Queen Elizabeth I reigned from 1558 until her death in 1603. Her reign was marked with: continuing religious frictions between Protestants and Catholics after the Protestant Elizabeth replaced her Catholic successor, Mary I, in 1558; economic difficulties in later years as a war with Spain caused inflation; poverty and widening inequality between the richest and poorest of the country; and internal anxiety over who would succeed the Virgin Queen (which led to Elizabeth passing legislation banning any published discourse of succession). 

Writers at the time were becoming concerned with the effect that the “new capitalism and the expansion of trade” were creating on society. According to researcher Keith Linley: 

“This new individualism and the accompanying greed it promoted have no place in Dream, but in the clash between the wilful-self-regard both of romance and paternal authoritarianism (evident in the clash between Hermia and her father) we can see the beginnings of the crumbling of old ways and the embryonic emergence of the new individualism.”

Linley also compares Elizabeth’s administration of her realm to Theseus’s rule in his “hypocrisy” as a public figure, “smiling pleasantly to [the artisans at their appalling bad play] but criticizing them behind their backs”, when they only performed for the duke out of loyalty to him; he also adds, “the lovers betray some upper-rank snobbery while the play-within-a-play is being performed.”

The festivities of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ultimately, have very little to do with the religious, cultural, social, and political context of the time period.