dappled shade

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.

The Fifth Elephant

I've largely given up trying to explain Terry Pratchett books to people who have never read them. When I start talking about the wizards, werewolves and assorted fantasy characters, I get the type of look normally reserved for Star Trek geeks. Despite knowing better, I couldn't resist at least one post, though, as I have long been a huge enthusiast of Pratchett's Discworld series.

I recently re-read The Fifth Elephant. Samuel Vimes, the protagonist, travels as an ambassador to a country where the Werewolves, Vampires and Dwarves are having a power struggle. (Even writing this down, and knowing that people will read it, is embarrassing.)

In The Fifth Elephant, as in all of Pratchett's books, I get involved in the characters and after awhile I stop noticing that the character I'm rooting for is a werewolf with family problems. Pratchett is very good at coming up with compelling motives for his sympathetic characters. And while he has his villains, generally good and evil are nuanced.

He has the habit (common to good authors) of apparently writing about one thing (e.g. a power struggle in a fictional country) but really making a comment on how people are motivated and how societies work.

Pratchett's books are also very funny and full of endless references.

For those of you who have never heard of Terry Pratchett, it's curiously difficult to pull out one book to recommend. The difficulty is that the early books tend to be a series of jokes (think Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, but less random). His later ones are much more plot driven, but lose some of their appeal if you don't know the character's back stories.

If you've never read a Pratchett book, start with Mort. It stands reasonably well on its own with the bonus that Death is a character. If you're familiar with the author, The Fifth Elephant is very entertaining and worth a read.

Occasional Happenings

If you're a friend who has dropped by, welcome! I'm posting to announce my personal site at http://dappledshade.typepad.com/personal (I've also added a link in the right-hand sidebar).

I tried a personal weblog once before, and what I rapidly found was that though my life is intensely interesting to me, it's hard to make it interesting for the casual reader. So I've called the site Occasional Happenings as it will be an occasional update for those who really want to know what I've been involved in recently.

Happy reading.