Enjoying “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare

I particularly enjoy finds like this because they are remarkably close to what I hope to someday write. It’s a simple introductory guide to Midsummer’s that tries to make it very fun, and most importantly, very approachable. Within the first few lines the author even states one of my own mantras, namely “Bring your own experience into it in order to decide what it all means to you.”

Tags: shakespeare

Trolling through del.icio.us today I found this Richard II study guide. Since you don’t often find such material on one of the lesser known plays, I thought it worth a link.

Just a quick little acknowledgement and tribute to playwright August Wilson, who has advanced liver cancer.

“…America’s Shakespeare is dying. This is all the more reason to pay tribute while he lives.”

Oh, somebody else please tell me that they’re watching POV – The Hobart Shakespeareans on PBS? I’ve just started it on Tivo, and I’m loving it.

Here you’ve got a teacher that comes right out and says “I teach these inner city kids everything the system wants them to learn…and then I teach them Shakespeare because I love Shakespeare, because my dad read it to me at bed time, because I want them to have my passion for it. I use Shakespeare as a microcosm for everything I want them to learn.” Nice.

These are young kids — fifth grade, maybe? I’m wondering how much they “get” Hamlet a little bit. I just listened to a scene where he summarized Hamlet as saying, “Hamlet is about….what? One word. Starts with a D. It’s about…..death, right?” Until he said D, my one word would have been “revenge”. Before he said one word it might have been “children and parents”. I think it’s about much more than just death.

Either way, it’s still good. I like this guy.

Such Shakespeare Stuff – Blogging Shakespeare Everywhere You Look

Guess which Shakespeare is one of the 12 books that changed the world?

Trick question. They count “First Folio” as a single book :).