Weekends with Will: Midnight Meetings

We have had two weekends of after-dinner readings of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the girls are doing very well with the play. Even Little Girl is able to read and understand most of it, though we are pausing here and there to "interpret" a little. (Let's face it, they are 6 and 9 and will need some help with vocabulary.) However, the girls are definitely "getting" the story.

Big Girl is fascinated by the idea that everyone in the story so far who seeks to be alone for one reason or another - meeting to elope, rehearsing a play in secret, etc. - is planning on meeting in the forest at midnight. Add to this the fairies (Oberon and Titania) who are having a lovers' quarrel and the fact that Oberon is going to use love potions on his wife and a mortal while actors are planning on prancing about the forest dressed up as animals, and you've got guaranteed giggles.

Big Girl has also decided that she likes Bottom, the actor who insists that he can play all the parts of the play better than anyone else, and all at the same time. Little Girl got to play a fairy (at last!), and did an admirable job tackling the lengthy dialogue between the king and queen of fairies.

Tomorrow night, we'll get some more read, and we may see the beginnings of the romp in the night-time forest. And that, my friends, is where the fun begins.

Previous posts on this subject:

• Summer Reading: Weekends with Will

[image source]

Please browse my eBay items. Thank you.