Dream in Shakespeare: From Metaphor to Metamorphosis

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.