Analyzing The Play A Midsummer Night's Dream

When I was eight, my parents took my siblings and I to a production of Romeo and Juliet at the 2008 Stratford Festival. As an eight year old girl who barely had the ability to understand the majority of common english, let alone Elizabethan english, I comprehended almost nothing of what was said, but it wasn’t the words that caught the attention of my hyperactive mind; It was the way the actors could make me understand what was happening in the story just by how they expressed their emotions in the lines Shakespeare wrote. After watching the entirety of Romeo and Juliet, I begged my parents to take me to the library so I could figure out what these actors were trying to present me and once I finally found a version of Shakespeare’s plays meant for children, I become obsessed; I would walk
around my house performing different characters monologues for months and my school work was covered with different quotations. My family couldn't quite understand my infatuation with Shakespeare, but then again, they didn’t exactly enjoy the performance we went to see; Shakespeare isn't for everyone I supose. My parents quickly became irritated by my reading choices and threatened to take my books away if i didn't stop stopping strangers and reciting the latest part of a monologue i had learned. A few years forward, when I was twelve, i had obviously stopped stopping strangers and telling them about my odd reading habits, but i continued to read the adult versions of Shakespeare’s plays, just not as often as i did before.
As I had a slightly larger vocabulary range than I did when I was eight, I didn't completely understand the text, but I could understand enough to know what a fantastic writer Shakespeare was. Even now, reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream in class, I don't understand every single word written in the play but it's blatantly clear to me why Shakespeare is studied in schools all across the world; Shakespeares is, and probably always will be, one of the greatest writers in the English language is history. So i guess the answer to your question “How do you feel about Shakespeare’s writing?” is that i am completely fascinated by it. I find it incredible how he could capture anything you're feeling and turn it into words that so many people could relate to and understand. I haven't seen one of his plays performed since the Stratford Festival but I have plans to go next year and I am hoping it will be just as amazing as reading his plays has always been to
me.