Why should one of Shakespeare's plays suddenly receive almost as many productions in a single season in the Swedish theatre as it had done during the whole previous decade? Kent Hagglund, in analyzing and comparing the five productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream seen in his country between July 1989 and June 1990, explains some of the accidental reasons for such a convergence of interest – such as the availability of a new and clear modern translation, which is only now becoming part of Swedish theatrical consciousness. But he also looks at those elements in the play itself which give it a sudden contemporary relevance – notably, the struggle for dominance which manifests itself in forms of sexual violence. All five productions prove to have been closely concerned with this issue, which, suggests Hagglund, also reflects an important aspect of the crisis afflicting ‘the Swedish social ideal’ today.