The Production

In retrospect, I should have done this differently.

My intention for my analysis of A Midsummer Night's Dream was to complete it and post it all in one big post. I think that was a bad idea for two reasons: 1) it was a little too much to chew, and think that it would be all ready to go by last Friday, and 2) it would have, in some ways, defeated the usefulness of the blog format. I have been working to illustrate some of my ideas with the play, but it has been more time consuming than I had expected and I have had some frustration with the effectiveness of my approach (I will discuss this later). On top of that, I now think that using the blogging platform to my advantage would have been the best way to go. Blogs are iterative—they allow you to write and formulate ideas and analyses, then update and change them as you work. We were told to blog our process, but I guess I didn't fully understand what that meant or how to do it. I think I do now.

In somewhat of a penitent attitude, I have decided to complete my assignment in iterations. The vast majority of these will be completed and posted today, with some other additions coming throughout the week as follow-ups to today's posts. By doing things this way, I hope to take better advantage of my blog and use it as a way to develop my thoughts rather than simply present them. I hope, too, that I can make better use of feedback and comments to further develop my ideas. Thus, three days late, so begins my analysis.

An Update

I continue to work on my analysis. I realize that it is now Saturday, but I hope that my finished work will be worth the wait!

A Picture of the Picture

Today is Friday, 21 October, 2011. Today, my more full analysis of A Midsummer Night's Dream is due to be posted. I am working on it. While I do, I want to share a resource that I have found that fits in nicely with my analytical approach to the play.

The Tempest

tem-pest |ˈtempist|

nouna violent windy storm.
That is how my Mac defines "tempest." A violent, windy storm. Today, I am beginning to read Shakespeare's play by the same name, The Tempest.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The night has ended and the dream is over.

This week I finished reading A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was great—it really was. I thoroughly enjoyed my reading of the play and read it faster than I have any Shakespeare work before (unless you count his sonnets, but that wouldn't be very fair). These are some of my initial thoughts on it.

Dear Hamlet: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Sweet Smoke of Rhetoric!

I just finished reading Act III of Love's Labour's Lost. The use of wordplay in this particular play is excessive and takes a central role in the play itself. Often, the characters spend more time bantering and discussing their use of language than they do actually living life itself or moving the plot forward. But, this in and of itself becomes an important part of the story. I found particularly interesting in this act Shakespeare's use of language to contrast the fool of Armado and the passion of Biron.