I finally cracked open the pages to Midsummer Night’s Dream in my Complete Works of Shakespeare book…
Based on my a-play-a-month project for reading up Shakespeare, that I wrote about here, I had to patiently wait all these months of 2024, to get to one of the funniest plays Shakespeare has written, and one that I am most familiar with.
Having seen a number of productions for MSND over the years, I didn’t think I would laugh much at the actual words, since the plays are all about the acting and the action, right? But hey, it’s Shakespeare’s writing we are talking about, and he certainly was a word genius.
So here I am laughing all over again when I actually can read the words the actors are saying, and the references they are making- the haze is lifting, and the magic is getting revealed with all it’s clarity and sharpness!
For this reason…
My week has been feeling like it has a permanent patch of sunshine!
I think of my life in terms of books that I am reading at the moment. Life broken down into book-by-book bits that define the flavor of that bit. Right now it’s certainly chocolate flavor with some depth of chili peppers…All fun and some heat 🙂
MSND is one of the only plays that we think Shakespeare did not have a reference for as a whole story. So it seems he made up the plot with references to lots of historical and mythological sources along with some literary ones. Like any creative, he built up on what had come before his time- stories, events, characters- but just took it to a whole other level that we are still marveling at his genius.
And his other genius was putting all the foreign stories in the context of what his Victorian audience, that were not big readers or travelers, would relate to in order to connect with and enjoy the plays. Because, obviously, they paid the bills.
One tiny example in terms of MSND would be, the story is set in Athens and environs, but the flora that get referred to in the plays are what the British folks would find around them. And in a play with a jungle to get lost in throughout the middle of the play- both literally and metaphorically, and with nymphs and fairies stirring up trouble all over the said jungle, plants are a big part of this play. The getting lost, the mirage of what is true and what just looks like truth, the finding of familiar paths- is mirrored both in the characters’ lives as well as the experience of walking through the woods.
I am enjoying the complexity of the play that I never could decipher from just seeing it performed, although I enjoyed them immensely. But reading it is giving me a whole other interesting dimension to appreciate this play with. And that makes this reading project worthwhile to me all over again.
Here is a set of lines spoken by the nymph Robin Goodfellow, that I never really captured in the performances, but loved the reading of it:
I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier.
Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire,
And neigh and bark and grunt and roar and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.
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