by Maurycy Gottlieb in 1876; hosted on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurycy_Gottlieb#/media/File:Shylock_e_jessica.jpeg
Gentle Reader,
What do I mean when I call you “gentle”? Is it out of affection, because you are courteous and polite? Do I consider you a person of distinction? Or am I reflecting on the character of your birth?
And if I am, is it in derision, praise or with the intent of reinventing you?
On Tuesday September 16, 2014 Vice President Joe Biden referred to people who make loans to
members of the military and take advantage of them while they are over seas, as “shylocks“. Today, Time Magazine says, “shylock” is considered an antisemitic slur. In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a jewish merchant and money lender, who is
portrayed as an antagonistic figure. Even some images of this character, as seen here, portray him as an antagonistic moneylender and loan shark.
But how did this prejudice meaning of the term “shylock” come to be? Continue reading
The moon is directly referenced several times throughout MSND, and Professor Halasz mentioned in our classroom discussion that Elizabethan culture often connected the moon with images of Diana, the goddess of virginity. Other scholarly sources support this correlation, and many add that while the moon in MSND may represent virginity and fertility, it also comes to signify ambiguity and fickleness especially with regard to love and relationships. Continue reading
In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lysander delivers the line, “The course of true love never did run smooth” (I.1, 134). He is referring to his own romantic complications in regards to marrying Hermia. This line, however, very aptly describes all the romantic relationships in the play. There is nary a functional relationship to be found. Continue reading
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play steeped in the fantastical: Shakespeare builds myth upon myth, creating a hodgepodge of mythical allusions to tell a story that seems completely trivial when compared to the weighty subjects of his other works. Continue reading
The word “fantasy” has a fairly obvious connection to A Midsummer Night’s Dream; fairies, magical juice from a flower, a human with a donkey head. But if the play is examined through the lens of the word “fantasy” not in terms of the supernatural, but for how perception relates to reality, then the use of the word “fantasy” may shine a new light on the play. Continue reading
The title of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” suggests the act of dreaming, and what dreams mean will play a significant role in the play. However, the word “dream” only appears 14 times throughout the play and the only variation of it, “dreams,” appears just twice. So we must pay close attention to each use of the word and the context in which it is used to understand the significance of the title and perhaps find a deeper meaning to the entire play.
Although their modern definitions are more distinct from each other, “fantasy” and “fancy” could more or less be used synonymously in Shakespeare’s era. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, both could mean “the process, and the faculty, of forming mental representations of things not present to the senses” (See definition 4a: OED – Fantasy). Yet at the same time, both words have a variety of underlying meanings that invoke a deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s social commentary. Continue reading
The blending of reality and fantasy in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream leaves lingering questions about the relationship between reality and fantasy, reinforced by the shifting setting. The play opens in Athens, an important city and a hub of political power, but moves later to the woods where fairies live and cast spells on the unwitting Athenians, who return to a state of normalcy once they leave the woods. This shift in understanding reality comes from Shakespeare’s changing context of the word “fantasy” and “fancy” in the play. Continue reading
To many in the present day the word “dream” can conjure images of fantastical visions and fantasies had while sleeping. Yet, Shakespeare uses the term “dream” to mean a variety of things. Continue reading