The waves caused by the storm pay no attention to societal conventions--that is, the face that the boatwain is talking back to the King of Naples.

So the play begins with subversion of hierarchies playing on the subversion of Prospero in the pre-history if the drama and the sub-plot of usurpation.

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This is an annotatable version of The Tempest using the hypothes.is app.

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Upward thrust. Bad swordsman and/or a playa.

"Too clever b y half!" Most days this is among my top five favorite lines in this play.

So in place of R&J's misdirected messenger, our play rides on to its comedic salvation with the aid of the amazing Dogberry and his associates.

How wickedly delightful that again a friar poses a solution involving feigned death, but unlike R&J's Friar Lawrence, puts us not on a path to tragedy but to comedy.

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This is an annotatable version of Much Ado About Nothing using the hypothes.is app.

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This is an annotatable version of A Midsummer Night's Dream using the hypothes.is app.

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This scene with its talk of insects conjures up some words from King Lear, "as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods." But that play is a tragedy and here we have a comedy, and so, I must think, as butterflies to wanton fairies...

The following lines (up to line 151) provide a great catalog of all the obstacles writers have used over the centuries to serve the same function as Wall in the play-within-a-play of Act V. Notice, though, that the obstacle between Hermia and Lysander is not listed in the catalog. That obstacle, of course, is simply Egeus's quite arbitrary objection to Lysander, and in the end it amounts to nothing.

How so? When I hover my cursor over the very first brackets I come to (around the word "wanes" in the opening lines), the 'explanation' merely says, "editorial emendation"--which tells us absolutely nothing, since the brackets themselves so indicate, and have for the past one hundred or more years. Am I doing something wrong?

I am not sure I understand what "thrice-blessed" refers to, can someone help with this?

This is one of those famous lines that gets excerpted enough that often people who haven't seen or read the play before know it. How does reading it in context inform our understanding of the line? It's not just mortals who appear foolish in the play, and given how the fairies tamper with the humans, how should "foolishness" be assigned? Are mortals foolish for their actions or for their belief that they have control over their feelings/actions?

Thanks, Puck! Could be a tagline for hypothes.is's (mouthful) ability to annotate the web!!

So begins one of the great poems in the play.

A reference to Elizabeth I?

Isn't this a tad arrogant? Isn't the implication that we know best and those that came before us were ignorant?

It would be interesting to know what changes contemporary editors make on the grounds the original might be offensive to a contemporary audience.

All the following metaphors of natural disaster--storms, floods, etc.--are to say that Oberon's jealous rages are literally intemperate.

The confusion of the seasons here is later mirrored in the confusion of the lovers.

I took a picture of LEGO Shakespeare's production of MNDream with Galadriel as Titania and Bottom as a Brony.

I love the juxtapositions of words here. I love the notion that a river could forcefully move a continent. And that this "movement" could have both emotional and physical registers. Reminds me of the Carole King lyrics:

I feel the earth move under my feet<br> I feel the sky tumbling down, tumbling down<br> I feel my heart start to trembling<br> Whenever you're around

Interesting legal language in the third line here, especially considering Lysander's claim on Hermia's love is clearly not sanctioned by the law. Perhaps he is purposefully using the legal language to suggest a new conception of law in this case, one based on true love rather than societal norms.

About 800 copies were originally printed and over two hundred are known to remain.

Here's a digitized edition you can explore.

This seems a hint of Hippolyta's response to Theseus's strict ruling in the case of the lovers. It's likely she is not pleased.

A play on "blood" as in family--listen to your father--and blood--as in sexual desire, passion. Theseus's hint here seems to be that Hermia should consider her choice between celibacy (no sex) and marriage to Demetrius (sex with a partner that is not her most desired).

Given he himself is a poet, it seems likely that Shakespeare would sympathize with Lysander's wooing of Hermia with "rhymes" (poetry).

This seems a central line setting up the drama of the play: Hippolyta was forced to marry Lysander ("by sword") much like Hermia is being forced to marry Demetrius (by law: the "ancient privilege" that her father Egeus evokes in the speech that follows).