Thisbe but never get to perform it.

Michael Dobson

Oxford University Press Titles

• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
• The Oxford Dictionary of Economics
• The Oxford Companion to American Literature
• The Oxford Companion to American Military History
• The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization
• The Oxford Companion to English Literature
• The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales
• The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare
• The Oxford Dictionary of Plays
• The Oxford Dictionary of Art
• Oxford Dictionary of Sociology
• Oxford Dictionary of World History
• Oxford Dictionary of World Mythology