One might think “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is the perfect vehicle for the naughty antics of Christopher Moore’s jester, Pocket.

In “Fool,” Moore had irreverent fun with his parody of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” tragedy turned farce when told from the perspective of the court jester.

In “The Serpent of Venice,” Moore introduced Pocket to Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.”  

Like most Moore books, they are irreverent comedies, poking fun at the material and well as – “sniff” – respectable sensitivities.

So, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” should be the perfect setting for Pocket, right?

“Midsummer” is something of a lusty romp on its own, with magic and love potions gone amok, a farce, or sorts, with poetry and fairies and other mythical beings.

“Lear” could use a good skewering. The “Merchant” parody is splendid with a serpent in the canals of Venice.

But “Midsummer” already has plenty of bawdy without Moore throwing more bawdy into the mix.

Moore turns “Midsummer” into a whodunit murder mystery after Puck, fairy jester to Oberon the shadow king, is killed.

Pocket becomes a bit of an Agatha Christie character revealing the murderer through a play before the assembled royals.

“Squirrels” is fun … it is Christopher Moore, after all.

Still, one can’t help but wish he’d been allowed to completely do what he had planned to do: toss Pocket, “Midsummer” and all of the fairies into a 1940s “tough-guy” era of San Francisco. 

His editors nixed the idea, as Moore explains in an afterword. The San Francisco stuff, instead, became his last novel, “Noir,” which was a whole lot of fun. As is nearly everything written by Moore.

Alas, “Shakespeare for Squirrels” is for the birds.