A Midsummer Inception

See? Woods. 

See? Lights.

I was in the Castle Amphitheater version, and watched the one on Netflix to compare. This was the same bewildering adaption that was talked about in a previous post. For the purpose of some third party opinion, I'm comparing a scene that didn't involve Hippolyta at all. Act II, scene I, we happen upon Robin Goodfellow and the first fairy. They have their banter, and then Oberon and Titania appear. In our play, the set is minimal, yet indicative. We did not have plastic trees or otherwise, but we were outside, nestled in woodland all around. And we attempted some semblance of flowers and nature in these fairy scenes. The 1996 movie adaption, on the other hand, did not use that same set or even setting. All around the fairies are floating lightbulbs--and that's all. No decorations otherwise, no true set. This was somewhat true of the other spaces in the movie. The scenes all seemed enclosed in their separate sets and were surrounded by some sort of blue fog. Instead of the liminal traveling space between sets, such as pathways, doorways, etc., the liminal space was fairly literal in that there was just nothing in time and space connecting these different places. The fairy scene is the most obvious. There was simply nothing save a few lights. This was an obvious decision to increase the dream aspect, which this adaptation played upon a lot using the actual dream inside a little boy's head as the setting of the entire play. In our version of this scene the fairies are literally in the woods when they interact, drawing more upon the dark human qualities that they possess. The vast difference in setting made for a very unique perspective on the scene. These fairies exist merely in  a dream. There is no Titania, no Oberon, no Puck--all are merely a figment-an apparition in one child's mind. This could be an amped up telling of the performing aspect. We've already seen how performance plays a role in this play, but what if the use of a child being the audience of the play, and us being the audience to him, is merely a commentary on just how little in the world is unobserved, and authentic. The literal dream interpretation begs the question of who is dreaming, and who is actually experiencing life as we see it. 

Titania and Oberon: Power Struggle or Prank War?

This weekend, I watched both the Rice production and the 1964 film of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The dynamics between Titania and Oberon, particularly in Act X, Scene X, presented differing opinions on the couple. In the Rice stage show, Titania maintains a subtly charming air when she interacts with Oberon; she flirts with him, she pouts at him, she stomps her feet, but does all of that in a charming, familiar manner. She plays on Oberon's sympathies with melodramatic scolding, an attempt to persuade him to end the conflict and set nature right again for the benefit of those in the woods around them. She suggestively offers him a chance to join her and her fairies as they dance if only he concedes. But when he refuses her demands, Titania leaves and the fairies follow their queen. It's clear who has the upper hand when she departs because of the tones she adopts during this scene. In comparison to Titania, Oberon seems bored with the conflict, worn out but unwilling to give up so easily. When he unfolds his scheme to Puck, he displays a similar charisma that Titania exercised on him moments before. Oberon's tone suggests he does not feel particularly malicious towards Titania, but that he just wants to reconcile without giving in so he doesn't look weak in the fairies' sight. As he conspires with Puck, his mischievous nature makes the plot seem like something concocted by two tricksy middle school boys. This tone sheds light on Oberon and Titania's relationship: they are locked in a game, not a war!

However, this fantastical relationship is portrayed quite differently in the 1964 movie. At the beginning of the same scene, Titania dances with the changeling boy-- the center of the conflict. That brief interaction establishes their close relationship, one of a mother and son. Her unwillingness to give him up is justified by this interaction. When they run into Oberon, the tone of the scene changes. No one frolics; they freeze. Titania looks horrified; Oberon looks angry. The music drops ominously. Clearly, the two are locked in a not-so-friendly conflict. In this adaptation, Oberon uses a commanding tone in order to establish his dominance here. Titania plays her role with the knowledge she is defying her husband and king, and yet cares enough for the changeling that she is willing to stand against his wishes. Unlike the almost sheepish Oberon in the Rice production who simply wants the conflict to end (and kind of enjoys the seductive element of the argument), this Oberon refuses to look at his wife or acknowledge her interest in the halfling. She cares about the boy, not a larger game or a power struggle, but to Oberon, her defiance exhibits a struggle for his power. Because of this characterization, his love potion plot is less about resolving the conflict or amusing himself and Puck, but is about regaining control and enacting revenge. Oberon's manipulative behavior because of Titania's genuine interest in the boy paint their relationship as a subservient, traditional marriage rather than a match of intellectual equals playing games to amuse and seduce each other.

Different Pucks for Different Plays

I wanted to compare the acting for the two Pucks of the live performance and the Rice University performance. In the Rice University performance, the actor gave Puck a more juvenile personality. When he went to report to Oberon that Titania had fallen in love with a man with the head of an ass, he came onto stage by walking on his hands. When he hears Oberon, he drops down and quickly runs to him with his arms stretched out wide. His body language seemed to be like a dog looking for a treat from his master. Puck's tone of voice was giddy as he bragged about what he did. This Puck's facial expressions were wide eyed and open, making him seem young. This Puck main agenda was to please Oberon.

The Puck from the live performance at the castle amphitheater was much more flamboyant, confident and just a little smug. It wasn't just about pleasing Oberon for him. He also wanted to entertain himself. I could see a gleam in his eyes that screamed trouble and a smirk that made him seem like he had more control over the situation than he actually did. While the other Puck ran and almost crawled around the stage, this Puck love to strut. He command the stage like he was his own, unless Oberon was there of course. But when he was, Puck never lost the mischievous gleam in his eye nor that smirk of his. This Puck was full of energy.

It was fun and interesting to see the different Pucks that can be portrayed. Both had the same lines and yet two different Puck's were created.

Fairies Made Your Bed; Now Lie in It

I loved the live performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Castle Theater. The lovers were suitably hilarious and superficial, but the final act's handling of the couples nagged me all weekend. Most productions embrace the light comedy and sketch silhouettes of the lovers; they're not really people so much as fairy stereotypes of humans. Helena, in particular, appears to be nothing more than a girl whose desires overrule her reason. She usually has no depth, which always disturbs me at the end of the play. I want to empathize with her even though she's annoying and shallow (like she could love Demetrius for his personality). She ends up on a situation reminiscent of my nightmares: she's married to a man that she knows doesn't love her. The live production and Michael Hoffman's adaptation prioritize different groups, as seen through Helena's depiction in the final act.

Exaggerated lovers at the Castle...and Sarai judging them in the background.

Two sets of lovers dressed exactly the same way. No commentary there. Nope.

In Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream, any glimpse of one young couple is immediately followed by an almost identical shot of the other. They had the exact same wedding and are celebrating in the same way. The couples, as shown above, are dressed the same. They react the same during the mechanicals' play, with stifled laughter and knowing glances. Only during Thisbe's death scene does this pattern break.

Thisbe's death dramatically differs in these two productions. The live one enjoyed the ridiculous aspect, while Hoffman's took a risk and brought a revolutionary tone: sincerity. As Flute displays genuine grief, Lysander and Hermia draw close, slipping into the easy intimacy two people in love. Hermia and Demetrius, however, still stay independent of each other. Demetrius' remarks and raucous laughter during this scene alienated Helena, who laughs but often appears in rapt attention to the drama unfolding on stage.

In both productions, Demetrius immediately cracks wise with Theseus while they clap. However, Hoffman then takes a moment explore a genuine moment, possibly the only one Helena has in the entire movie. Demetrius turns to Helena, pleased with himself (the clip cut off right there) and Helena, who was touched to the point of tears, shifts her gaze to look at him. I can't decide if it's disappointment or regret, but Helena has a moment where she sees through the illusion of the Demetrius she built in her mind, the Demetrius that wooed her under a spell, the Demetrius who played the part of a lover to perfection.

The live production at the Castle emphasized the contrast between the nerds and the rockers (for lack of a better word) and cultivated rich comedy. Everyone had fun with the play and created an energy that juxtaposed beautifully with Oberon, Titania, and Puck's metatheatrical goodbye. This transition underscored what the production had masterfully executed: the difference between fairy and human. Each were depicted with flaws, but the fairies emphasized competition (especially Puck and Titania's attendants) while the humans sought solutions.

Hoffman's film instead has a much larger focus on the lovers. It makes sense that little moments of interpretation such as Helena's reaction to Demetrius punctuate the film. It makes me see a Helena I didn't think could exist but is fascinating to imagine.

Hermia the Fiesty Dwarf

I watched the live version and then the Rice University production of Act IV Scene II. I looked specifically at the physical interactions between the characters in both versions. Some things were quite similar between the two but there were a few obvious differences. The character that was the most different was Hermia. In the Rice University production she was much more physically forceful during this scene than the live version. In the beginning of Scene II when Hermia accuses Demetrius of murdering Lysander, the Rice University production had her actually physically threaten him by hitting, punching, and twisting his ear. The live version had nothing like this. What really caught my attention was the way both characters acted like this was normal, suggesting that Hermia had done this to Demetrius before, which is certainly a contrast to the weak females and strong males that are shown in the other version.

Later on in the scene, Hermia’s physical reactions were fairly similar in both versions. She jumped on Lysander, clung to his leg, and tried to attack Helena, all in very similar ways. In the live version, however, as the scene goes on Hermia becomes less physical and starts looking less angry and more like she’s going to cry. In the Rice University version she remains angry and physically threatening throughout the whole scene.

These differences created a unique gender dynamic in the Rice University version. Although Helena never gets very physical (at least in the scene I saw), Hermia’s physical threats make her seem almost dominant over Lysander and Demetrius despite her small size. Perhaps they did this to counteract some of the more anti-feminist elements of the play. If so, they did a good job of at least showing Hermia as a strong female (though a bit alarmingly abusive) through her physical interactions with the other characters.

Pettiness: Not Just For Humans

After our class discussion, I was interested in looking over A Midsummer Night's Dream with an eye attuned to the "darker elements" present, especially in conjunction with the fairies. Using the library's Shakespeare guide as a starting point, I stumbled onto an article discussing just that. For the most part, it expounded on things we had touched upon in class (darkness being a central part of the fairies' world), but then it made a fascinating connection: though the fairies follow the dark "like a dream" (V.i.393), they are anthropomorphized to exhibit human pettiness. Puck's sense of superiority to the mortals in the woods shows up a few times in the play. Oberon and Titania's relationship is portrayed like the common trope of jealousy, petty squabbles, and the nagging wife who ultimately submits to her much more knowledgable, rational husband. (Eew. Typing that made my fingers weep. But you get the point.) Though the fairies are portrayed as the wild, natural creatures, they are subject to a similar ordering of the world as the lovers are: a world where males reign supreme. These parallels with the human world take the fear out of the untamed natural world the fairies dominate. It allows the audiences of Shakespeare's day to even identify with the supernatural instead of being scared of its foreignness.

Language, Language

Professor Burton discussed in class how A Midsummer Night's Dream really needs to be watched in order to experience the layers of the play. I began to believe that more and more as I watched adaptations. I've seen a lot of adaptations of Midsummer, and this time, watching an old 1968 adaptation that embraced a traditional approach, I was struck by how A Midsummer Night's Dream needs to be heard.

I know from literary courses that Shakespeare carefully applies rhyme and rhythm to his social classes, in part to vault their speech to a poetical level, but also to play with the idea of "importance." The fairies, of course, speak in iambic pentameter and couplets. Athenian nobility retains the rhythm but loses the consistency of the rhymes. The mechanicals, with a few exceptions, speak in prose.

However, reading the play with these language distinctions lacks the status that the actual performance can deliver. Fairies are difficult to take seriously, especially when they are as petty as Oberon, Titania, and Puck; however, with a musical cadence and consistent, musical rhyming, it's difficult not to fall into their mentality. They carry authority because their speech is distinctly different than those around them.

This fairly strict distinction can (depending on the direction) make Bottom's speech in Act V (when he initially awakes) a complicated, central passage in the play. Bottom speaks in iambic pentameter, like the fairies. Is it a residual effect of Puck's spell? Is Bottom glimpsing some cosmic truth traditionally beyond human understanding? Is Bottom being juxtaposed against the language mastery of the fairy world?

The Text is King

I went and saw A Midsummer Night's Dream on Saturday night, and something that really surprised me is how they played around with the text to make it fit the modern setting. Not that it was a bad thing. The way they did it was actually really funny. However, it made me think about the other Shakespeare adaptations (mostly film versions) that I've seen, which all were very faithful to the text beyond moving some things around and taking some things out. This is the first Shakespeare performance or adaptation that I've seen that actually exchanged some of the words for new ones, even though not all of those were in an Elizabethan setting.
This in turn made me wonder why the original Shakespearean text is often viewed as somewhat sacred. In an article that I found via Google on the "dos and don'ts" of Shakespeare adaptations (see here) one of the "don'ts" was to avoid messing with the text. Obviously Shakespeare's use of language was groundbreaking and is still powerful for many modern audiences, but I don't see any harm in changing just a few words here and there to make the text fit a new setting better. It was a bit distracting at times when I was trying to focus on understanding the Shakespearean language, but overall it helped the text work much better in the modern setting.

Performance

We touched briefly on the idea of performance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I mentioned in class that the fact that there is a play within a play is indicative of the performances that we put on in our daily lives—regardless to whether we realize that or not. In the last act of Midsummer, the royals watch in mirth as the rude mechanicals perform for them. As was pointed out, their play is basically just Romeo and Juliet, but comedic because Pyramus and Thisbe, as well as the rest of the company, are not actors. Two aspects of this are interesting. First, that Shakespeare chose to include a play at all—was he simply including a spectacle for the sake of it, or was there a deeper meaning to this decision? I choose to think the latter—that Shakespeare purposefully placed the play right at the end to point out to us, in the most meta of ways, that we are simply players, as is stated in “As You Like It”. We are not people going about life, simply existing. We are beings of design, meant to perform for the world, each one of us on our personal stage. The second piece of this is also extremely meta. The play, “Pyramus and Thisbe” is not just a story. It’s the plot of Romeo and Juliet. So Shakespeare chose to make fun of one of his most famous plays by making a shenanigan out of it. He basically acknowledged his own plays while writing Midsummer. Was this a commentary theater as an art form, or simply a meta-nudge to his other works? This becomes more interesting when the plays are actually performed because in Shakespeare the fourth wall is somewhat nonexistent. Who was Shakespeare really highlighting here? The actors, the writers, the theater-people who perform for a living? Or the watchers, the audience, the theater-goers who live to perform?

Pyramus and Juliet

To me, Midsummer's isn't one of Shakespeare's funniest comedies, but it does contain what I consider to be some of Shakespeare's finest humor: "Pyramus and Thisbe." The storyline mocks Romeo and Juliet, demonstrating Shakespeare's genius in writing both comedy and tragedy. His ability to dramatize essentially the same story in two different tones showcases his talent. Sources disagree on which play was written and performed first, but one can assume that many theatergoers saw the two shows and noticed the parallels. The text itself sets the tone for the story; the asides between the royal audience members during "Pyramus" provides the bulk of the scene's humor. Even if the play within a play was played seriously, the court's quips poke fun of the popular tragic archetypes of the day. Do you guys think that Shakespeare's burlesque of "Pyramus" makes up for our high school sufferings from Romeo and Juliet?

Fun fact: According to the awesome Oxford Reference, Shakespeare drew some inspiration for A Midsummer's Night Dream from Chaucer's Knight's Tale.

Fun fact 2: Disney adapted the play into a short Mickey Mouse cartoon! (Here's a link to part 1! I can't find part 2, but anything with Donald Duck is worth the watch.)

Fairies in the Woods

One of the most fascinating aspects of A Midsummer Night's Dream to me is Shakespeare's use of both the fairies, and the setting of the play. Both are utilized so that they become more than simply other characters, or trip through the woods. They become symbols, characters, themes--and vital to understanding what the play is really about. 

To start off, the setting; the play begins in Athens, in the midst of a civilized group of people bursting at the seams with issues. Theseus and Hippolyta are meant to get married, but in reality he "wooed her with his sword", Egeus is trying to get his daughter either killed or wed to Demetrius, who loves her, but she doesn't love him, of course. She loves Lysander. As soon as those two decide to take their fate into their own hands, they run away to the woods. That's an interesting and cleverly crafted decision to move them out of civilization into something darker and more wild. As soon as they leave this royal court they find themselves inside a world that they cannot control, and where conventions of society don't exactly exist. And the woods are where everything begins to get interesting.

Within the woods we have the fairies. They also exist in a world outside of social conventions. Naturally they have their own social structure, but it operates on a different playing field. Oberon and his wife can get into magical fights where they use their powers to get their way at all costs. Selfish, childish, or maybe just privy to more primitive human emotions. They are ruled by passions, and cannot be bothered with rules. They simply don't play by those. Puck is an impish, playful, sometimes malicious, example of the most base of human feelings. All of the fairies, really, represent those wild and less manageable emotions. 

Shakespeare uses both the woods and the fairies to display a darker side of humanity. Wild, passionate, outside of standard societal rules, they exist beyond what we think of as normal. 

Choosing the Simpler World

A Midsummer Night's Dream has always been one of my favorite plays, and not just because I killed it in 8th grade as Oberon. There is something about the unpredictable exaggeration of the fairy world that amplifies societal strictures across all three groupings of characters. Puck and Oberon's separate attempts at wooing, for example, lead with the assumption of male superiority. However, there is so much more nuance to that than popular interpretation seems to allows for.

Neil Gaiman just gets Shakespeare.

However, as I explored supplemental reading in preparation for class, I was alarmed and frustrated with how often the women-are-property argument was used. While Shakespeare's complex handling of gender dynamics evolved over his career, Shakespeare rarely is so overtly general with his gender roles. I feel that if anything the chaos of switching affections and supernatural machinations take the power of sexuality away from either gender and emphasizes its uncontrollable nature. The temperamental elements of the fairy world parallel nature more than they parallel the social construction of human society. Shakespeare makes a strong case for attraction being beyond human control. I mean, how else do you account for Helena's irrational love of Demetrius? There is none.

Over simplifying this conflict guts the implications of Ass-Bottom and Titania's fling. By using a natural element--a flower--Oberon and Puck bend the rules of society, nature, and choice (specifically the idea of love being a choice) to topple Titania's resolve against her union with the fair king.

Neil Gaiman takes this conflict a step further in his Sandman comic when he draws Oberon's court into the human realm to enjoy a performance of the play. Dream, the primary character, mediates the encounter, bridging the staunch humanism of the actors and the more animalistic nature of the fairies. They dynamics leap off of the page and add an interesting context to the original source material.

(Also, this is a really interesting combination of a staged adaptation accompanied by the original text.)

A Midsummer Night's Funniest Dream

I must admit that this was the first time reading A Midsummer Night's Dream and I was not disappointed in the least. The play, although written hundreds of years ago, does not lose its hilarity. This play is a good example of how people's sense of humor does not really change. For example, the unknowing puns Bottom made when talking about himself. In fact, his name becomes part of the pun!
And then there is Puck. The mischievous mind who started the pun in the first place. Puck and Oberon were quite the funny duo. They start out trying to trick the queen of the fairies by making her fall in love with some beast (Bottom with his donkey head), but they end up mixing up the two couples that entered the forest with the same flower juice they used on the queen. The fact that these magical being could make mistakes like that makes it all the more funny because they are known for being above common human error. I also thought it was quite funny how Puck threw insults at Demetrius and Lycander in their voices to confuse them and make them lost so that they don't kill each other.
I think it is interesting how something that was written so long ago can be just as funny today as it was then. The way people talk may change but their sense of humor evidently does not.  

Varying Degrees of Comedy

Shameless advertising.

Thus far I've been in two productions of Midsummer, and have seen many other, including film adaptations. I've even read books based around the simpler plot points of the show. I've learned one major thing in these experiences-something that has been pointed out by many students in the class in various posts and comments. Shakespeare can be interpreted infinite ways. Right now I'd specifically like to touch on comedy. Midsummer is a comedy. It has a rise, and a fall, and it has a conclusion that doesn't end in people dying! Unless you count the play within the play, which we probably shouldn't. Anyway, in the productions I've seen and participated in, the show is invariably funny. However, it does vary in the ways in which it presents the comedy. The text itself is hilarious, filled with word play, and situational comedy, as well as even the perfectly timed, purposeful flubbing of lines that Peter Quince brings to the stage whilst reading the prologue. It's a funny play, no matter how you play it. But when watching the production I am in currently, you'll find a much more emotional production, playing on the situations and the lines, and using the comedy that has already been built into the show, as well as physical comedy. When watching the Grassroots revival a year ago though, myself and the rest of the audience was struck by the absolutely hysterical all-male cast, that played every aspect as a farce. Not a line was serious, and not a single moment was meant to inspire anything except laughter. And again, I have seen other productions where the only comedy was the text and the set, or the text and a specific actor used as a running gag throughout the show. As we read the play we can see a great deal of comedic writing, but we can also look deeper at the characters and dig into their situations and motivations to find either the emotion that lies underneath, or the comedy that we can conjure.

Watch out, world! Story of my paper

Okay, so it took forever for me to get my paper going.

     I came up with a couple different ideas for theses and got great feedback from all of you (thank you!) and from my facebookgroupies along with some really solid advice from Dr. Burton. I found all these possible sources, of which I only ended up using a couple, but that’s okay.

     Thanks to some more guidance from Dr. Burton right at the end I changed my whole approach, (from “comparing R&J to MND andproving that MND was better” to “since we have to teach Shakespeare in spite of these risks, we’d better do it right, so here is WHAT to teach and HOW to do it” which was frustrating, but guess what! It made my topic much more accessible.

     Of course I was procrastinating a lot and praying a lot, which is not advisable but worked out for me: the night I was supposed to be writing this paper but getting nowhere I finally gave up at like 12:00 am and decided to just read a couple of articles for my ENG 378 class and then go to bed. Well guess what, those articles were about Shakespeare! And the next day my ENG 378 teacher shared a Scholastic Scope kids lit magazine that had a MND script in it – I was so surprised and very grateful. Those articles and that magazine fit perfectly into my essay. I also had one good response from a question I posted to a teacher Google community that contributed to my thesis. Equipped with these great tools, I stayed up til 3:30 am and finished that dang paper in the nick of time! Now maybe it will be accepted to the venues I have submitted it to (the Rough Magic guys emailed me back and are looking over my full text!) and go on to change the world! 

Leah's Learning Outcame

History, Context, Genres and Themes, and Ethics  - I felt like I exponentially increased my Shakespeare Literacy by studying the plays, watching the movies, and attending the performance. The different genres make Shakespeare accessible and enjoyable - the setting, characters, diction, allusions, themes, and of course the PLOTS make a lot more sense now.

Secondary Scholarship 

I benefited from the other books and articles and blogs and conversations that I read about Shakespeare and his work. I learned to appreciate all that is available about this and other topics.

Scholarly Research 

1. Gain Shakespeare Literacy 

I loved the things I learned about original Shakespeare and about Shakespeare today. I understand it has a huge part in education and entertainment all over the country, around the world, and across various interests and investments (i.e. Shakespeare video games!). I understand Shakespeare better by getting familiar with him/his works through all these different genres.

2. Analyze Shakespeare Critically 

In my essay I compared A Midsummer Night's Dream to Romeo and Juliet and other plays, and had to think critically to decide why MND is, in my opinion, the best option for teaching ninth graders. This required me to focus on this and the other plays and their similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses, appeal to audiences, and impact on society. I feel like I own Shakespeare in a whole new manner!

3. Engage Shakespeare Creatively 

When we wrote and filmed our sonnets I felt like this helped me to engage creatively with Shakespeare. That was fun and interesting and provided a bit of insight into the bard’s mind, if nothing else than just to think like a poet for a few minutes.

4. Share Shakespeare Meaningfully 

People said they liked my sonnet that I posted on facebook and google +. That’s a good way to share Shakespeare. And I am hoping that the essay I wrote about how to teach Shakespeare will influence teachers and students in a way that is meaningful. I am excited about the venues to which I submitted my paper. I think all the blogging in class was a sort of way to share Shakespeare meaningfully – not really my cup of tea, but required for this class, so I did it. Talking to people about Shakespeare in person was fun and I plan to do more of that for the rest of my life.

5. Gain Digital Literacy 

I learned how to blog, how to upload videos to youtube, and how to find social media groups about pertinent things, like google communities. My digital literacy has been increased. I might even end up blogging this summer as part of my job. Imagine that! I did not think that this kind of research was necessary or the most valuable way to learn and write about Shakespeare, but I guess every thing has its place somewhere. 

Submitted once, offered twice...we'll see what they say!

I submitted my essay to ScholarsArchive, and sent an email to

This Rough Magic
A Peer-Reviewed, Academic, Online Journal
Dedicated to the Teaching of Medieval and Renaissance Literature

and

Stage Mom Musings

art is everything & everything is art

with this abstract: 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

A Teacher’s Solution to Disinterest and Society’s Solution to Anti-Literacy

Shakespeare has made his way from the heart of commonplace Globe attendants, through the minds of scholarly experts and into the adolescent classroom. As an icon in the history of written English literature, Shakespeare has influenced writers for centuries. Now, thousands of ninth grade students study Romeo and Juliet and other plays each year. The universal themes promoted by Shakespeare’s myriad of publications as well as his stylistic prowess in make his work a popular part of high school English syllabi. However, arguments about the psychological and academic impact of these plays on today’s youth present a contrary argument. This paper will show how teachers can be wise in selecting a Shakespeare text for their classroom and the best methods to teach this material in a way that will engage, motivate, and educate their students.

Wish me luck!

Leah Anderson: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Teacher’s Solution to Disinterest and Society’s Solution to Anti-Literacy

A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

A Teacher’s Solution to Disinterest and Society’s Solution to Anti-Literacy

Shakespeare has made his way from the heart of commonplace Globe attendants, through the minds of scholarly experts and into the adolescent classroom. As an icon in the history of written English literature, Shakespeare has influenced writers for centuries. Now, thousands of ninth grade students study Romeo and Juliet and other plays each year. The universal themes promoted by Shakespeare’s myriad of publications as well as his stylistic prowess in make his work a popular part of high school English syllabi. However, arguments about the psychological and academic impact of these plays on today’s youth present a contrary argument. This paper will show how teachers can be wise in selecting a Shakespeare text for their classroom and the best methods to teach this material in a way that will engage, motivate, and educate their students.

healthy feedback...much more healthy than the chocolate chips that are getting me through this paper-writing session....

i really appreciated the feedback 

from Mikaela and Kara and Nyssa

in person and in posts

about quotes, statistics, thesis, various claims, major points in my paper, confusing parts, people to talk to, and technical writing bits

thank you!

A Bit Confused: My Response to Leah

Leah, I just read your draft on teaching Shakespeare in high schools, and I left it a bit confused. It didn't sound like the paper I had been reading about or talking with you about. I felt like you were making too many claims, and I didn't know where to focus my attention. Here are some things that threw me for a loop and some ways to help things feel more cohesive.