A Midsummer Night's Drean, Neil Gaiman's Interpretation

I enjoyed the interpretation that Neil Gaiman wrote. I thought it was really clever, it would have been hard to understand if I have never read Shakespeare's play beforehand. It was a bit confusing as times with distinguishing the characters as times with who was in the play and who was in the audience.

This is a graphic text about Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer's Night Dream, as if Shakespeare himself was promoting the play. He has actors, that also include his son Hamnet. Shakespeare is very distant and disconnected towards his son. Hamnet feels that his father cares more about his plays than he does about him. The audience are mythical creatures, from "the other realm," that play a huge role in the interpretation of the play. Oberion, Titania, and Puck, are being acted out in the play, but are audience members as well. 

Shakespeare and his son are important character's in this version of the play, as well as the audience that they perform in front of. The audience helps the reader understand what the play is about as it is acted out. The audience helped make the play more enjoyable and humorous. For example on pages 74-76 the audience members help each other explain what is happening throughout the play. "Hang on. So there's this love potion and he's goin' to make her majesty love something nasty...but where do the young mortals come into it? Don't you ever lissen? he's put the potion on wossame, Laysander right? now he;s going to fall in love with her, the skinny one"(74). This helps not only the audience member, but the reader to understand the play a lot better.. "All right. What's so funny about having a donkey's head? Eh? Eh? Go on, tell me what's go funny?"(76). The audience member is offended because he as well has a donkey head. This is an example of the humor that Gaiman uses in his interpretation. 

The Dream lord is an important character throughout the story. He is very distinctive. He seems much darker and when he speaks the text is white and the bubble his very different from the other characters. It was able to distinguish him when he was speaking.