Reality In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Dreams are used throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare to strengthen points and reveal important aspects of both the play and the characters within. Often linking different periods, dreams are a prevalent and important aspect of the play that commonly reveal important plot characteristics. Therefore demanding attention by the reader and analyzer. Shakespeare is trying to show his readers the thin line between dreams and reality by foreshadowing future events through dreams, providing a link to reality, and revealing how reality reflects perspective and circumstance Foreshadowing future events and providing a link to reality through dreams reveal the influence of dreams on reality throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Throughout the play dreams, often find their ways into reality. When Hermia awakes from sleeping in the wilderness near Lysander she cries “Help me, Lysander, help me! Do thy best to pluck their crawling serpent from my breast!” (Shakespeare 1537). Hermia soon explains that she thought “a serpent ate my heart away” (Shakespeare 1537) and Lysander “sat smiling at his cruel prey.”(Shakespeare 1537). This foreshadows Hermia’s battle with
Future events are often shown throughout dreams, and dreams often provide a mirror image of what is occurring in real life. Dreams help transition characters and periods in the story. Reality also reflects perspective and circumstance and it is important to keep the character’s background in mind when reading and analyzing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare closes the play with a speech given by Puck, reinforcing the dream imagery found throughout the play and encouraging the reader to look at their own life critically and think about negative events in their life as dreams as