SOURCE: "Bottom's Dream, the Lion's Roar, and Hostility of Class Difference in A Midsummer Night's Dream" in From the Bard to Broadway: The University of Florida Department of Classics Comparative Drama Conference Papers, Vol. VII, edited by Karelisa V. Hartigan, University Press of America, 1987, pp. 191-212.

In the following essay, Schneider asserts that the issue of class tension and aggression is suggested in A Midsummer Night's Dream through the language of the working class characters (Bottom and his associates), and especially through the Bottom and Titania episode, whose source is "classical social satire."

As the name itself could hardly suggest more emphatically than it does, A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that—on surface appearance anyway—has little to do with politics, let alone class conflict. Among Shakespeare's early comedies, MND is often seen as a precursor to the late romances, A Winter's Tale and The Tempest...