What is the significance and origin of the title of the play, A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Since the previous answer has already addressed most of the specific relationships between the text and the title, I will try to add some perspective into the thematic significance of these connections. A common theme in Shakespeare is the fragility of love. In many of his plays, love will come suddenly, leave suddenly, or even transform rapidly into violent hatred. This shows the folly of humans who are experiencing a certain type of romantic love....

Since the previous answer has already addressed most of the specific relationships between the text and the title, I will try to add some perspective into the thematic significance of these connections. A common theme in Shakespeare is the fragility of love. In many of his plays, love will come suddenly, leave suddenly, or even transform rapidly into violent hatred. This shows the folly of humans who are experiencing a certain type of romantic love. We meet a person and quickly lose our sense of priorities, reason, and judgment. This is very similar to the love potion we see in the play. It happens all at once, and without logical explanation.

However, once the relationship is over, or the courting phase of the relationship is over, reason sets back in, the normal state of affairs re-continues, and we are left to deal with the benefits or consequences of our action during this intoxicated period. The theme of the dream represents the strange flash of human behavior that occurs while humans are under the influence of romantic emotions. Sometimes we find that all this time we have been fawning over an ass, sometimes we find ourselves marrying a person, sometimes we find ourselves loving a different person than we thought we had. The play explores the nature of romantic love.