Premonitions

The last premonition I remember having was about a week before school started. Obviously, because it was close to the start of school, I was expecting something bad to happen. I wasn't precisely sure what, but I was certain something would, and something did.

It turned out that one of my cats went missing for a few days shortly after that. She was somewhat of a loner to begin with, so none of us thought anything of it. However, a few more days later, we decided to go for a walk and happened to find that she had died a little ways down the block from our house. I probably couldn't have done anything to prevent it; it was basically all just bad luck, but I still hold the start of school partially responsible, if only as some sort of omen.

That's a bit of a depressing story, yes, but it was the only bad premonition that readily jumps to my mind now. I've had a few good premonitions recently, too, one of which also coincidentally involves cats.

Shakespearean Stories

I don't really watch all that many movies, (the last one I saw was around six months ago) so the only one I can recall enough to discuss involving Shakespearean themes is this TV movie on the Lifetime channel called Perfect Romance. It's about a mother who sets her daughter up with a man on the internet, and they finally meet, but he realizes that he doesn't love the daughter, because it was her mother he was corresponding with. The daughter sets up her own plan to get the man together with her mother: she fakes kissing another person when he walks in the room, who she actually ends up falling in love with. At the end, the mother loves the man she talked with online for her daughter, and her daughter loves the man she pretended to kiss.

I would say that fits the theme of love triangle and the theme of mistaken identity. It's definitely a case of mistaken identity; the man thinks he has been talking to the daughter the entire time. It's a love triangle, because the mother has secretly fallen in love with him, but she wants her daughter to have a lover, so she stays out of their "relationship". The play the movie seems most similar to is As You Like It. I can't say for certain if the producers were inspired by anything related to Shakespeare, but it's fairly obvious they were trying to use some of the common themes in his plays.

Anticipating Shakespeare

I was able to understand A Midsummer Night's Dream fairly well. I think that the language in Shakespeare's plays is hard to understand at first, but gets easier if you listen to it for a little while. So far, I have a good perception of his work. I think that I would enjoy reading or seeing more of it. I liked all of the characters and ideas in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

As for Romeo and Juliet, I've read the play once before, but it was quite a while ago, so I've forgotten a lot about it. However, I remember the basic storyline, and I think I'll enjoy reading it again. I consider Shakespeare quite a good writer for creating two plays as different as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet. One is a tragedy, and the other has a very happy ending; I believe it shows a considerable amount of skill to write both well.