Tag Archives: Midsummer Night's Dream

The Bard Does Halloween

By Robin Bates | Published: October 30, 2015

In honor of Halloween, check out what Shakespeare had to say about ghosts. When his graves yawn and yield up their dead, they produce apparitions that are genuinely frightening.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged ghosts, Halloween, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Sacks & the Bard’s Midsummer Madness

By Robin Bates | Published: August 31, 2015

The late Oliver Sacks’s observations on the mind sometimes sound a lot like Shakespeare in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charles Bonnet syndrome, hallucinations, human mind, Midsummer Night's Dream, Oliver Sacks, Tempest, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Puck’s Summer Magic

By Robin Bates | Published: June 22, 2015

“Midsummer Night’s Dream” dips into ancient British legends about the mystical aspects of midsummer.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. S. Byatt, Children's Book, E. Nesbit, Midsummer Night's Dream, Midsummer Night's Eve, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, summer, summer solstice, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

The Peace of Wild Things

By Robin Bates | Published: December 21, 2014

My Intro to Literature class explored how a disconnect from nature leads to existential anguish while opening themselves up to nature provides spiritual nourishment.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Ancient Mariner, "Egrets", "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Killing the Trees", "Peace of Wild Things", All the Pretty Horses, Bacchae, Barbara Kingsolver, Ceremony, Cormac McCarthy, Euripides, Flight Behavior, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lucille Clifton, Mary Oliver, Midsummer Night's Dream, Nature, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, spiritual healing, Wendell Berry, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth | Comments closed

NBA Playoffs: Daphne Chases Apollo

By Robin Bates | Published: April 26, 2014

Like the topsy-turvy forest in “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the NBA playoffs are witnessing strange reversals.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Basketball, Midsummer Night's Dream, NBA playoffs, Sports, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Top 10 Hellish Child-Parent Relationships

By Robin Bates | Published: March 26, 2014

Top 10 Literary Parent-Child Relationships from Hell.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "All that Rises Must Converge", "Daddy", "Letter to a Dead Father", Aeschylus, Brothers Karamazov, D. H. Lawrence, Euripides, Flannery O'Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hamlet, King Lear, Medea, Midsummer Night's Dream, Oedipus, Oresteia, parents and children, Phillip K. Roth, Portnoy's Complaint, Richard Shelton, Romeo and Juliet, Sons and Lovers, Sophocles, Sylvia Plath, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Is Peyton Manning Pitted against Puck?

By Robin Bates | Published: February 1, 2014

Tomorrow’s Super Bowl drama may be forces of order vs. forces of chaos. Or it may involve Denver trying to outwit a trickster Puck-like team.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Football, Midsummer Night's Dream, Peyton Manning, Richard Sherman, Seattle Seahawks, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sports, Super Bowl, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Beagles, a Wellspring of Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: September 18, 2013

Two dogs we were keeping recently ran off, triggering a flood of anxiety and poetry.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Dogs, Four Saints in Three Acts, Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Midsummer Night's Dream, pets, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Beckett, Unnamable, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Fantasy, Because Reality Is Unsatisfactory

By Robin Bates | Published: October 1, 2012

Fantasy is nothing in and of itself but takes its character in opposition to an unsatisfactory reality.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Lady of Shalott", "Lotos Eaters", "Passing of Arthur", Alfred Lord Tennyson, C. S. Lewis, Eve of St. Agnes, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lord of the Rings, Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare | Comments closed