Skip to main content

What passages about dreams appear in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream?

The play's title refers to the dreamlike qualities of romance. It also refers to the yearning to escape the mundane or troublesome qualities of marriage that are portrayed in Titania and Oberon's relationship, as well as Theseus and Hippolyta. The love spells that occur are a sort of fantasy and wish fulfillment interlude. So many quotes from the play refer to these different ideas and symbols.


There is even a suggestion that the entire play is a dream, and the setting in fairyland supports this; at the end of the opening prologue, Puck says: 



If we shadows have offended,
Think but this,--and all is mended,--
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.



This suggests that the action to come may be a dreamlike experience, and not a "real" story. Later on, Theseus uses the term "shadows" to refer to the players in the production of Pyramus and Thisbe:



The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.



The metaphor of "shadows" is another reference to dreaming, to things that look differently at night than during the day. The "midsummer" of the title refers to the summer solstice, which is the shortest night of the year, and this underscores the fleeting quality of the dreams portrayed in the play, and the fact that dreams are often the source of humor and frivolity. This includes "Bottom's Dream" which is created for Titania by Oberon, and results in Bottom being turned into an ass, and Titania being affected by Puck's love spell, so that she falls in love with him even though he looks like an animal.


We also see the lovers using dreams as a way to describe love's fragility. Lysander tells Hermia that love can be be "swift as a shadow, brief as any dream." And after Bottom is released from the spell that turns him into an ass, he says: "I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more