Celtic Night: A Fifteen-Year-Old Girls Modern Retelling of Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream

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A latest retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream, this tale of a year-old American girl's event learning in a foreign country within the Irish nation-state borrows parts from Irish folklore and escapist-fantasy fiction. Adjustment to existence with an Irish family members is tough firstly, yet she forges a bond along with her new university associates while, overdue one evening, they slip out into the encompassing woods and revel with fairy-like creatures at a mystical marriage ceremony social gathering. Read Online or Download Celtic Night: Download e-book for iPad: Pants on Fire by Meg Cabot.

Yet she cannot precisely inform the reality, either—not whilst she's juggling boyfriends, secretly hating the highschool soccer group each person else worships, and attempting to have the simplest summer season ever. Her largest mystery, what quite occurred the evening Tommy Sullivan is a freak used to be spray-painted at the junior excessive gym wall, is secure.

Fifteen-year-old Katey aka child is going to college within the Game—a mall switched over right into a "school" run via company sponsors. The Espressologist by Kristina Springer. What is your drink of selection? Is it a small pumpkin spice latte? Then you are plenty of enjoyable and a piece sassy. Or a medium americano? Kehler pays little attention to his writings, as they were largely derivative of previous works. She notes, however, that Hudson too believed that the play should be viewed as a dream. He cited the lightness of the characterisation as supporting of his view.

He also argued that Theseus was one of the "heroic men of action" [36] so central to Shakespeare's theatrical works. Clapp and Horace Howard Furness were both more concerned with the problem of the play's duration, though they held opposing views. He also viewed the play as representing three phases or movements.

The first is the Real World of the play, which represents reason. The second is the Fairy World, an ideal world which represents imagination and the supernatural. The third is their representation in art, where the action is self-reflective. Snider viewed Titania and her caprice as solely to blame for her marital strife with Oberon.

She therefore deserves punishment, and Oberon is a dutiful husband who provides her with one. For failing to live in peace with Oberon and her kind, Titania is sentenced to fall in love with a human. And this human, unlike Oberon is a "horrid brute". Towards the end of the 19th century, Georg Brandes —6 and Frederick S. Boas were the last major additions to A Midsummer Night's Dream criticism. To Boas the play is, despite its fantastical and exotic trappings, "essentially English and Elizabethan". Summing up their contributions, Kehler writes: The 20th century brought new insights into the play.

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In , Elizabeth Sewell argued that Shakespeare aligns himself not with the aristocrats of the play, but with Bottom and the artisans. It is their task to produce a wedding entertainment, precisely the purpose of the writer on working in this play. He counted among them fantasy, blind love, and divine love. He traced these themes to the works of Macrobius , Apuleius , and Giordano Bruno. Bottom also briefly alludes to a passage from the First Epistle to the Corinthians by Paul the Apostle , dealing with divine love. Dent argued against theories that the exemplary model of love in the play is the rational love of Theseus and Hippolyta.

He argued that in this work, love is inexplicable. It is the offspring of imagination, not reason. However the exemplary love of the play is one of an imagination controlled and restrained, and avoids the excesses of "dotage". Dent also denied the rationality and wisdom typically attributed to Theseus.

He reminded his readers that this is the character of Theseus from Greek mythology , a creation himself of "antique fable".

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He can't tell the difference between an actual play and its interlude. The interlude of the play's acting troop is less about the art and more of an expression of the mechanicals' distrust of their own audience. They fear the audience reactions will be either excessive or inadequate, and say so on stage. Theseus fails to get the message. Also in , Jan Kott offered his own views on the play. He viewed as main themes of the play violence and "unrepressed animalistic sexuality".

The changeling that Oberon desires is his new "sexual toy". As for the Athenian lovers following their night in the forest, they are ashamed to talk about it because that night liberated them from themselves and social norms, and allowed them to reveal their real selves. In , John A. Allen theorised that Bottom is a symbol of the animalistic aspect of humanity. He also thought Bottom was redeemed through the maternal tenderness of Titania, which allowed him to understand the love and self-sacrifice of Pyramus and Thisbe.

He emphasised the "terrifying power" [40] of the fairies and argued that they control the play's events. They are the most powerful figures featured, not Theseus as often thought. He also emphasised the ethically ambivalent characters of the play. Finally, Fender noted a layer of complexity in the play. Theseus, Hippolyta, and Bottom have contradictory reactions to the events of the night, and each has partly valid reasons for their reactions, implying that the puzzles offered to the play's audience can have no singular answer or meaning.

In , Michael Taylor argued that previous critics offered a too cheerful view of what the play depicts.


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He emphasised the less pleasant aspects of the otherwise appealing fairies and the nastiness of the mortal Demetrius prior to his enchantment. He argued that the overall themes are the often painful aspects of love and the pettiness of people, which here include the fairies. Zimbardo viewed the play as full of symbols.

The Moon and its phases alluded to in the play, in his view, stand for permanence in mutability. The play uses the principle of discordia concors in several of its key scenes. Theseus and Hippolyta represent marriage and, symbolically, the reconciliation of the natural seasons or the phases of time. Hippolyta's story arc is that she must submit to Theseus and become a matron.

Titania has to give up her motherly obsession with the changeling boy and passes through a symbolic death, and Oberon has to once again woo and win his wife. Kehler notes that Zimbardo took for granted the female subordination within the obligatory marriage, social views that were already challenged in the s. In , James L. Calderwood offered a new view on the role of Oberon. He viewed the king as specialising in the arts of illusion.

Oberon, in his view, is the interior dramatist of the play, orchestrating events.

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He is responsible for the play's happy ending, when he influences Theseus to overrule Egeus and allow the lovers to marry. Oberon and Theseus bring harmony out of discord. He also suggested that the lovers' identities, which are blurred and lost in the forest, recall the unstable identities of the actors who constantly change roles. In fact the failure of the artisans' play is based on their chief flaw as actors: Also in , Andrew D.

Weiner argued that the play's actual theme is unity. The poet's imagination creates unity by giving form to diverse elements, and the writer is addressing the spectator's own imagination which also creates and perceives unity. Weiner connected this unity to the concept of uniformity, and in turn viewed this as Shakespeare's allusion to the "eternal truths" [44] of Platonism and Christianity. Also writing in , Hugh M. Richmond offered an entirely new view of the play's love story lines.

He argued that what passes for love in this play is actually a self-destructive expression of passion. He argued that the play's significant characters are all affected by passion and by a sadomasochistic type of sexuality. This passion prevents the lovers from genuinely communicating with each other. At the same time it protects them from the disenchantment with the love interest that communication inevitably brings. The exception to the rule is Bottom, who is chiefly devoted to himself. His own egotism protects him from feeling passion for anyone else.

Richmond also noted that there are parallels between the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe , featured in this play, and that of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In , Ralph Berry argued that Shakespeare was chiefly concerned with epistemology in this play. The lovers declare illusion to be reality, the actors declare reality to be illusion. The play ultimately reconciles the seemingly opposing views and vindicates imagination.

The mood is so lovely that the audience never feels fear or worry about the fate of the characters. In , Marjorie Garber argued that metamorphosis is both the major subject of the play and the model of its structure. She noted that in this play, the entry in the woods is a dream-like change in perception, a change which affects both the characters and the audience. Dreams here take priority over reason, and are truer than the reality they seek to interpret and transform.

He was certain that there are grimmer elements in the play, but they are overlooked because the audience focuses on the story of the sympathetic young lovers. He viewed the characters as separated into four groups which interact in various ways. Among the four, the fairies stand as the most sophisticated and unconstrained. The contrasts between the interacting groups produce the play's comic perspective.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Wikipedia

In , Ronald F. Miller expresses his view that the play is a study in the epistemology of imagination. He focused on the role of the fairies, who have a mysterious aura of evanescence and ambiguity. He in part refuted the ideas of Jan Kott concerning the sexuality of Oberon and the fairies. He pointed that Oberon may be bisexual and his desire for the changeling boy may be sexual in nature, as Kott suggested. But there is little textual evidence to support this, as the writer left ambiguous clues concerning the idea of love among the fairies. He concluded that therefore their love life is "unknowable and incomprehensible".

It is the tension between the dark and benevolent sides of love, which are reconciled in the end. Lamb suggested that the play may have borrowed an aspect of the ancient myth of Theseus: The woods of the play serve as a metaphorical labyrinth, and for Elizabethans the woods were often an allegory of sexual sin. The lovers in the woods conquer irrational passion and find their way back. Bottom with his animal head becomes a comical version of the Minotaur. Bottom also becomes Ariadne's thread which guides the lovers.

In having the new Minotaur rescue rather than threaten the lovers, the classical myth is comically inverted. Theseus himself is the bridegroom of the play who has left the labyrinth and promiscuity behind, having conquered his passion. The artisans may stand in for the master craftsman of the myth, and builder of the Labyrinth, Daedalus. Even Theseus' best known speech in the play, which connects the poet with the lunatic and the lover may be another metaphor of the lover.


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  • It is a challenge for the poet to confront the irrationality he shares with lovers and lunatics, accepting the risks of entering the labyrinth. Also in , Harold F. Brooks agreed that the main theme of the play, its very heart, is desire and its culmination in marriage. All other subjects are of lesser importance, including that of imagination and that of appearance and reality. She argued that the play is about traditional rites of passage , which trigger development within the individual and society. Theseus has detached himself from imagination and rules Athens harshly.

    The lovers flee from the structure of his society to the communitas of the woods. The woods serve here as the communitas , a temporary aggregate for persons whose asocial desires require accommodation to preserve the health of society. This is the rite of passage where the asocial can be contained.

    Falk identified this communitas with the woods, with the unconscious, with the dream space. She argued that the lovers experience release into self-knowledge and then return to the renewed Athens. This is " societas ", the resolution of the dialectic between the dualism of communitas and structure. Also in , Christian critic R. The experience of the lovers and that of Bottom as expressed in his awakening speech teach them "a new humility, a healthy sense of folly".

    They just learned a lesson of faith. Hassel also thought that Theseus' speech on the lunatic, the lover, and the poet is an applause to imagination. But it is also a laughing rejection of futile attempts to perceive, categorise, or express it. Some of the interpretations of the play have been based on psychology and its diverse theories.

    In , Alex Aronson argued that Theseus represents the conscious mind and Puck represents the unconscious mind.

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    Puck, in this view, is a guise of the unconscious as a trickster , while remaining subservient to Oberon. Aronson thought that the play explores unauthorised desire and linked it to the concept of fertility. He viewed the donkey and the trees as fertility symbols. The lovers' sexual desires are symbolised in their forest encounters. First, they have to pass through stages of madness multiple disguises , and discover their "authentic sexual selves". Holland applied psychoanalytic literary criticism to the play. He interpreted the dream of Hermia as if it was a real dream.

    In his view, the dream uncovers the phases of Hermia's sexual development. Her search for options is her defence mechanism. She both desires Lysander and wants to retain her virginity. In his view, Shakespeare suggests that love requires the risk of death.

    Love achieves force and direction from the interweaving of the life impulse with the deathward-release of sexual tension. He also viewed the play as suggesting that the healing force of love is connected to the acceptance of death, and vice versa. In , Jan Lawson Hinely argued that this play has a therapeutic value. Shakespeare in many ways explores the sexual fears of the characters, releases them, and transforms them. And the happy ending is the reestablishment of social harmony.


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    Patriarchy itself is also challenged and transformed, as the men offer their women a loving equality, one founded on respect and trust. She even viewed Titania's loving acceptance of the donkey-headed Bottom as a metaphor for basic trust. This trust is what enables the warring and uncertain lovers to achieve their sexual maturity. In , Barbara Freedman argued that the play justifies the ideological formation of absolute monarchy , and makes visible for examination the maintenance process of hegemonic order. During the years of the Puritan Interregnum when the theatres were closed —60 , the comic subplot of Bottom and his compatriots was performed as a droll.

    Drolls were comical playlets, often adapted from the subplots of Shakespearean and other plays, that could be attached to the acts of acrobats and jugglers and other allowed performances, thus circumventing the ban against drama. When the theatres re-opened in , A Midsummer Night's Dream was acted in adapted form, like many other Shakespearean plays. Samuel Pepys saw it on 29 September and thought it "the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw John Frederick Lampe elaborated upon Leveridge's version in In , David Garrick did the opposite of what had been done a century earlier: Frederic Reynolds produced an operatic version in In , Madame Vestris at Covent Garden returned the play to the stage with a relatively full text, adding musical sequences and balletic dances.

    Vestris took the role of Oberon, and for the next seventy years, Oberon and Puck would always be played by women. After the success of Madame Vestris' production, 19th-century theatre continued to stage the Dream as a spectacle, often with a cast numbering nearly one hundred. Detailed sets were created for the palace and the forest, and the fairies were portrayed as gossamer-winged ballerinas. The overture by Felix Mendelssohn was always used throughout this period. Augustin Daly 's production opened in in London and ran for 21 performances. Herbert Beerbohm Tree staged a production with live rabbits.

    Max Reinhardt staged A Midsummer Night's Dream thirteen times between and , introducing a revolving set. After he fled Germany he devised a more spectacular outdoor version at the Hollywood Bowl , in September The shell was removed and replaced by a forest planted in tons of dirt hauled in especially for the event, and a trestle was constructed from the hills to the stage.

    On the strength of this production, Warner Brothers signed Reinhardt to direct a filmed version , Hollywood's first Shakespeare movie since Douglas Fairbanks Sr. James Cagney starred, in his only Shakespearean role, as Bottom. Other actors in the film who played Shakespearean roles just this once included Joe E. Brown and Dick Powell. Erich Wolfgang Korngold was brought from Austria to arrange Mendelssohn's music for the film.

    He not only used the Midsummer Night's Dream music but also several other pieces by Mendelssohn. Director Harley Granville-Barker introduced in a less spectacular way of staging the Dream: He replaced large, complex sets with a simple system of patterned curtains. He portrayed the fairies as golden robotic insectoid creatures based on Cambodian idols.