A Midsummer Night's Dream: Bottom's Dream
...ry or fret about the change in his personal circumstances. He seems to believe, as does Brutus, in taking advantage of current circumstances, but Bottom seems to be able to sleep peacefully during his turn on the stage, whereas Brutus suffers from pathetic insomnia. Bottom, in fitting with his character, falls asleep with the fairies, during which time the impossible events are reversed. He wakes up with the sun, alone and human again, questioning his memory of the night. The initial reaction of a human mind to a vague memory of impossible events is to distrust, to reject, to label it a “dream.” Other Athenians also experience temporary turns of fate during the midsummer night, Lysander and Demetrius, Helena and Hermia. With the coming of morning, however, none but Nick Bottom appear to sense the depth or significance of the dream. It seems that Bottom has experienced a brief awakening of sorts, a realization that he has perceived something beyond his earthly senses, something he cannot describe. He is not an immediate disciple of the unknown, however, no decision is ever made as to whether the entire night was a dream or not. In fact, Bottom declares any man an “ass” that goes about trying to “expound this dream... there is no man can tell what.” And furthermore, in Bottom’s most famous lines: “...man is a patched fool if he will offer to say, what methought I had. 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.” Bottom purposely scrambles the senses and their functions in this speech it seems, to make emphasis– he is speaking to the audience here, or perhaps only to himself, as he becomes b...