A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream was a comedy play by William Shakespeare. (PROSE: A Midsummer's Nightmare)

Inspiration
Shakespeare based A Midsummer Night's Dream on a midsummer night's dream of his own. Specifically, the entry in his dream diary for 24 June 1594 was the inspiration for the play and he subsequently transcribed it into the Shakespeare Notebooks.

The dream featured a group of Sontarans on the planet Vortis, though Shakespeare described them as "war-goblins". In order to celebrate their conquering of the Isop Galaxy, they sought to prepare for a dramatic reconstruction of The Most Glorious Defeat and Most Deserv'd Death of the Trifling Rutan Foe at Fang Rock which was to be performed before the Group Marshal at a victory ceremony. The performance served to demonstrate that the Sontaran's enemies, the Rutans, were "so feeble they [were] defeated by a puny subspecies without [their] active participation". Kryntz cast himself as Colonel Skinsale, Flaxis as Leela, Starvel as Vince the lighthouse keeper, Stoun as Lord Palmerdale and Snarg as the Rutan. Before they started, they discussed how they would achieve various effects, such as the crash of the Rutan ship. While they practised, a white-haired old Doctor observed them and discovered their presence on Vortis. He then deactivated Stombot's meatamorphic field generator with his Reacting Collator, thus exposing him as a Rutan spy. The Rutan, who had killed Stombot and taken his place, proclaimed how it would have succeeded with its plan to infiltrate the ceremony and eliminate the Group Marshal had the disguise not destabilised. It then "crackled with lightning", prompting the Sontarans to back away, a retreat which soon developed into a full-blown evacuation of the planet. Now on his own, the Rutan having chased off the Sontarans, the Doctor giggled to himself, saying "good riddance to bad rubbish".

A butterfly king and queen, named Hrobron and Tetynia respectively, also appeared in a separate scene. (PROSE: The Dream)

Legacy
The Fourth Doctor called it the "one with the ass's head and the chink in the wall" when asking if Romana II was familiar with the play. She replied that she had once foregone a performance of the play in order to the see the comparatively "more useful ... and much funnier" The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Doctor didn't share her opinion, pushing back by saying, "Oh I don't know, I rather like old Shakespeare." He suggested that he could play Thisbe and Romana could play Pyramus, though he wondered aloud if it was "the other way around". This left K9 Mark II with the part of the Lion, something he was very displeased about. (PROSE: A Midsummer's Nightmare)

The Shakespeare Notebooks described A Midsummer Night's Dream as one of Shakespeare's "well-loved" plays. (PROSE: The Dream)

Owen Harper studied the play at school, quoting the line "well met by moonlight, proud Titania". He also knew of a porn version - A Midsummer Night's Wet-Dream - although he hadn't seen it "for years". (PROSE: Slow Decay)

In 1993, the University of Oxford gave an excellent production of the play. (PROSE: The Dimension Riders)

In the 2010s, it was one of the subjects that Clara Oswald's English class at Coal Hill School covered during the year. (COMIC: Spirits of the Jungle)

Behind the scenes
In 2016, BBC One aired a televised version of the play adapted by Doctor Who head writer and executive producer Russell T Davies, with music by Murray Gold, starring Matt Lucas, Bernard Cribbins, Colin MacFarlane, Richard Wilson, Nonso Anozie, Eleanor Matsuura and Kate Kennedy. It had many of BBC Wales' Doctor Who crew working on it, including casting by Andy Pryor, cinematography by Dale McCready, editing by Philip Kloss and production design by Michael Pickwoad.

The title of A Midsummer's Nightmare, a short story published in Doctor Who Annual 1981, is a reference to the play.