A Midsummer Night's Dream Review

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream couples Greek myth with English Faeries. Theseus and Hipolyta are due to be married, but there are two couples caught in turmoil because of unrequited love. When the troubled couples take their follies to the forest, they unknowingly wind up in faery territory. Oberon, the king of the invisible faeries, pities one of the unrequited lovers and orders his jester to cast a spell to remedy their troubles. But mistaken identity leads to more trouble than was originally wrought. In the meanwhile, the king and queen of the faeries have troubles of their own. Oberon's solution is to have his jester spell the queen into falling madly in love with anything she lays her eyes on so he may take her ward as his knight and they will no longer have any trouble between them. Robin causes Titania to fall in love with a member of a theater troupe, who Robin had spelled to have the head of an ass. All of the mischief is then corrected in time for the wedding, where it all seems like it was a dream and the reunified Faes dance in celebration of the marriage of three couples.

There are many tropes of Faes that seem to originate or be highlighted by this play. First is the typical connection of Faes to nature. All the faeries reside on the forest and primarily draw their powers from nature. Oberon's love potion and antidote are created from flowers and plants. Also, the lesser faeries are named after animals or plants. Another trope is Robin's mischief. He loves to witness mischief or to cause it. By nature, he misleads people, such as the theater troupe. And when he gets caught in causing more mischief than he was supposed to, he tries to use a misunderstanding of words and technicality to excuse himself from fault.  Which that attributes to Faes being attached to words, such as their inability to lie, their bargaining with words that may mislead, and geases. Finally, the number three seems to play a subtle, yet constant role throughout the play. There are three couples in the play, three main faeries that are given realistic names, and three spells to get Demetrius to fall in love with Helena.

This review is not as well-researched as I would like it to be. It is only a primary review for now and I hope to be able to be able to do more research on this book in the future.

2018 Update

Hi everyone. Just wanted to update you all on my progress so far. I have been keeping up with my Fae reading goal and am currently on my third book of the year. The first month has been pretty rough with work, health issues, and I misplaced my USB drive, which has my draft for my post of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." As soon as I find it, I will post it ASAP. I am also working on finishing up my post for Holly Black's The Cruel Prince. Reading-wise, I am on the second book of Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black's The Spiderwick Chronicles and will write one large post for the whole series once I am finished. Just wanted to let you know that I have not forgotten about keeping up with my posts, I just need to find the proper time for it. I hope to get my first book review posted soon.

In the meanwhile, I thought I would do a non-fiction post to tide everyone over. I recently bought "The Faerie Handbook", which is a book compiled by the editors of Faerie Magazine. Faerie Magazine is classified as a women's culture magazine. Through their works on the magazine, they have compiled a lot of their articles and topics into this consolidated book and have expanded on many things. Firstly, look how pretty the cover and end papers are.

What I love most about this book is that beyond providing me with information about Fae literature and folklore, it also expands the Fae as a culture rather than just a mythical and literary creatures. This book contains wonderful topics, such as fashion, bathing, interior design, baking, and many others related to the Fae culture.

2018 Book Resolution

To end off the year of 2017, I had just finished the classic Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I will not give a lengthy review of that book because I did not have the time for it and that is not the purpose of this post. Overall, I really enjoyed reading that book, especially since it was my first time reading it and it was the most appropriate time to read it. When it comes to classics, I always have a skepticism that it either lives up to the hype or it is an overrated piece of work that only reflects a culture’s flimsy appeal. But for A Christmas Carol, it was a novel that I really understood why it was so popular. It was short and sweet, which makes for a perfect novel for the bustling holiday seasons, and really touches the heart of those who have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. The narration was also very enjoyable and reminded me of a novel and a play while reading it. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

Now, in the spirit of the New Year, I have set myself a very specific reading goal, as I have expressed to many of my friends. For the entirety of 2018, I will be dedicating my reading time to only books that contain Fae characters. As most of my close friends know, I dearly love the Fae and am a big advocate for literature that promote the Fae, whether it be Fantasy, Classics, YA, or Middle Grade. I also hope to one day teach Fae literature. *fingers crossed* So I planned out this year to be the start to my Fae studies in literature. I will be including classics, like William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queen. I will also be reading my favorite genre, YA, with books like Maggie Stiefvater’s The Faerie Queen’s Deception, Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses series, Cassandra Clare’s The Dark Artifices series, and many others. I am also going to finally read Holly Black’s young reader series, The Spiderwick Chronicles, after already reading almost all of her YA Fae books. If I have time leftover, I may try to challenge myself to the series that made Faes so famous among adults, The Lord of the Rings. If there are any books anyone would like to recommend for me, please feel free, as long as it contains Faes. Wish me luck!