A Midsummer Night's Dream

When I was in college, a fellow lit student tried to convince me that Shakespeare wasn't really that good a writer. This fellow student was displaying his independence and rebelling against the establishment, though, ironically, he was obviously parroting and exaggerating a professor's lecture.

There's no way to say that Shakespeare was not a great writer. Anyone who does tends to come off looking slightly daft. It is completely socially acceptable, though, to write whole books on whether Hamlet was really mad, or just faking it.

I like picking up Shakespeare occasionally just for the mental exercise and I re-read A Midsummer Night's Dream recently. It's light, it's entertaining and it's a heck of a lot easier to follow than the tragedies (it lacks long soliloquies with twisted metaphors and meanings).

The problem with my copy of this play, though, is that the academics had clearly gotten a hold if it. The level of analysis (and I'm sure it only scratched the surface of what's out there) left all joy a reader could take in the play far behind. The introduction was nearly as long as the play, and considerably less entertaining.

Oddly enough it was Shakespeare that made me decide I would never pursue literature beyond the undergraduate level. I read an introduction to a Shakespeare play which had the for and against arguments for when he was born. Not, mind you, the year he was born in, but the day of the month. I did not want to spend my life having heated arguments with academics about the birthdate of a man who died hundreds of years ago.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is certainly one of the more accessible plays. The English language was much more fluid then (and let's face it, Shakespeare took some liberties) so it is good mental exercise. If you're looking for an easy Shakespeare read, this is a good play to start with. If you're looking to get to know Shakespeare better, though, go see a play or rent a movie version. The ones by Branagh are good, if a little dark.