Considering my preconceived notions regarding Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream wasn’t half bad. Not half bad in the sense of the content, but rather in my ability to understand it. The footnotes were a big help too.
The dialogue between Theseus and Egeus was fairly simple and quite the classic tale. The father wants a certain husband for his daughter but the daughter want her ideal man, we’ve heard this story so many times before but given the time period that Shakespeare wrote it in, it was probably more original than if it were done now. Even the dialogue in the very beginning was easy to understand, but the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta is what kind of threw me for a loop.
The play starts off with those two characters talking about their wedding and how they can’t wait to get through the four days until then. But after reading the footnotes I discovered that Hippolyta was Queen of the Amazon and was captured by Theseus on his quest through the Amazon. Apparently he “wooed” her with his sword, real classy guy. It just seemed as though he went to the Amazon and most likely did some killing and destroying and then claimed her as her prize. Now, I could be entirely wrong, I’m still new to Shakespeare, but from what I read and gathered this is what seems like is going on.
I think the standout part of the acts we read was the dialogue between the workers, and their talk about putting on the play. Quince seems a little nervous about the whole thing, and its probably a lot of pressure to impress the Duke and Duchess on their wedding day. It’s also probably a horrible punishment if they screw it up. That part was the most comical to me, which I later found out after looking on the internet, this play is a comedy. That kind of changes the way I’m reading it. Shakespeare’s words make it a little difficult to see what genre he’s writing in.
I became a little confused and lost when those damn fairies came in. Maybe my brain was having trouble processing all the different names. I’m not one hundred percent what’s going on with Theseus and Hippolyta’s bed, but the two fairies seem to have opposing ideas about it. I think Oberon doesn’t want to “put” a child, the changeling, in the bed, and Titiana does. I’m not sure if they mean they’re putting a spell on so Hippolyta becomes pregnant, I’m going to have to reread a little more.
Like I said before, it wasn’t as painful as I originally had thought it was going to be, now I just have to see if it keeps up.
9 comments:
You're not alone. I have experience with Shakespeare and STILL find him to be so difficult to understand. I agree this play was easier to follow than others...and thankfully it's much shorter than most! Your ideas on Hippolyta and Theseus are right on target. The other way I took it was that he "wooed her with his sword" or, in a Freudian reading, with his penis. Just a thought!
I have to agree with you having a hard time understanding shakespeare. I have always found shakespeare hard to read and never knew what was being said. But A Midsummer Night's Dream has actually been pretty interesting and comical to read. Especially "Those Damn Faires" they make things really confusing and i was lost as to what was going on. I think that is what makes Shakespeare such a great writer and his stores so interesting.
Yeah, i found that his wooing tactics a little odd. I agree with Amy though, i totally saw it as a phallic symbol.
I never thought I was very good with Shakespeare either, and I was having a little bit of an easier time reading this, but I'll agree that when the fairies get involved it becomes more difficult, perhaps because the dialogue isn't so "back and forth" anymore. The speaking parts actually turn into these much longer speeches or monologues, filled with much more information to pick apart and figure out. Hopefully we'll all get better at that part, too.
I’m glad you brought up the play being put on by the artisans, I was really intrigued by that scene! At first I thought it was really inappropriate to be putting on what seemed like a tragic love story for a wedding, so I had to do some outside research to figure out it was a comedy. Flute, Bottom, Quince, and the other artisans seem like comical characters so I am interested to see how they will weave themselves into this love story.
I’m not quite sure, but if I can illuminate your confusion as to the scene in the forest, I think Titiana and Oberon were arguing what to do with the changeling child Titiana had recovered from her old friend. Titiana wishes to keep the changeling close to her while Oberon urges that he be raised in Athens, to be instructed in law, and have a more masculinely-charged upbringing.
Personally, I thought it was more interesting that Theseus and Hippolyta seem to have the least problems with their relationship out of all the couples in the play. Hippolyta was impressed that Theseus could challenge her as a warrior, and that's no more strange than liking a guy because he can match wits with you.
As for Oberon and Titania's interest in Theseus and Hippolyta, that has nothing to do with the Indian boy. Oberon says he knows about Titania's prior romantic/sexual involvement with Theseus, and Titania says the same about Oberon and Hippolyta. The Indian boy is a separate argument: Titania wants to keep him in her court while Oberon wants to make him a warrior.
Jared,
I'm so glad that you didn't think that A Midsummer Night's Dream was half bad! I hope that now that we've completed this play, the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta seems more clear. I wanted to briefly comment on your statement about how original it was in Shakespeare's time for Hermia to desire a man that her father did not approve of. I honestly don't know if that's correct or incorrect but your comment seemed interesting to me. I think it is a common misconception that since women had a lack of certain rights in a particular time period, it means that to fathom a world in which women still had desire but just weren’t acknowledged is also impossible for the time period. It seems like many people imagine the women from this time as not even being aware of what they want. For some women, this could be an accurate truth. However, I tend to imagine that there were many women who wanted and desired certain things for their lives and tried to voice how they felt but were often not taken seriously. Another example of where we've seen something like this take place in literature is with Chaucer's Wife of Bath. Shakespeare's attention to Hippolyta might not have been so original or new in the minds of his audience. I haven't read enough Elizabethan literature to really know if Shakespeare's attention in his work to this aspect of life was unique or not but it would be interesting to look into!
I felt the same way when I started reading, not that bad. I was concerned that Shakespeare was going to be a horror to understand as if it were the calculus of an English Major. Footnotes and online sources make it so easy to comprehend. The complexity of all the character names Shakespeare uses is a valid point, it certainly does make the work all the more difficult to understand. It requires the reader to jog his or her memory as to which character did what on top of just recalling the plot.
Agreed. Perhaps if the fairies were introduced earlier on as important characters the play would have made more sense. It absolutely threw me for a loop trying to keep up with both worlds when we were only used to the one. Personally I dont think the fairies were a necessity to the plot. And as far as having a hard time understanding Shakespeare, it definitely takes a lot of patience to read and follow along with!
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