أحببتها إنها الوجه الآخر لشكسبير الوجه الساحر اللطيف الرومانسي.

بقصص حب وجنيات تتلاعب بقلوب البشر، يتنزه بنا شكسبير في غابة سحرية في ليلة ساحرة ليست بمنتصف الصيف حقا بل في أواخر الربيع.

يتنقل بنا بين المحبين ونرى عن كثب ماذا يفعل بهم الحب، فعاشقان لا يرضى الأهل عن قصة حبهما، وأخران يستعد الجميع لحفل زفافهما الملكي، وتلك العاشقة الهائمة بحب من لا يراها بالأساس، وهذا العاشق الولهان بمن تهوى غيره وزوجان يتبادلان المكائد ببعضهما وبمن حولهما من بشر.

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كل هذا في جانب، وعلى الجانب الأخر هؤلاء العمال الذين يقررون تمثيل مسرحية ليؤدوها أمام الملك في حفل الزفاف، لتتحول تلك المسرحية الرومانسية التراجيدية على إيديهم إلى مسرحية هزلية بأداء تمثيلي أضحكني من قلبي.

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بوتوم النساج هو ألطف من في الرواية أحببت حماسته وإندفاعه وثقته بنفسه وتفانيه في دوره كأسد ووقوعه في الحب وهو برأس حمار

This was so much fun! Discovered another Shakespearean play I love :D
A Midsummer Night's Dream took me out of my reading slump. Hopefully, this luck continues :D

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

I've been in a mood to read more classics and especially more Shakespeare. Imo this is a great comedy. I especially liked a couple things :

3.5 stars

Είναι το πρώτο Σαιξπιρικό έργο που διαβάζω και μου έκανε τρομερή εντύπωση το πόσο φρέσκο είναι στην ανάγνωση. Άμα δεν ήξερα ποιανού είναι δεν θα μου φαινόταν περίεργο αν μου έλεγες πως γράφτηκε εχθές.

Τα γελάκια του τα είχε. Η πλοκή ήταν ωραιότατη. Το προτείνω ανεπιφύλακτα!

This was a reread as the first of an attempt at reading Shakespeare’s plays act by act, and writing a summary and thoughts on my blog. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays because of its humour and the elements of magic. As Theseus and Hippolyta are preparing for their wedding to be celebrated, Egeus the father of Hermia approaches Theseus to complain of his daughter wanting to marry Lysander when he wants her to marry Demetrius, who loves her as much. Hermia must make a choice by the old Athenian law either to comply with her father’s wishes or forfeit her life or take the veil. Hermia and Lysander decide to elope and head off to the woods. But Demetrius is told of their plans by Hermia’s friend, Helena who loves Demetrius and whom Demetrius loved until he became besotted by Hermia. In the wood they become involved in the effects of a quarrel between the fairy queen and kind, Titania and Oberon, over a little changing who Titania is looking after and Oberon wants in his entourage. Into this wood also come a bunch of Athenian workmen who are rehearsing their play to present at Theseus’ wedding. The fairies’ magic, and Puck’s mischief leads to plenty of confusion but of course at the end, everything comes right again.

This is a light-hearted, humorous read for the most part though it touches upon some more serious themes too—love and jealousy, subservience and strength, among them. I enjoyed this revisit but the resolution of Oberon and Titania’s quarrel felt a little unsatisfactory.

My posts on the play on my blog are here:
Act I: https://potpourri2015.wordpress.com/2...
Act II: https://potpourri2015.wordpress.com/2...
Act III: https://potpourri2015.wordpress.com/2...
Acts IV and V: https://potpourri2015.wordpress.com/2...

Sólo el título de esta obra ya muestra un lirismo asombroso y ni qué decir del desarrollo de la obra misma. Los personajes son muy heterogéneos, tenemos a Hipólita y Teseo, como gobernantes de Atenas por un lado, a unos ciudadanos que forman dos parejas de jóvenes como son Demetrio y Elena y Lisandro y Hermia. luego en el pueblo unos artesanos decididos a representar una pieza para Teseo y por otro lado el mundo fantástico de las hadas con Titania y Oberón, secundados por Puck. Cuando empecé me pareció muy difícil armonizar todo ello pero Shakespeare lo logra con una maestría impresionante, mostrando todo el simbolismo que te pueden aportar tan pintorescos personajes. Particularmente creo hay algunas frases memorables aunque la pieza es simple, me quedo con los intentos de Elena de hacer entrar en razón a Demetrio con una valentía y amor fuera de toda razón. El título de la obra explica todo, una gran confusión originada por el mundo fantástico entre los cuatro jóvenes que al final tiene el final esperado.

بسيار خنده رفت.
بخش اعظم نمايش، به طرز هوشمندانه اى اشتباهات پريان باعث ميشه رشته ى عشق شخصيت ها به صورت كلاف پيچ در پيچ خنده آورى تبديل بشه. فقط انتظار داشتم ملكه ى پريان هم اشتباهاً عاشق يكى از عاشقان چهارگانه بشه، كه در اين صورت رشته بسيار آشفته تر و خنده دارتر ميشد.
بخش آخر نمايشنامه، كه يك نمايش در نمايش بود، هر چند بسيار شيرين و مفرح بود، ولى ارتباطى با خط داستانى نداشت.

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 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.

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 :)

Midsummer madness abounds in A Midsummer Night's Dream – one of William Shakespeare's most popular comedies, and one that contemporary audiences still find to be openly, unabashedly, and understandably funny. The mischievous sprite Puck, or Robin Goodfellow – whose use of magical powers makes him an important catalyst for the play’s misadventure-laden plot – famously says at one point in the play, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" And yes, he means every one of us, as Shakespeare makes clear throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The play, as most of us probably know by now, seamlessly weaves together three plotlines:

Plotline #1: The Fairies. In the world of the fairies – supernatural spirit creatures who wander “Over hill, over dale,” unseen and unknown by humans – Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of the Fairies, are involved in a sort of custody battle over a changeling (a human child abducted by and brought up among the fairies). Titania has the changeling, and Oberon wants the changeling – all of which explains the harshness with which Oberon greets Titania upon their first meeting in the play, saying, “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.”

As Titania refuses to surrender the changeling, Oberon concocts a plot to humble his proud wife. Puck will be involved in this plot, as Oberon once saw the love god Cupid unsuccessfully shoot one of his love arrows at “a fair Vestal [Virgin], thronèd by the West”. The arrow fell to the ground, while the untouched Vestal walked away “In maiden meditation, fancy-free”; where the arrow fell, a flower was spawned, and its juice has the power to make one fall madly in love with whomever he or she sees.

Oberon, who knows where Titania is sleeping during their estrangement – “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows” – sends Puck to gather this flower, with plans to make Titania fall in love with a particularly lowly mortal, someone far beneath her in social station. Puck assures Oberon that he will move quickly to get the flower – “I’ll put a girdle round about the Earth” – and Oberon grimly apostrophizes Titania once she has left him: “Thou shalt not from this grove/Till I torment thee for this injury.”

Plotline #2: The Nobility of Athens. Don’t expect this play to feel terribly Athenian – it seems to have about as much to do with Athens, Georgia, as with Athens, Greece – but it is, at least theoretically, set in Athens, where a sort of love quadrangle is in play among four noble young people of the city. Briefly, Lysander and Demetrius both love Hermia. Egeus, Hermia's father, wants her to marry Demetrius. (Why? I really couldn’t say. Maybe Egeus and Demetrius are drinking buddies.)

Hermia loves only Lysander, and wants nothing to do with Demetrius; meanwhile, another young woman, Helena, desperately loves Demetrius. An angry Egeus invokes an Athenian law setting forth that Hermia must either marry Demetrius, take a vow of lifelong chastity, or be executed; Theseus, King of Athens, reluctantly agrees that the law must be enforced. Small wonder that Lysander tells his loving Hermia that “The course of true love never did run smooth,” as the two plan to run away from Athens in hope of finding happiness somewhere else. Demetrius, informed of the plan by Helena (whose love he nonetheless sets at naught), plans to follow.

It will be understood if the modern reader or playgoer, observing these elements of the plot, finds him- or herself thinking of the J. Geils Band’s 1980 hit song “Love Stinks”: “You love her,/And she loves him,/And he loves somebody else,/You just can’t win.”

Plotline #3: The Common Folk. The above-mentioned Theseus, King of Athens, is about to marry Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons – and indeed, part of the reason for his reluctance to support Egeus in applying the harsh Athenian marriage law against Hermia may be that doing so is not likely to incline Hippolyta toward a quick acceptance of connubial bliss. Yet the plans for the royal wedding continue to go forward, and a group of ordinary working men of Athens want to put on a play in honor of the upcoming nuptials. Their plan – one no doubt influenced by Shakespeare’s reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses – is to stage the tragic, Romeo and Juliet-style story of the separated lovers Pyramus and Thisbe. Among the artisans – or “rude mechanicals,” as they are called at one point – one Nick Bottom, a weaver, stands out as a particularly eager and enthusiastic would-be actor.

At this point, the three plotlines start to be brought together. The woodland to which the four noble lovers have repaired – Lysander and Hermia having fled there together, while Demetrius pursues them, and Helena pursues Demetrius – is also the woodland where Titania is taking refuge with her fairy attendants. While Titania’s attendants sing the fairy queen to sleep – “You spotted snakes with double tongue,/Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;/Newts and blindworms, do no wrong,/Come not near our Fairy Queen” – Oberon steals onto the scene, and, unseen, by any of the fairies, anoints Titania’s eyelids with the love juice. So far – from Oberon’s point of view – so good.

But then fate, or chaos, takes a hand. Oberon, having seen Helena’s expressions of love for the disdainful Demetrius, and having taken pity on the distraught and despairing Helena, has told Puck to sprinkle some of the love juice on Demetrius’ eyelids, so that he will return Helena’s love; but Puck mistakenly applies the juice to the eyes of Lysander, who abandons his beloved Hermia and begins pursuing Helena.

As another part of his busy day, Puck interrupts the drama practice of the artisans, gives Nick Bottom an ass’s head, and arranges things in such a way that Titania sees Bottom immediately upon waking up, and falls uncontrollably in love with the donkey-headed man. Was Shakespeare looking back upon his earlier life and expressing his sense that he was once in love with someone who turned out to be a real ass? I suppose we’ll never know.

Oberon soon learns that Puck applied love-juice to the eyes of the wrong Athenian youth; Puck dutifully applies love-juice to Demetrius’ eyes; and before long, both Lysander and Demetrius are running after Helena, declaring their love for her, while Hermia, once loved by both men, is now scorned by both. Helena meanwhile is convinced that she is the subject of a cruel practical joke: “O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent/To set against me for your merriment.” Lysander and Demetrius declare their readiness to fight to the death for Helena’s love, while an angry Hermia chases a frightened Helena through the wood. It is in this context that Puck makes that famous declaration of “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Yet A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy, and therefore all ends well. Oberon, having won his argument with Titania and gained custody of the changeling, relieves the enchantment she was under, and the fairy queen awakens, thinking nothing more than that she has had a very strange dream. Puck removes the love-charm from Lysander’s eyes, and his love for Hermia is restored; Demetrius remains charmed, so that his love for Helena will continue. Love quadrangle resolved! And oh, yeah – Nick Bottom loses the donkey head and gets his real head back.

Theseus and Hippolyta enter the woods on a pre-nuptial hunt – Hippolyta recalls how “I was with Hercules and Cadmus once/When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear” – when they find the four sleeping lovers, who like Titania awaken thinking all has been a dream. Seeing that these four once-unhappy lovers are now paired-off as two happy couples, Theseus decides to disregard the law that would have let Egeus dictate his daughter Hermia’s marriage choice – “Egeus, I will overbear your will;/For in the temple, by-and-by, with us,/These couples shall eternally be knit”.

Why couldn’t Theseus have just said that in the first place? Why, so that William Shakespeare would have a full-length play to write, of course – and so that the literary critics of subsequent centuries could write books and articles about how fathers in Shakespeare plays are always trying to dictate their daughters’ marriage choices, and always fail.

The happy-ending triple-wedding goes forward as planned, giving King Theseus a chance to reflect upon the madness of love: “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet/Are of imagination all compact.” The artisans’ less-than-competent post-nuptial staging of the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe gives the newly married couples a good laugh, and the play ends with Puck asking the audience to place themselves in the position of those characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream who believe that what they have experienced was but a dream state:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended –
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.

The play has been filmed successfully a number of times -- the 1935 film with James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, and Mickey Rooney; the 1968 film with David Warner, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, and Ian Holm; and, most recently, the 1999 film with Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Stanley Tucci, Calista Flockhart, Christian Bale, David Strathairn, Sophie Marceau, and Roger Rees. Look at that list of actors, and you'll see that this play has drawn some serious talent to it.

The poetry of A Midsummer Night’s Dream may not be Shakespeare's very best -- he throws in lots of rhyming couplets where rhyming couplets may not absolutely be needed -- but it is a comedy whose humour remains resonant for contemporary audiences, 400 years after the play’s first staging. Truly, it remains a dream worth dreaming.