A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn) form and shaped by regular phrasings and harmonic transitions. The piece is also noted for its striking instrumental effects, such as the emulation of scampering 'fairy feet' at the beginning and the braying of Bottom as an ass (effects which were influenced by the aesthetic ideas and suggestions of Mendelssohn's friend at the time, Adolf Bernhard Marx). Heinrich Eduard Jacob, in his biography of the composer, said that Mendelssohn had scribbled the chords after hearing an evening breeze rustle the leaves in the garden of the family's home. The overture begins with four chords in the winds. Following the first
Puck (A Midsummer Night's Dream) Lysander's eyes, which will cause him to fall back in love with Hermia. The four lovers wonder if the events that occurred in the forest were real, or merely a shared delusion (or, to put it another way, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"). At the end of the play (Act 5 Scene 1) Puck delivers a speech in which he addresses the audience directly, and suggests that anyone who might have been offended by the play's events should, like the characters, consider that the whole performance was just a bad dream: <poem> If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and