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A Midsummer Night's Dream By William Shakespeare

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            A Midsummer Night's Dream  is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595.  The play begins with Theseus, Duke of Athens, and his fiancée discussing their marriage that is set to take place in four days.  Theseus is impatient and tells Philostrate to entertain the people until their marriage.  Later, Egeus brings his daughter, Hermia, to Theseus, demanding that she punished.  He is upset because he has arranged for to marry Demetrius, but she refuses because her and Lysander are already in love.  Theseus advises Hermia to choose Demetrius but he gives her until his wedding in four days to make up her mind.  Hermia and Lysander decide that they want to run away together to Lysander's aunt's house where they can legally be married.  Hermia promises to meet him the next day saying, "I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow/ By his best arrow with the golden head... In that same place thou hast appo...
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Lysistrata by Aristophanes

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Lysistrata by Aristophanes is a classical play about a woman named Lysistrata in Greece.  She gathers women from all over Greece, on every side of the war, for a meeting during the Peloponnesian War.  They are all tired of the war and want it to end.  Lysistrata suggests that they all refuse to have sex with their husbands in order to gain peace throughout Greece.  She is not sure how this will go over because it appears that she believes most women are weak.  She may believe this simply because the women of Greece put up with their husbands and everytihng that they do.  Lysistrata is an exception to this.  At first, the women refuse and they cannot imagine anything worse.  Calonicé says, “anything, anything but that! Bid me go through fire, if you will; but to rob us of the sweetest thing in the world, dear, dear Lysistrata.”  Eventually they agree and all take an oath to abstain from sex with their h...
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The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

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           The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is about a twelve-year-old Mexican American girl, Esperanza Cordero, living in a poor Chicago neighborhood.  Her family of six has moved around a lot from one poor neighborhood to another but their new house on Mango Street is the first one that they have owned and not rented.  Still, Esperanza wants to get out of the area and move to a bigger and better house eventually.  She does not have much hope, however, that this will happen in the near future.               Esperanza is looking to find herself and she discovers that to be more difficult when she is worried about things like being embarrassed about her home, her family, and even her own name.  She wants to change her name when she is older as a step to her fresh start away from Mango Street.  She believes that this will mak...
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