SOURCE: Wiles, David. “The Carnivalesque in A Midsummer Night's Dream.” In Shakespeare and Carnival after Bakhtin, edited by Ronald Knowles, pp. 61-82. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1998.
In the following essay, Wiles examines the festive and carnivalesque elements in A Midsummer Night's Dream. According to the critic, the play was historically part of an “aristocratic carnival” used to celebrate weddings in upper-class society.
