A Midsummer Night's Dream, my first thoughts?
"Ah."
So maybe im a bit of a shakespeare newbie. Of course, i've gone through the highschool requrements, but writing an essay on Romeo & Juliet requred reading only one act and watching the movie. To be honest, the idea of a reading an entire play inspired just a teensy bit of trepidation, but if you want to know the truth... I loved it!
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy written by Shakespeare supposedly for a wedding Elizabeth I attended as a guest of honour, therefore it is romantic, lighthearted and contains the odd nod of the head to the virgin queen.
Within the play there are several storiers going on at once, which made me glad i read the introduction first! The play is starts just before the wedding of two nobles (Hippolyta and Thesus) and covers the stories of several groups of characters involved. There are the lovers, four young nobles who are connected in various ways (Hermia loves Lysander yet her father wants her to marry Demetrius, who supposedly loves her too, while Helena loves him), then there is a group of workmen who are staging a play for the happy couple, (which supposedly happened a lot in those days), these are quite entertaining to read about, then there are also The Fairies, where the fairy lord (Oberon) is trying to take a young pageboy off his queen (Titania), who refuses. Oberon then makes a bit of a mess of things by putting some sort of spell over Titania, and ordering one of his fairies to do the same to some of the lovers.
I thought before reading this that i would understand none of the language, but was pleasantly suprised, as it pretty much makes sense as you go along. I read the Oxford School version, which had lots of introduction parts (which i read the start of) and then it has some words picked out and explained, which helps in some places because there are a lot of refrences to mythology and stuff (I think the play is set in Athens), but is annoying sometimes because it explains some pretty obvious ones, yet sometimes there were combinations of words that i would have liked to check i understood properly, but there wasn't really anthing about them. If you're pretty new to Shakespeare and this slightly more archaeic style of writing then i'd recoment something like this, if only for the explanation at the begining, i found it helped having the annotations there, but was able to ignore them for most of it.
The language the play is written in is fantastic, i've always done a bit of a mental eye roll upon hearing other people say that, but its true, i think that without even understanding it you'd still be able to find enjoyment in the way the words roll and sound, which is quite beautiful. It is also very relaxing (which helps, as i read it before bed) not having read much other shakespeare theres not really much i can say to compare them, but i think this is probably a nice one to start on, its not too serious or depressing like some of the tragedies and is quite short (only 5 acts long, 9 scenes in total), so it doesnt feel like you have to wade through lots of heavy bits. The writing slips between poetry and prose, which is also quite nice.
To conclude a rather round-about review, i thought this was very good, it read nicely and i found myself wanting to go on (you always know you're onto something good when you get that book itch), it was also accessible language-wise, which helps (a lot) and left me interested in reading more of his stuff, (also good. im thinking of perhaps a bit of the old 'hubble bubble' next?).
im afraid i may have to re-write this later, but for now im just going to say that im very glad i joined this once upon a time challenge, if only because it got me to read this and openes up a whole new genre (if you'd call it that) to me...plays? who'd have thought? so thankyou very much :) i have only two days of the challenge, and three of the other books i said i'd read to go, so probably won't finish on time, but i've definitely got something out of this, which hopefully is enough, and theres always next year. good fun :)
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I am also counting this book towards my classics challenge, although i was hoping to read all 6 Jane Austens that may no longer be achievable, therefore, for the time being i am including this and gone with the wind (both read during the challenge's open-time) as part of my six unless i read enough other books to count instead.
