First attempt

A love as true as this makes me believe
Heaven on Earth holds true for me and you
How my big heart with yours you did relieve
Promise to you, your love I will not lose
Our life, our path unpaved but you should know
Each day we will begin with an embrace
A hug a kiss our touch let's take it slow
Stopping the sands of time for love's no race
A year with you has passed within a blink
My eyes open when close so not to miss
Special moments in time in which we seek
My life with you it's true will be pure bliss
    Let's live each day as if it were our last
    Making nothing matter we start our past

From a flower comes the turn from comedy to tragedy. But what a perfect way to start with Shakespeare. We found love, love lost and love again, sprinkled with a trickster and an ass. I was extremely amused throughout A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, with Hamlet, there appears to be more than just amusement which must have been Shakespeare's intent, for he states: "If he wants merely to amuse, then he must accept that he will be indulged only so far as he entertains, and that his credit will not go an inch further. These are modes to be avoided at all costs, though, if he has something to say that he wants his listener to believe. If he wants his listener to know that he loves him with real love, then he has to convince him. He has to prove it" (Hughes 54). Shakespeare proves his love of his listener in Hamlet. Death, betrayal, love and murder with no laughing. Shakespeare keeps me on the edge of my seat, waiting and wanting to know more and he does this without the fear of Puck sliding behind be and pushing me off of my chair. We have stepped out of the shadows of comedy and now find ourselves deep within tragedy. It is dark, but I look forward to teasing out the light in class.

     I know our assignment was to dream and in this area I have been lacking. But this was too good not to share. The other day while on campus I ran into my friend Ehson. He is a scientist for NASA who builds satellites to put into orbit. I greeted him with the friendliest hello I could think of, "Thou mangled onion-eyed death token". With this he gave me a look of confusion and a chuckle. I proceeded to tell him our assignment to use these putdowns in the real world. Success. I asked him how his trip to Dubai was, having spent the last week there at a convention, and what he told me was worth well over a sixpence a day. While he was there, he had major pains in his shoulder and needed to see a doctor. I can only assume the doctor goes by the name "Puck". His shoulder was out of socket, however, with a few painful tugs, his shoulder was back in its rightful place. For the pain, "Puck"gave Ehson morphine, which is known to put its users in a vivid dream state. He did not dream of love, for he was not given the juices from the flower "love-in-idleness", however he dreamed he had control of a flame thrower. He, with a giant pack on his back, shot flames twenty feet long from left to right burning everything in sight. He told me this laughing the entire time not knowing I was thinking only of this class. This dream was crystal clear yet had no truth. This did not happen but it seemed lifelike to him.  He had been given a potion from a trickster.
  Jan Kott, in The Bottom Translation, refers to Puck as a trickster, in this case, the doctor. She says, "The trickster is the most invariable, universal, and constant mythic character in the folklore of all peoples. As a mediator between gods and men--the bottom and the top--the trickster is a special broker: he both deceives the gods and cheats men. The trickster is the personification of mobility and changeability and transcends all boundaries, overthrowing all hierarchies. He turns everything upside-down. Within this world gone mad, a new order emerges from chaos, and life's continuity is renewed"(Kott 82). For Ehson, this doctor had very well turned his life upside down by giving him a potion to clarify and manipulate his dream while at the same time restoring order by healing his pain. The healer becomes the trickster, the trickster becomes the healer.

     While watching the Super Bowl this weekend, I could not help but to think of Shakespeare. This big game has a diverse audience with similarities to what a Shakespearean audience must have been like. Anyone and everyone, well almost everyone watched the game, however, unlike Shakespeare, there were no redeeming qualities, no attempts to educate or cater to such a diverse crowd. It was a mind numbing four hours filled with dudes and likes. A commercial brought me directly to class discussions. Godaddy.com had a commercial where a beautiful female model proceeds to make out with a computer geek for an extended period of time. This was no Fabio nor was it the Elephant Man. It was as if Helena helped create this commercial, "Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind" (Act 1 Scene 1 235).  It was the mending of two pure individuals and love was blind. During what I thought would be a break from school, I was drawn back to Shakespeare. There was a power outage during the game where the announcers went from doing their jobs to becoming The Mechanicals. It was as if they were fearing for their lives, explaining everything to the audience, that darkness would return to light. Even the players took off their masks in an attempt to show they were only people in costumes, do not be afraid we are only men in costumes. The fact remains that Shakespeare is all around us, for when I thought I was taking a break from school, I realized I was still "bathing in moonlight" with William Shakespeare. 
     It was nice to read other blogs to grasp where others are in relationship to the class. I am glad to see a couple of students wanting to teach this material at the high school level. Hopefully they can take what we discuss in class and offer it to their students in a similar fashion. Ask them to engage. I hope they are able to present the material in a different way than it was presented to me. This course will be very beneficial when attempting that. I see true love for the subject when I arrive in class which makes me want to find what I have never seen before. I hope you can allow to see Shakespeare in the same way we are viewing him in this class. They will truly be the winners if you are successful in providing a similar environment.

     Reoccurring themes for Shakespeare seem to be love, love lost and unattainable love. Knowing writers often draw from their personal lives, I was drawn to find out more about Shakespeare's love life. After looking over many sources, I found there to be discrepancies in his love life, almost as if Shakespeare had written it himself. It has been said that he was married to Anne Hathaway. Anne was 26 at the time Shakespeare only 18. The age of consent at the time was 21. This is the first place where my mind begins to wonder. Could it be that they were forbidden to marry, or they did not have the blessing from each side? Who knows, but if he is drawing from his personal life in his works, this may have been an issue he had to deal with. The next area to spark my interest is Shakespeare had two marriage licenses set for two different days, each with different names. Shakespeare's name spelled differently and Anne was presented with two different last names, Whateley and Hathwey. Why would he have two different certificates made up with different names? Could it have been two different men with the name Shakespeare? Or better yet, two different women. From what I found, no one really knows the truth but the possibilities of foul play or resistance from the family keep my interest in this area. At the time of the marriage, Anne was three month pregnant. Another possible taboo. From all that I found, it seems to me that Shakespeare drew from his personal life when writing his plays. Did he have a love triangle as seen in some of his plays? I have not yet been able to find a concrete answer. But I will not stop looking. I used multiple sources from the internet, ohh the wretched internet. I am interested in finding books on the matter which will be my mission for the weekend.

http://www.literarygenius.info/marriage-william-shakespeare-anne-hathaway.htm
http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-biography-marriage-wife-anne-hathaway.htm
http://www.biography.com/people/william-shakespeare-9480323
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/shakespearemarriage.html