After reading Midsummer’s Night Dream, by William Shakespeare, I understood it as another Shakespearean take on love and marriage. The love quadrangle was interesting and showed that love can change hands quickly. Even the actors were very humorous. I could only picture the play so much because the Shakespearean language blurred my perception of the story. When we got into our groups and started to talk about and bring parts and ideas together and repetitively recite and memorize lines, it let me literally see the play from twelve different points of view, many of which were different than mine.
The thing that makes Shakespeare so difficult to deeply comprehend is the language that he uses. Because we don’t use the language in everyday scenarios, I found it difficult to understand the text on the first try. For example, the first time Oberon and Titania entered the story (2.1.62), I was utterly confused with what their conflict was. It wasn’t until I reread the passage multiple times when understood that Oberon and Titania had been married for a very long time and that Oberon accused Titania of cheating and vice versa. I could then pull out that they had a tedious relationship and didn’t really love each other. I thought that maybe Shakespeare thought that marriage was tedious and not worth it.
When we had a group discussion one of my classmates brought out the point that they’re immortal fairies. If they didn’t love each other they would have left by now. This was something that didn’t even cross my mind while reading the book. Since I was so caught up in trying to understand the language I wasn’t able to see the deeper meaning. Then when we got into group discussion I was able to combine my ideas with my peers’ ideas to come to deeper conclusions.
It is this sharing of ideas that helped me the most through this whole project. Especially when my acting group sat down to discuss specific ideas, that is, after Patty let
Mike and I try her whoopie pies. When we sat down to talk through our scripts we talked about the emotions we would convey on “stage.” When reading the book over the summer since I was so focused on comprehension, I could only really see basic emotions like happy, sad, and angry. When my group discussed it, our three interpretations combined to have very specific emotions for each dialogue. We had annotations on our script such as “Finger wag-ish,” “Ultimatum-y,” “Ooey-gooey,” and “Scheming.” We had to be specific because humans have more then just basic emotions, they can be happy, sad, and angry, but they can also be everything in between.
A character that I played in our scene was Thesus. He was the mediator between the whole love quadrangle as well as Hermia’s father. When I first read his lines in the play I read them as aggressive and very authoritative. Upon talking with my peers in class and in my group, I came to the conclusion that he was more coolheaded. I ended up performing his little monologues in a calm way, like he’s calmly but earnestly telling Hermia to weigh her options.
Looking back at my annotated script I can see our assigned scene play out clearly. In my mind the characters move about showing a lot of emotion, quite the step up from the monotonic characters of my summer reading.
When our adrenaline ceased to flow after our performance and we sat down to listen to the other groups perform, I instantly noticed a difference from what I read to what I saw. The other groups allowed me to see that Oberon wasn’t just a booming fairy but that he very cool headed sometimes. The big thing that I noticed a difference in was the actors in the play. Thisbe had to play a women even though he was a man. It never occurred to me that his voice would sound so humorous because when I read it over the summer, I read it in a women’s voice, not a man exaggerating a high voice.
When I read the fight scene I was awfully lost. I had just memorized who loved who and then Robin messed it all up with his potion. So when I read the fight scene between the four lovers I was more focused on who was mad at whom than what the scene might look like. When I saw the scene acted out by Emily’s group, I saw more than just a verbal war. In the scene there was physical contact as well. I see could see the two girls aggressively advancing towards each other, not just four people in the woods yelling at one another.
When I memorized and recited my lines with my group, I usually said the line different each time. I was looking for the right tone to go with what my partners had said and were going to say. It wouldn’t sound right if Lysander said to Hermia, “How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there fade so fast?” (1.1.130-131), in a mighty and loud voice. After reading the line out loud a few times I came to the conclusion that it should be said in a loving and comforting voice.
After this experience I believe you have to be able to see the play not just read it. The way I perceive the play now to how I did over the summer is much more clear, detailed, and coherent. I can see the sorrow of Helena, the bickering between Titania and Oberon, the aggressiveness of the fight between the lovers, and the sheer foolishness of the actors. What it took for me to understand the text was the transfer of ideas between my peers and then mixing those ideas with mine to come up with the best possible interpretation of the play.
Evaluation:
The Midsummer’s Night Dream essay was a few essays after the one I wrote on my summer reading. There was already a lot of improvement. One of the reasons it was better was because it was an informal essay. Since I could use my personal voice, the essay sounded less forced than some of my literary analysis essays. I don’t talk like an English Ph.d so it only hurts me when I try to talk like one. This essay really shows that my personal voice sounds much better in writing than something I force to make it sound smart. Since this was a process essay I broke it up into each step of the process. Then I described how that step helped me understand Midsummer’s Night Dream better. (And yes Patty’s whoopie pies helped). I always went back to my thesis which was that I understand books more when I hear, and in this case see, how others perceive them. This shows improvement from the first essay I wrote where there wasn’t a lot of organization. This essay also went better because I was writing about my comprehension process. Since this process is something I’m familiar with it was easy to write about. I wasn’t pressured to come up with an extra topic for my thesis or anything like that, I could just write. The main thing I got from this essay was to use my personal voice. My best writing is going to be written the same way I talk.
Period 3
9/30/12
Midsummer’s Night Dream
After reading Midsummer’s Night Dream, by William Shakespeare, I understood it as another Shakespearean take on love and marriage. The love quadrangle was interesting and showed that love can change hands quickly. Even the actors were very humorous. I could only picture the play so much because the Shakespearean language blurred my perception of the story. When we got into our groups and started to talk about and bring parts and ideas together and repetitively recite and memorize lines, it let me literally see the play from twelve different points of view, many of which were different than mine.
The thing that makes Shakespeare so difficult to deeply comprehend is the language that he uses. Because we don’t use the language in everyday scenarios, I found it difficult to understand the text on the first try. For example, the first time Oberon and Titania entered the story (2.1.62), I was utterly confused with what their conflict was. It wasn’t until I reread the passage multiple times when understood that Oberon and Titania had been married for a very long time and that Oberon accused Titania of cheating and vice versa. I could then pull out that they had a tedious relationship and didn’t really love each other. I thought that maybe Shakespeare thought that marriage was tedious and not worth it.
When we had a group discussion one of my classmates brought out the point that they’re immortal fairies. If they didn’t love each other they would have left by now. This was something that didn’t even cross my mind while reading the book. Since I was so caught up in trying to understand the language I wasn’t able to see the deeper meaning. Then when we got into group discussion I was able to combine my ideas with my peers’ ideas to come to deeper conclusions.
It is this sharing of ideas that helped me the most through this whole project. Especially when my acting group sat down to discuss specific ideas, that is, after Patty let
Mike and I try her whoopie pies. When we sat down to talk through our scripts we talked about the emotions we would convey on “stage.” When reading the book over the summer since I was so focused on comprehension, I could only really see basic emotions like happy, sad, and angry. When my group discussed it, our three interpretations combined to have very specific emotions for each dialogue. We had annotations on our script such as “Finger wag-ish,” “Ultimatum-y,” “Ooey-gooey,” and “Scheming.” We had to be specific because humans have more then just basic emotions, they can be happy, sad, and angry, but they can also be everything in between.
A character that I played in our scene was Thesus. He was the mediator between the whole love quadrangle as well as Hermia’s father. When I first read his lines in the play I read them as aggressive and very authoritative. Upon talking with my peers in class and in my group, I came to the conclusion that he was more coolheaded. I ended up performing his little monologues in a calm way, like he’s calmly but earnestly telling Hermia to weigh her options.
Looking back at my annotated script I can see our assigned scene play out clearly. In my mind the characters move about showing a lot of emotion, quite the step up from the monotonic characters of my summer reading.
When our adrenaline ceased to flow after our performance and we sat down to listen to the other groups perform, I instantly noticed a difference from what I read to what I saw. The other groups allowed me to see that Oberon wasn’t just a booming fairy but that he very cool headed sometimes. The big thing that I noticed a difference in was the actors in the play. Thisbe had to play a women even though he was a man. It never occurred to me that his voice would sound so humorous because when I read it over the summer, I read it in a women’s voice, not a man exaggerating a high voice.
When I read the fight scene I was awfully lost. I had just memorized who loved who and then Robin messed it all up with his potion. So when I read the fight scene between the four lovers I was more focused on who was mad at whom than what the scene might look like. When I saw the scene acted out by Emily’s group, I saw more than just a verbal war. In the scene there was physical contact as well. I see could see the two girls aggressively advancing towards each other, not just four people in the woods yelling at one another.
When I memorized and recited my lines with my group, I usually said the line different each time. I was looking for the right tone to go with what my partners had said and were going to say. It wouldn’t sound right if Lysander said to Hermia, “How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there fade so fast?” (1.1.130-131), in a mighty and loud voice. After reading the line out loud a few times I came to the conclusion that it should be said in a loving and comforting voice.
After this experience I believe you have to be able to see the play not just read it. The way I perceive the play now to how I did over the summer is much more clear, detailed, and coherent. I can see the sorrow of Helena, the bickering between Titania and Oberon, the aggressiveness of the fight between the lovers, and the sheer foolishness of the actors. What it took for me to understand the text was the transfer of ideas between my peers and then mixing those ideas with mine to come up with the best possible interpretation of the play.
Evaluation:
The Midsummer’s Night Dream essay was a few essays after the one I wrote on my summer reading. There was already a lot of improvement. One of the reasons it was better was because it was an informal essay. Since I could use my personal voice, the essay sounded less forced than some of my literary analysis essays. I don’t talk like an English Ph.d so it only hurts me when I try to talk like one. This essay really shows that my personal voice sounds much better in writing than something I force to make it sound smart. Since this was a process essay I broke it up into each step of the process. Then I described how that step helped me understand Midsummer’s Night Dream better. (And yes Patty’s whoopie pies helped). I always went back to my thesis which was that I understand books more when I hear, and in this case see, how others perceive them. This shows improvement from the first essay I wrote where there wasn’t a lot of organization. This essay also went better because I was writing about my comprehension process. Since this process is something I’m familiar with it was easy to write about. I wasn’t pressured to come up with an extra topic for my thesis or anything like that, I could just write. The main thing I got from this essay was to use my personal voice. My best writing is going to be written the same way I talk.