This is more of a diary entry than a book review which I have never done before, but... times are weird!

One of my friends had a BRILLIANT idea to organize a Shakespeare read-through over Zoom this weekend. (The irony is lost on none of us that we're essentially reenacting Station Eleven.) A group of us divvied up parts and read A Midsummer Night's Dream, which, incidentally, is the play in which I made my acting debut as Mustardseed the fairy when I was 11. I was angling for Puck so that casting decision came as quite the blow. It felt redemptive to read as Hippolyta last night, a slightly meatier role.

Anyway, all silliness aside, times are tough right now and I know a lot of us are having difficulties concentrating on our usual sorts of escapism, which for most of us includes reading. This virtual Shakespeare production amongst a group of friends was such a fun distraction that we're going to make it a weekly thing, proceeding with The Tempest next weekend. If you have a friend group who'd be down for this kind of thing (it doesn't have to be Shakespeare - you could do any play or movie script), I HIGHLY recommend it. It's the only 2 hours this week that I've felt truly switched off from the constant news stream and existential dread that's been eating away at me. That's why I thought I'd share - there's so much discourse floating around about how you need to Make The Most of this quarantine to clean your house and learn a new language and write the next great American novel, but I think what we really need are lower-stakes, delightfully distracting and unproductive projects like reading Shakespeare with your friends around the globe with a glass of wine.

Hope you all are staying safe and healthy!

This is one of the most hilarious comedies of Shakespeare that I have read, even funnier than A Comedy of Errors . Combining fantasy and reality and setting in Athens at the time of the wedding of the Duke of Athens, Theseus to Hippolyta, the Queen of Amazon, the play revolves around the adventures of the four young Athenian lovers, a group of performers who plan to put on a play for the wedding of the Duke and the Queen, and the meddling acts of fairies, especially those of the Fairy King's through Pluck, his most trusted "knavish" spirit.

The main theme of the play is love, and actions of jealousies and betrayals center upon that theme. The writing is beautiful; poetic and lyrical. This is the second time in my reading of Shakespeare that I came across such beautiful, poetic, and lyrical writing, the first time being in Romeo and Juliet. It is a real treat to read those poetic and lyrical verses as they tell this light hilarious story.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the most creative and imaginative plays by Shakespeare. The fantasy element is brilliantly combined with reality and the play is cast by an interesting set of characters ranging from humans to fairies to human-animal forms! All these elements have contributed to making the play a very interesting read. I enjoyed it very much and had a good laugh all along. Shakespeare had done a great job with this play.

"And with her height, forsooth, she hath prevailed with him.
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes."
i felt that Hermia

The Strange Party

I’ve just had the weirdest dream
(Things aren't always what they seem)
All my GR friends were here
Celebrating the new year
At my parents-in-law’s place
Who had gone away someplace
Partygoers one by one
Showed up ready to have fun
There was Nick with a cigar
Blowing smoke rings from afar
Violeta had brought salad
Vesna sang us a sweet ballad
Ken kept drinking from a can
Like a real American
Someone knocked and there was Lee
Come all the way from Italy
Lisa put some music on
But no one fancied reggaeton
Ilse danced a grim Fandango
Me and Bogdan did the tango
On the sofa friend Irena
Dreaming hummed a cantilena
Jeroen David and Katia
Wrestled on the bath mat yeah
S. came with an alligator
And forgot about it later
Fio who had eaten shrooms
Went exploring many rooms
Julie drank a lot of wine
She even guzzled some of mine
P.E. looked through every drawer
Opened and closed every door
After one too many tokes
We all laughed at Olga's jokes
Laysee made a kitchen mess
Trying to bake a cake no less
Cookie didn’t show up at all
She’ll be in my dream next fall
In the front yard there was Noam
Chatting up the garden gnome
Mark rode his bike in the foyer
Right behind him barked his lawyer
Great fun it was while it lasted
Everyone I knew was blasted
But my in-laws were due back
Any minute now alack!
My wife whispered “get them out
Even if you have to shout
Your weird friends have gone too far
And I don’t know who they are
Plus I’m tired I need some sleep
Please be so kind as to sweep
Up the crumbs and clear the smoke”
(Un)fortunately I awoke

(If you wish to join the party, let me know, and I'll include you in a custom-made dream-couplet, faster than you can say Sandman.)

PS: Saw a production of this play again this summer, one of those picnic on the lawn outdoor productions, kinda punky, kinda funky, and where the boys are bewitched to be with girls but when they are unbewitched they get together with their Truly and Fated Intendeds, boys with boys and girls with girls. The most gender fluid of any production of this play I have ever seen, which totally makes sense with all the messing around with gender/sexuality. Billy Boy, again, ahead of his time.

“My Oberon, what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamored of an ass”--Titania

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s early plays, written around 1595-96, what appears to be the tenth by the actor-turned-playwright, but considered his best at that point, and certainly one of his best loved plays ever. I read it this time because I have just reread Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Volume 4, which includes his Eisner-award-winning fantasy tale about a production of that play with some speculation about a deal the young Will made with Dream of the Endless, to have Shakespeare write this play and The Tempest. Great comics fantasy back story.

I report on my reading in mid-summer 2020, where some of my fellow country people are locking down and some are partying their little heinies off, convinced the whole thing is a hoax:

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

I won’t give you a synopsis, since you are either familiar with it or won’t care, but there are several plots and subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. So right, it’s a romantic comedy, so it has to be about love and weddings and hookups and flirtations and rejections and delusions, not necessarily in that order. One subplot revolves around a conflict between four Athenian lovers, Hermia and Lysander, another about a group of six amateur actors, Peter Quince, Nick Bottom, Francis Flute, Robin Starveling, Tom Snout and Snug who have to act out their interpretation of the play "Pyramus and Thisbe" at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta.
In a parallel plot line, Oberon, king of the fairies, and Titania, his queen, have come to the forest outside Athens. The trickster character Robin Goodfellow, or Puck, is much involved in the playful mayhem involving love potions and other machinations. So there’s a play within a play, one commenting on the other, though we might ask: Did anything happen here, or is it all a dream within a dream?

“Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream.”

Though surely no one at first read or viewing can claim they know what in the heck is going on with any certainty. But who cares, it's about fantasy and fun!

Themes include, duh, the vagaries of love--I love her and she ignores me but loves him, who loves another who ignores him, which is central to the comedy, of course:

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

It becomes clear:

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.”

More themes include dreaming, play, theater, art, Invention! The idea of performing a part or one’s identity. There are fluid sexual identities, silly jokes, and the blurring of reality and fantasy. And the supernatural. And nature is central to this romantic comedy and its sensuality:

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

So, yeah, it has lovely poetry!

And humor. Death, and grief are central to Shakspeare’s tragedies, but in the plays actors obviously “pretend” these scenarios, so in this play we have the traveling actors make fun of that process in the play within a play:

“Thus I die. Thus, thus, thus.
Now I am dead,
Now I am fled,
My soul is in the sky.
Tongue, lose thy light.
Moon take thy flight.
Now die, die, die, die.”

And there’s also some raucous, baccanalian humor. Way fun!

But if you aren’t all that literary, take the word of Samuel Pepys, who said of it in his Diary that it was "the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life,” though he admitted it had "some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure."

What a wonderful yet messed up play this was, thoroughly enjoyed it!

Absolutely loved the setting, the language and the element of fantasy within the story. It was comical yet still had potential to be a tale of tragedy and I think that's why I enjoyed it so much. It keeps you on your toes and the story goes round in circles but it reached a satisfactory resolution!

For me, Shakespeare is a bit hit or miss but I really did enjoy this one!

No ha estado del todo mal, es cortito, hay algunos enredos entre los enamorados y los no enamorados y el travieso Puck.
Sinopsis: Durante la boda de Teseo e Hipólita tiene lugar una obra plagada de fantasía, sueños, amor y magia que se entremezclan en las historias de amor de dos parejas nobles, de unos cómicos despreocupados y un grupo de miembros del mundo de las hadas.
Valoración: 5/10

mini-review, as I do for classics:
this was my first time reading Shakespeare on my own, and I kind of...saw that as a negative. I like discussing Shakespeare in a classroom setting, and being motivated to mark up the text and otherwise process it fully. I felt like I missed out on stuff here.
also, this play felt so short. maybe it's my edition's fault, for being 111 pages. maybe it's how abrupt the ending was (which is very). or how flat the characters were, or how there were a sh*t ton of them. long story short, it's not my fave Shakespeare.
all that being said, this was very readable and funny at some points. I think this is one of the plays you really need to see performed, rather than read it.

bottom line: I recommend watching this (I sure want to!) but I don't think I recommend reading it.

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

I’m sure there’s some keyboard commando all primed and ready just waiting for a chance to chime in about how “this isn’t Facebook” or “talk about books and don’t post stupid pictures.” To him/her/them I shall quote ol’ Bill himself and say . . . .

n  Fucketh off with thee!n

Because I have read A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I’ve read it more than once. Originally I read it back in the stone age as a high schooler who opted for additional literature classes as electives rather than other selections such as “Home Ec” and asked for things like this for Christmas, which although unattractive still holds a prime location on the ‘puter desk . . . .

n  n

I’ve re-read it occasionally over the years because I enjoy the Shakespeare comedies *cough supernerd cough*. But I never loved it as much as I loved it last night when this happened . . . .

n  n

And my baby boy made his acting debut as Francis Flute in a modernized in music/wardrobe, but not in content version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Yeah, this is a post that should probably go on Facebook, but I deleted that motherfucker and never looked back so you’re getting my proud momma moment here. Haters can eat a bag of weiners.

(Additional tidbit: Robin Goodfellow (a/k/a “Puck” to those of you in the know) was played by a girl and she kicked allllllllllllllllllllllllllllll of the ass.)

2024 will be my year of Shakespeare (I’ll probably give up after 3 plays)

I had fun with this one, I thought it was quick, fast and just absolutely hilarious!
There are misunderstandings, and a little of revenge and hate going on but it was a delightful read!

Read in the Reading Sprint in my buddy read group :)

This play was whimsical, fun and a bit magical, complete with fairies and all. It made me chuckle at times; I got a kick out of the fairy queen, Titania, falling head-over-heels in love with Bottom after he was transformed to a ludicrous creature with the head of an ass. The play was not hard to digest, aside from the language of course. However, I did have to pause and sort out the various love relationships after the love potions were applied, and havoc was wreaked amongst the mortals. Puck was very naughty and seemed to take such delight from his silly mistake in meting out these potions. I found this to be lightly entertaining, but otherwise I did not really take away much more from this play. I think it would be enjoyable to see this on stage, and I would most definitely do so if the opportunity ever presents itself. One more note here, my kindle version included some very delightful illustrations which really may have been my favorite part of my first experience with this less serious of Shakespeare’s famous plays.