Читать книгу Understanding Dreams: What they are and how to interpret them - Nerys Dee - Страница 43

Throughout the bard’s work there are references to dreams and sleep and it has been said that, unless his works are viewed as if they were dreams, they make little sense.

The Tempest, set in that state between reality and illusion, is an example of this. Caliban dreams that ‘the isle is full of noises and sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not’, and he cries to dream again. And the wise character of Prospero suggests that maybe life is but a dream anyway. ‘We are’, he says, ‘such stuff as dreams are made of and our life is rounded with a little sleep’. The tragedy of Macbeth is a nightmare in itself and the sleep-walking Lady Macbeth re-enacts her crimes, agonising in her guilt. From Hamlet, the now famous line, ‘To sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream’, gave rise to a musical play, while the remainder of that quotation, ‘For in that sleep of death what dream may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil’, offers an enlightened view of life after death. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is but a dream inhabited by timeless images from real life, shadowy figures and figments from another dimension. In this we can identify with either and both worlds, but usually it is the symbolic one that wins.