Dream in Shakespeare: From Metaphor to Metamorphosis

Abstract

Dream is a central image for Shakespeare, encompassing at once the terrors of the irrational and the creative powers of the imagination--one's deepest fears and highest aspirations. Used in the early plays as a verbal or structural device, dream becomes, in the tragedies and late romances, a transforming experience which leads the dreamer toward a moment of self-awareness. In this illuminating study, now reissued with a new preface by the author, Marjorie Garber skillfully charts the development of Shakespeare's use of dream from the opening lines of Richard III to the magic of A Midsummer Night's Dream to Hamlet's most famous soliloquy. Drawing on the works of Freud and other psychologists, but basing its argument on the language and dramatic structure of the plays themselves, Dream in Shakespeare presents a coherent and innovative reading of the plays and their developing concept of dream.

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