A Midsummer Night's Dream inspired by the play, that was first performed in 1827. In 1842, partly because of the fame of the overture, and partly because his employer King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia liked the incidental music that Mendelssohn had written for other plays that had been staged at the palace in German translation, Mendelssohn was commissioned to write incidental music for a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that was to be staged in 1843 in Potsdam. He incorporated the existing Overture into the incidental music, which was used in most stage versions through the 19th century. The best known of
A Midsummer Night's Dream Lysander, Demetrius and Helenus (a male Helena), the play was carried to a more gender fluid era. The last performance was broadcast live all around the world through internet. W. Stanley Moss adopted the quotation, "Ill met by moonlight, (proud Titania)", from A Midsummer Night's Dream as the title of his best-selling book "Ill Met by Moonlight" published in 1950 describing the Kidnap of General Kreipe. The book was adapted into a film of the same name, directed and produced by Michael Powell and released in 1957. It featured Dirk Bogarde as Patrick Leigh Fermor and David Oxley as Moss.