Shakespeare in Community (Act 3): A Midsummer Night's Dream and Shakespeare Across Borders
Channel: Jesse Stommel
Date: 2015-05-03

How does Shakespeare travel: across borders, across oceans, across continents, and from one language to another? https://moocs.wisc.edu/mooc/shakespeare-in-community/

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lysander says, “The course of true love never did run smooth” (Act 1, scene 1, line 136). Shakespeare here is very clever, for he uses the word “course." A course is an abstraction but it is also a word that means the very ground on which a race is run. So a “course” is something physical that our feet touch as we are running in that race. And Shakespeare keeps us in mind of community because he makes his character speak about something that binds us all together: the wish for love and the hope that we find it.

Director, Editor, Producer: Jesse Stommel
Producer, Assistant Editor: Catherine DeRose
Producer: Sarah Marty
Producer: R L Widmann
Graphic Designer: Mark Neufeld
Music: Folger Consort