The_Transition_Of_Reality_Into_Ideality_In_A_Midsummer_Night

The Transition Of Reality Into Ideality In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Two themes present in many of Shakespeare’s plays, the transition of reality into only a dream and the absurd nature of love form a large part of the dramatic content of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In Act Four Oberon tells Titania that Bottom will “think no more of the night’s accidents / But as the fierce vexation of a dream” (IV.i.65-66). Indeed this is what happens, as Bottom himself puts it: “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was.” (IV.i.204-207) It is interesting to note that many commentators now recognize the mangled version in Bottom’s speech as one of the passages in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, the Bishops’ Bible (2:9): “The eye hath not seen, and the ear hath not heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” We can see clearly that the risk of blasphemy is removed by the comic dislocations of sense and of senses in Bottom’s version. Dislocations of the senses occur several times in A Midsummer Night’s midsummer, night’s, dream, one, love, hermia, act, nature, imagination, double, play, lysander, line, hath, demetrius, things, helena, four, forest, eye, characters, bottom, both, been, about, way, shakespeare, remarks, reality, people, parted, man, makes, lovers, interesting