Historedia
No locationEvent

Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream and Merchant of Venice

When
1600
Where
Unspecified
Episodes
2

In 1600, Thomas Fisher published the first quarto of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Thomas Heyes published The Merchant of Venice. Both plays had been performed on the London stage prior to these publications, as noted on their respective title pages.

Episodes

  1. 1600 · UnspecifiedPublication of A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Thomas Fisher published the first quarto of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1600.

  2. 1600 · UnspecifiedPublication of The Merchant of Venice

    Thomas Heyes published the first quarto of The Merchant of Venice in 1600.

Background and detail

Publication of Quartos. The first quarto of A Midsummer Night's Dream was published by Thomas Fisher in 1600 after being entered in the Stationers' Register on 8 October. Similarly, The Merchant of Venice was published by Thomas Heyes before the end of 1600, following a transfer of rights from James Roberts.

Prior Performances. While the exact dates of first performance are unknown, the 1600 title pages for both plays claim they had been acted 'sundry times' or 'divers times' prior to publication. This indicates both works were established on the stage before their print editions appeared.

People involved

Sources

  1. A Midsummer Night's Dream Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-23
  2. The Merchant of Venice Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-12

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.