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| It is tempting to see 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
as a great Renaissance tapestry woven out of a rich variety
of colourful threads. Matt Simpson attempts to point out some
of these subtly interweaving threads in order to help us understand
the complexity of Shakespeare's imagination at its most genial,
so that we can experience the play's happy admixture of pagan
and Christian, madness and reason, dream and nightmare, the
parallel worlds of humans and fairies, as fully as possible.
He interprets the play as constructed out of a series of meaningful
contrasts and vividly sketches in some of what we need to know
if we were to approach it with perhaps something of the expectations
of the audience for whom it was originally written. |
| Matt
Simpson is a poet and critic. His critical essays have
recently been published by Shoestring Press. He lives in Liverpool
where he was born. |
| Other titles in this series that might
be of interest |
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| About the Student Guide Literary Series |
| The Times Educational Supplement:
"The style of [this series] has a pressure of
meaning behind it. Students should learn from that...If art
is about selection, perception and taste, then this is it." |
