Midsummer Night’s Dream book club

My absolute favorite Shakespeare play is Midsummer Night’s Dream. When I was in college a movie version of it came out. I happily went to see it with my friends and enjoyed an enchanting two hours of movie. I happily quoted along with the characters as the play progressed, was mildly irked when they cut some of my favorite lines, but overall was happy. Then the final monologue came. As Puck said the immortal words, “If we shadows have offended,” I silently said the lines with him until he skipped a line. In the middle of the not so very crowded theater, I yelled, “What?” My best friend Tara desperately attempted to shush me, but I was less than happy with the ending. I still love the Midsummer Night’s Dream movie, it’s amazingly well cast, and they created a wonderful interpretation of the story, but then there’s that final monologue. The kids and I set out to read and act out A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and after they’d read/acted through the whole thing we watched the movie, sort of a play and a movie as a variation on our usual book and a movie. We studied this in 8th-grade.

I do promise, I will behave myself in this post, and not go off in a tirade about certain amazing lines being cut.

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 A Midsummer Night’s Dream plot

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy of errors, there is misplaced love, a play within a play, fairies, PUCK! (Puck is very important, he gets all the best lines), the Rude Mechanicals. All in all, it’s great. It’s hilarious, and if you can see it live, you should.

I’ve seen it live four different times and performed in it (as a random extra fairy).

We even performed the Rude Mechanicals play for Princess’ AHG Talent Show.

That was a lot of fun.

So, I super loved this movie night.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream book club

Okay, so we studied A Midsummer Night’s Dream right before I discovered the wonders of 7Sisters Study Guides, because if I had known about them, I would totally have used their Midsummer Night’s Dream study guide.

It’s super awesome and I highly recommend it.

Our A Midsummer Night’s Dream snacks

• Donkey ears- these are elephant ears, and were delicious (and undoubtedly super bad for you)
• thorn bush- salad
• fairy bower- haystack cookies, but with some candy melts added in and some sprinkles
• four lovers- sour patch kids
• fairy treats- random yummy treats
• Cupid’s flower- I used the playdough cookie recipe to make flowers (I could have sworn I had this on my blog, but it does not look like it)
• this dog, my dog- the dog shortbread cookies (though I could have used my sugar cookie recipe and a dog cookie cutter)
• play script- graham crackers with marshmallow fluff and melted chocolate
• moonlight- sprite
• wall- chocolate
• lion- open-faced peanut butter sandwich with coconut shavings for the mane and chocolate chips for eyes

Acting out A Midsummer Night’s Dream

We read this with Shakespeare Made Easy, and edited down versions of the scenes to make it a bit faster, but the big thing was our props.

Our favorite play group, Penefold Theater (if you’re in the Austin area, come see their plays), and they use minimal actors and minor costume changes to show who is who.

We took inspiration from them, and showed which character was which with hats. Absolutely silly and over the top hats.

 More fantasy book and a movie fun

• Howl’s Moving Castle
• Alice in Wonderland
• Peter Pan
• The Black Cauldron