Kyle’s Reviews > A Midsummer Night's Dream > Status Update
Kyle
is on page 97 of 171
It is unfortunate that the clowns are branded "rude" and lower-class when all they seek is to entertain a crowd of nobles and not get their heads chopped off for doing so. Just because a few mispronounce some words, readers are led to think them ill-educated louts, and yet these same people will look on with fondness at the upper-class twits rampaging through the woods ready to do violence upon each other for "love?"
— Apr 14, 2014 09:01PM
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Kyle’s Previous Updates
Kyle
is on page 122 of 171
Although he seems to have a bone to pick with playwrights, along with lunatics and lovers, when the Pyramus and Thisby begins, Theseus becomes the most forgiving of the actors' faults while other "gentlemen" in the audience are at the least endearing behaviour. The fairies return to turn the tables on the audience for not making the fullest use of their imagination, but then kindly letting them off the hook.
— Apr 16, 2014 01:34PM
Kyle
is on page 106 of 171
The most Inception-like scene in Shakespeare's plays, more than famed speeches from The Tempest or nightmare visions from Macbeth, has the characters confronting a reality that they co-created with the fairy's narcotic. Each dreamer wakes with a better sense of what they need to do, but it is not clear what Oberon got out of this scheme - where's the Indian boy? The play within must go on!
— Apr 15, 2014 10:55AM
Kyle
is on page 72 of 171
Our divided natures seem to affect both fairies and humans, with Robin Goodfellow being a mischief-maker most of the the time, but a loyal servant to an angry Oberon. Titania raises the issue of jealousy, and then to enact her accusation comes Helena, in love with a disdaining Demetrius and resenting her childhood friend Hermia. When Lysander declares his love's reasoning, it is to the wrong partner: he is the snake!
— Apr 13, 2014 12:09PM
Kyle
is on page 57 of 171
Egeus must be Athens' crankiest citizen, to insist on a son-in-law like Demetrius over Lysander, when one is as interchangeable as the other, plus he makes complaint to the Duke who just a few lines ago was telling his fiancé about the crazy stuff he did to woo her. Seems a bit out of character that Theseus would take Egeus' side against his own daughter, so the tradesmen need not worry about performing mimetically.
— Apr 12, 2014 08:54PM
Kyle
is on page 40 of 171
At the end of a long term of Shakespeare studies, I can finally catch up with reading plays for enjoyment - or not quite yet! Turns out this masterful psychological gem will be the play my Early Modern Exploration students want to study, and even rereading the introduction with my newly educated eyes makes me spot the miniature echoes throughout the play of greater themes elsewhere, plus there's Greenblatt's Freedom.
— Apr 11, 2014 09:51PM
