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 compatriots was performed as a droll. Drolls were comical playlets, often adapted from the subplots of Shakespearean and other plays, that could be attached to the acts of acrobats and jugglers and other allowed performances, thus circumventing the ban against drama. When the theatres re-opened in 1660, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was acted in adapted form, like many other Shakespearean plays. Samuel Pepys saw it on 29 September 1662 and thought it ""the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw ..."" After the Jacobean / Caroline era, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was never performed in its entirety until the