A Midsummer Night's Dream

Uncle Jerry draws on A Midsummer Night's Dream as a work that tries to define the nature of love in all its forms, comparing Shakespeare's fifth-act speech (where love is called madness, foolishness, insanity) to what Taylor is doing across State of Grace. He sees the song as a similarly comprehensive attempt to catalogue what love does to people, how it arrives, what it costs, and what it creates. The connection is thematic rather than textual: both works hold love up to a light and turn it over, examining its contradictions.

Uncle Jerry references A Midsummer Night's Dream when discussing the theme of definitions of love in All Too Well. He notes that Shakespeare explores what a lover is in the play, 'a lover is a madman, a lover is a poet', and argues that Taylor is similarly exploring the meaning and depth of love through her definitions (oath, sacred prayer, rare, real, masterpiece, innocent).

“Saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts”

Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss how the title 'Death by a Thousand Cuts' made Uncle Jerry think of Hippolyta and Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In one of the Amazonian legends from Greek mythology, Theseus challenges Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, to a fight and cuts her repeatedly until she collapses from blood loss. Uncle Jerry also notes that in Act Five of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare compares love to an addiction.