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3 1/2 stars
3 3/4
Upped the rating when I realized that I'd given 3 1/2 to King John, Pericles, and The Taming of the Shrew


Been a while since I've visited this review. This play was the first I read in a project to read all the Bard's plays before I kicked the proverbial bucket wherever you're supposed to kick it. I'm probably behind on this goal by now (of reading/reviewing four plays a year). Ah well.

There are multitudes of rather innocuous comments inside this spoiler. It can safely be skipped.

(view spoiler)[
Here I've decided to add some comments about this project, finding myself about 30 months into it.
- I've read 10 of the plays so far, so I'm on schedule; all but one (The Tempest) reviewed; I trust I'll get to that one soon.
- The plan outlined below has been altered some, which can be seen by taking a look at some of my more recent reviews. I've tried to just go where I please instead of being rigid.
- I've tried different strategies for ordering the reading list. For whatever reason, the ten plays I've read are five comedies, three histories, and two - Pericles & The Tempest - well, what the heck are they? See my reviews if you care what I thought.
- I've added links to the plays I've reviewed inside my review of the Complete Works (link below, right under Resources.)
- The bit about watching a movie of the play didn't last too long, since I found it difficult to find a movie for some.
- Making up for that, I'm now seeing at least three plays a year on stage.
- I'm still kickin'. I guess that's the best part. 8 )



I made a plan in early 2014 to read all of Shakespeare’s plays. Not in 2014, but in the rest of my days.

Naturally this plan relied on some assumptions.

First, all plays would be treated as if I’d never yet read them (which was true for most of them).

Second, I assumed that reading one play every three months would be reasonable. There are 37 plays, hence a little over nine years. I would be 78. Seems okay.


Problems

1. What order to read the plays in?

A. Best guess as to the order they were written?
A��. The order that they appear in my Complete Shakespeare? (close to the same thing)
B. By sets of the types of Play? (comedy, history, tragedy, problem plays)
C. Random?
Wresting with this question occupied me until about August. (view spoiler)[NO, NO JUST KIDDING (hide spoiler)]
(view spoiler)[I randomly selected MND to start with. (hide spoiler)]

2. I only got one play read.

Okay, this is not huge. I now have 36 to go. An even nine years? Perhaps this is a very favorable, even unrealistic? assumption. Yet ��
anyway. So I’ll be 79. Seems okay.

3. My answer to 1, and the fact of 2, may be related.

I’ve never much enjoyed reading plays that are comedies. Seems to me that they’re much more fun to watch than to read. There’s not much to engage the mind in a comedy, nor is there anything to learn from them (like there is from a history, for example). (view spoiler)[Okay, you can learn about human nature from a good comedy, just like you can learn about human nature from any well-written fiction. But in my experience a comedy is pretty much pure entertainment, like a musical. If it goes beyond entertainment, then it goes beyond comedy. (hide spoiler)]


Resources

The edition of Shakespeare’s works that I have is this one.

The books of commentaries that I have are The Wheel of Fire, Shakespearean Tragedy and Coleridge’s Writings on Shakespeare.

WoF contains analyses of seven of the plays, together with other essays.

ST (Bradley) contains very lengthy pieces on four of Shakespeare’s play, with some other lectures.

The Coleridge book discusses to varying degrees many of the plays.

I have one other book, Engagement with Knavery by Robert Jones, which deals with only one of the plays, Richard III. This book seems to be unheard of on GR. (Duke Univ. press, 1986)

For movies, I have Netflix. (hide spoiler)]

This Plan of attack was my answer to all the above scratching my head. These following sections used to be in spoilers, but I've revealed this stuff else there wouldn't be much showing.

Read the introduction

I noted the sources listed: Chaucer (the opening of the play has similarities to the beginning of the Knight’s Tale; Plutarch’s “Life of Theseus��; and of course Ovid’s tale of Pyramus and Thisbe.

Naturally the Faeries are found in folklore. “Belief in faeries, which had been fairly strong some generations before, was dying out except among the ignorant �� Among educated men and women fairies had become a picturesque fantasy, and a topic for pretty verse and Courtly entertainment.��(view spoiler)�ڳ����Գ����’s The Faerie Queen, written just a few years before this play, has nothing to do with Shakespeare’s use of faeries here. Spencer’s work was a vast and serious allegory related to contemporary political and religious affairs in England, not a light entertainment. His “Faerieland�� is peopled with Arthurian knights representing various virtues, not with folkloric pixies.

Puck was modelled on a well-known character of country tales named Robin Goodfellow. Shakespeare appears to be the first to have conferred the name “Puck�� to this good fellow.

There are also links to three earlier plays by Shakespeare: Two Gentleman of Verona (the cross-wooing of two pairs of lovers), Love’s Labor’s Lost (amateurs producing a drama for royalty) and Romeo and Juliet (fairy pranks).(view spoiler)[Who says GoodRead reviewers are the only ones to re-use material? (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]


Read the play
If you’ve never read the play, and want a synopsis, look elsewhere.

Well okay, here’s a synopsis.

Athens: Theseus and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta are preparing to be wed. Young Athenians Lysander & Demetrius are both in love with Hermia, who loves the first & loathes the second, whom her father insists she must wed. A second Athenian lass, Helena, does love Demetrius, but is spurned by him.

A group of comedic blue collars is preparing to present Pyramus & Thisbe following the wedding ceremony; chief among these is Bottom, a bombastic buffoon. Meanwhile the king and queen of the faeries (Oberon & Titania) are preparing for the midsummer night’s faerie revelries in the woods outside Athens, but are locked in a caustic argument about Titania’s young “changeling��, a boy “stolen from an Indian king��. (II.i.21-23)

Oberon commands his mischief-maker Puck to gather a weed that, when sprinkled on the eyes of a sleeper, will cause them to fall madly in love with the first live being they see on awaking. Puck is to sprinkle this on Titania and arrange that she will see something or someone ridiculous when she awakes (view spoiler)[Oberon will only allow the spell to be removed when she agrees to give him her boy (hide spoiler)]. Mix this in with Lysander and Hermia deciding to flee from Athens, and sleeping in the woods when they tire; Demetrius searching for Hermia; Helena moping about in the same woods; the play actors rehearsing in the same environs; Puck wreaking planned and unplanned havoc on various characters, including giving Bottom the head of an ass; Titania falling for this ass-headed one; lovers reversing the object of their desires, spurning those whom they formerly loved; and soon only Oberon is left with any knowledge of what’s going on, trying to instruct Puck on how to straighten everything out.

Eventually, all’s well that ends well. It is good fun.


Watch a movie of the play
Recently I've been reading plays that the Chesapeake Shakespeare Theatre has been putting on, before seeing their production. SO I'm not feeling a need to also see a movie of the play. However, back when I started I wasn't seeing live productions. Thus the following words on movies of Midsummer Night's Dream.


Several versions of the play have been filmed, the earliest in 1909 with Charlie Chaplin. I chose to watch . This movie features extensive use of Felix Mendelssohn's beautiful music which he wrote for the play �� first the 1826 Overture, and then the 1842 incidental music.

The film features the debut of Olivia de Haviland as Hermia; James Cagney as Bottom (his only Shakespearean role, for which he got a lot of deserved praise); and a thirteen year old Mickey Rooney as Puck.

The wording and cadence of Shakespeare is fairly well preserved in the movie, though extensive editing chops out much of the text. I felt it was a good production, and I was certainly more entertained by the movie than by the play.

Mendelssohn’s music was wonderful, and the fairie sequences which were all accompanied by this music were inspired magic. The ballet done in these scenes was gorgeous, and the way the fairies glided through the air was beautiful. The costuming of the female faeries, including that of Titantia, surprised me by its very suggestive, almost salacious, design. And Victor Jory as Oberon lent that role a dark creepiness which I found very appealing. All in all, these dreamlike scenes were for me the highlight of the movie.




The Theatrical release poster



Read any commentaries on the play that I have

The only small bit on this play was the following note in the Coleridge book, which is taken from marginalia he wrote at I. i. 246 ff, where Helena betrays Hermia. Since it’s all I’ve got, I’ll quote the whole thing:

I am convinced that Shakespeare availed himself of the title of the play in his own mind as a dream throughout, but especially (and perhaps unpleasingly) in this broad determination of ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this too after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes. The act is very natural; the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold that principles have on the female heart when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men, because they feel less abhorrence of moral evil in itself and more for its outward consequences, as detection, loss of character, etc., their natures being almost wholly extroitive. But still, however just, the representation is not poetical; we shrink from it and cannot harmonize it with the ideal ��

”e��ٰ��Ǿ��پ�����?�� (view spoiler)[From thefreedictionary.com: ���渿�ٰ���´�����پ����� a.1. Seeking or going out after external objects.
“Their natures being almost wholly extroitive.��
- Coleridge.
Another sight gives the same definition and example. Is Coleridge the only person who ever used this word? (hide spoiler)]


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