by Filip Krajník
published in "RozraRazil" 02/2008
Shakespeare wrote his works in an environment with a strong interest in sleeping and dreaming. Drawing from a long... more
Shakespeare wrote his works in an environment with a strong interest in sleeping and dreaming. Drawing from a long cultural and literary tradition, the motifs of sleep and dreams pervade the dramatist’s entire canon, regardless of the specific genre or his creative period. The topoi often enter the dramatic works not merely for ornamental purposes, but as effective technical devices. A typical example is the correlation between the quality of sleep and the character of the sleeper, as seen in Richard III, 2 Henry IV or Macbeth. Dream prophecies, through their ability to convey information to the audience and hide it from the dreamer at the same time, were usually a rich source of dramatic suspense and irony, for instance in Titus Andronicus, 2 Henry VI or Julius Caesar. Throughout Shakespeare’s plays, we might also find traces of popular humanistic beliefs concerning sleeping and dreaming, for instance the functioning of the human soul in the daytime and at night (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) or the closeness between sleep and death (Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet).
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