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Spirits: Mythology, Legends, & Folklore

342: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Spirits: Mythology, Legends, & Folklore

Multitude

Myths, Folklore, Society & Culture, Alcohol, Legends, Learning, Urbanlegends, Mythology, Comedy, History, Education, Gods, Educational, Drunkhistory

4.82K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From Greek mythology to fairy lore, Shakespeare has always loved the magical and supernatural in his plays. With A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we chat about hot messengers, earnest amateur actors, and the parallels between rulers and fairy kings. Also, why doesn’t everyone just kiss a little?

Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of genitals, death, execution, racism, exoticism, murder, human sacrifice, and abduction.

Housekeeping

- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends Life with Leo(h)

- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books

- Call to Action: Check out Pale Blue Pod: an astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but want to be its friend! New episodes every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts!

Sponsors

- BetterHelp is an online therapy service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/spirits

- Shaker & Spoon is a subscription cocktail service that helps you learn how to make hand-crafted cocktails right at home. Get $20 off your first box at shakerandspoon.com/cool

Find Us Online

If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. You can support us on Patreon (http://patreon.com/spiritspodcast) to unlock bonus Your Urban Legends episodes, director’s commentaries, custom recipe cards, and so much more. We also have lists of our book recommendations and previous guests’ books at http://spiritspodcast.com/books.

Transcripts are available at http://spiritspodcast.com/episodes. To buy merch, hear us on other podcasts, contact us, find our mailing address, or download our press kit, head on over to http://spiritspodcast.com.

About Us

Spirits was created by Julia Schifini, Amanda McLoughlin and Eric Schneider. We are founding members of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio. Our music is "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'll see you in the next video.

0:29.3

Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore.

0:33.0

Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world.

0:36.4

I'm Amanda, and I'm Julia, and this is our episode all about a mid-summer night's dream, baby!

0:43.2

Woo! Amanda as theater nerds, we were very much exposed to Shakespeare at kind of a young age,

0:50.5

I would say. It's true. And this is a hot take, I'm sure. They are a fantastic place. They are

0:55.5

full of dick jokes. And high school kids like us love learning about them. That's just the

1:00.9

effect. Yeah, that was the biggest surprise to me, just how many references are phallic ones.

1:07.0

Yeah. And it is incredibly funny. And hey, these plays are not like a annoying literature you have

1:12.4

to read, but entertainment for the masses that also have a lot of poetry in them. And so there

1:18.0

are also a ton of sources in mythology that the bard borrowed from. So I'm really excited to

1:23.7

see your take on these plays, Julia. Yeah, so as you've highlighted for the audience, Shakespeare

1:29.7

does feature in both the tragedies and the comedies. A lot of both magical and supernatural elements,

1:36.8

and of course mythological and folkloric references. And Shakespeare, like a lot of literature and art

1:42.8

at the time, really pulled heavily from these various different classical western mythologies

1:48.1

and folklore to make illusions or to take poetic license, right? And I mean, in certain plays,

1:54.1

he quite literally pulls figures from mythology and folklore and puts them into his stories. And

2:00.3

one of the best examples of this is the focus of today's episode, which is a midsummer night's

2:04.9

dream. Yeah, we got queen tatania, all kinds of stuff. Exactly. So Amanda, I do have to ask,

2:10.5

what is your relationship with a midsummer night's dream? Because it wasn't one that we did in high

2:15.6

school, but it is one that I feel like I've seen at least a few times like actually performed.

2:21.2

Yes, I've seen it performed a lot. I have seen it at the globe, which was really cool. I've seen

...

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