In my first period of this year at university, I followed a course on Shakespeare. During which I read quite a few of Shakespeare's plays. Now personally, I am not really interested in devoting my entire studies to Shakespeare, but this course was obligatory and it is never bad to learn historical things. Not all plays and parts of the course I found interesting, but I was very excited to read both Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Romeo and Juliet because I had never read the original Shakespeare version before, besides, in Dutch, the play is called 'Romeo en Julia', and I got teased a lot about this when I was younger (as Julia is my name if you didn't know). I wanted to read A Midsummer Night's Dream because the characters of this play are also part of Julie Kagawa's The Iron Fey series, which was the first YA fantasy I ever read and fell in love with. I actually reread the series in January of this year, I found it fun to get into the story once more (now in English, because I first read it in Dutch) but I did not like it as much as I did back then. Okay, this intro is getting way too long, but for this month's Monthly Classics I wanted to talk about A Midsummer Night's Dream. Let's get into it!
As some of you may know, Shakespeare wrote both comedies and tragedies. Many of his plays were and have been very popular since publishing. I haven't been to an actual staging of any of his plays yet. But during my studies, I've already read a lot of him so far. My two course professors are very fascinated by his works and adore him a lot. As would be necessary, why would you otherwise devote so much of your time to him? Now I have a deep respect for what Shakespeare has achieved by writing his plays. He is well-known all over the world and some of his lines are recited even in our modern-day and age: "To be, or not to be" or "O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo", yes I recited this from memory, am I now approved as English literature student? Shakespeare is still read by many 'ordinary' people and even more students. Around him, entire communities of scholars have been created and every word in his play is looked into.
However, some of his statements are very dated. Even though scholars find hints that this might not be what he suggests himself. Plays as The Taming of the Shrew do not give an accurate or fun representation of women (in my opinion). So not all of his plays I found fun to read. If I'm honest, sometimes reading in Early Modern English made me sleepy sometimes. More than once my eyes closed while reading his texts.
When I found out that I was to read A Midsummer Night's Dream in the last week, I was actually kind of excited. This was one of the few plays that I actually enjoyed to read and understood. Even though during the seminar I discovered that I didn't understand many things. Eventually, I decided to write my final paper of the course on this play. My essay discussed the role of the fairies within the play, but I will not go into that here, even though I've written around 3000 words on that topic :).
A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's more fantastical plays. Important characters in the story are Oberon, Titania and Puck (fairies), which are also part of Julie Kagawa's The Iron Fey series, where I was introduced to them. By reading about Shakespeare's character in this way I became interested in learning more about their original story. And I finally read it.
It is a difficult play, it has many storylines and characters all doing different things. I definitely had to read some passages to fully grasp the play. But I guess that that's typical for a Shakespeare play. I will not go into the story too much because then I will spoil everything.
If you want to read something from Shakespeare and something more fun, I would recommend you A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is definitely my favourite of the plays I've read from him. Keep in mind that these plays are very different. The word choice is different and Shakespeare can add a lot of depth in his plays without explicitly showing it (or so I'm told at least). I found A Midsummer Night's Dream actually fun and Puck was definitely my favourite character. If you read or have read this play let me know! So then we can talk about it. I hope you enjoyed this rather different Monthly Classics post, I will see you soon!
Keep reading,
Julia
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