A Midsummer Night’s Dream Sleep Quotes

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania some time of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. Oberon explains to Puck where he will find his wife, so that a trick can be played on her. He uses evocative language and mellifluous verse as he describes Titania sleeping place. This is one of the play’s most beautiful passages and has a dream-like quality about it. The Fairy Queen’s bed of nature is an enchanting and tranquil woodland bower where exotic plants and wild flowers abound. The only sinister thing to disturb this tranquil picture is the reference to the snake. This is foreshadowing of the nasty revenge that Oberson is about to take on his Queen. That Titania is "Lull’d in these flowers" also foreshadows that the juice of a flower will be used to enchant Titania and others who sleep.

Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence –
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,
Some war with reremice for their leathern wings
To make my small elves coats; and some keep back
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 2. Titania instructs her attendant fairies to dance and sing her to sleep. She assigns them their work duties: kill the pests on the rosebuds, fight bats to make leather jackets for the elves from their wings, and keep an especially noisy owl away.

What thou see’st when thou dost wake,
Do it for thy true love take.
Love and languish for his sake.
Be it ounce or cat or bear,
Pard or boar with bristled hair,
In thy eye that shall appear
When thou wak’st, it is thy dear.
Wake when some vile thing it near.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 2. Oberon chants this spell as he squeezes the love potion from the enchanted flower into the sleeping Titania’s eyes. She will fall in love with the first creature she sees when she awakens. He mischievously wishes that it is some "vile" creature, like a wildcat, bear or wild boar.

"Amen, amen" to that fair prayer, say I.
And then end life when I end loyalty!
Here is my bed. Sleep give thee all his rest!

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 2. Lysander adds an ironical “Amen, amen” to the “fair prayer” of Hermia, who hopes that his love will never change until he dies. Echoing Hermia’s hope, he prays that his life will end if his loyalty ever does and wishes her a restful sleep. However, under the influence of the fairies’ magic love potion, Lysander wants to have nothing to do with Hermia the very next morning.

Through the forest have I gone,
But Athenian found I none
On whose eyes I might approve
This flower’s force in stirring love.
[Sees LYSANDER and HERMIA]
Night and silence! Who is here?
Weeds of Athens he doth wear:
This is he, my master said,
Despised the Athenian maid;
And here the maiden, sleeping sound,
On the dank and dirty ground.
Pretty soul! she durst not lie
Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.
[Squeezes flower juice on LYSANDER’s eyelids]
Churl, upon thy eyes I throw
All the power this charm doth owe.
When thou wakest, let love forbid
Sleep his seat on thy eyelid:
So awake when I am gone;
For I must now to Oberon.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 2. Puck has been searching through the forest, but he hasn’t found the Athenian boy Demetrius to use the love nectar from the "Love-in-Idleness" flower on. Then seeing Lysander and Hermia, he mistakingly squeezes the love juice on the eyelids of Lysander, who is wearing Athenian clothes. This is example of dramatic irony, as the audience is aware of the magic juice and that Puck has used it on the wrong person.

Help me, Lysander, help me; do thy best
To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast.
Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here!
Lysander, look how I do quake with fear.
Methought a serpent eat my heart away,
And you sat smiling at his cruel prey.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 2. Hermia wakes up from a nightmare and calls out for Lysander, to find herself deserted by him. In her terrible dream a serpent devours her heart while Lysander stands by and smiles. The serpent is a metaphor for Lysander’s betrayal and the heart a metaphor for love, as Lyander’s affections switch to Helena. The symbolism of the dream foreshadows Lysander’s newfound love for Helena, as he pursues her, trying to convince her that his affection for her is genuine. The sleeping Hermia’s dream is thus a mirror for reality.

If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep,
Being o’er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep
And kill me too.
The sun was not so true unto the day
As he to me. Would he have stolen away
From sleeping Hermia? I’ll believe as soon
This whole Earth may be bored, and that the moon
May through the centre creep and so displease
Her brother’s noontide with th’ Antipodes.
It cannot be but thou hast murdered him.
So should a murderer look, so dead, so grim.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Hermia fears that Demetrius has killed Lysander. If that is so she tells Demetrius that he should kill her too. She cannot believe that her faithful Lysander would abandon her. She would only believe it if a hole appeared through the center of the earth and the moon sneaked through to surprise her brother, the sun, on the other side of the world.

There is no following her in this fierce vein:
Here therefore for a while I will remain.
So sorrow’s heaviness doth heavier grow
For debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe:
Which now in some slight measure it will pay,
If for his tender here I make some stay.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Demetrius is feeling sleepy and sorrowful after his unsuccessful pursuit of the "fierce" Hermia, so he decides to call it a day. He lies down and takes a nap. He uses a money metaphor to compare his lack of sleep to a money deficit, saying that he will pay down his sleep deficit – "his tender" – by resting here a while.

Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye,
Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,
To take from thence all error with his might
And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.
When they next wake, all this derision
Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision.
And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,
With league whose date till death shall never end.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Oberon hands Puck a new herb that will undo the spell caused by the “Love-in-Idleness” flower. He wishes to put right the mischief and mayhem visited on the Athenian lovers. So he orders Puck to drop the juice of the herb into Lysander’s eyes. Tomorrow because of its magic the sleeping lovers will wake up and view the events in the forest as simply a dream, Oberon predicts.

On the ground
Sleep sound:
I’ll apply
To your eye,
Gentle lover, remedy.
When thou wakest,
Thou takest
True delight
In the sight
Of thy former lady’s eye:
And the country proverb known,
That every man should take his own,
In your waking shall be shown:
Jack shall have Jill;
Nought shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Oberon gives Puck a flower to reverse the enchantment on Lysander, which has caused confusion and conflict. When the four star-crossed lovers are asleep, Puck squeezes the juice from the flower into Lysander’s eyes, so that he will awaken to love his former lady Hermia. Meanwhile he leaves Demetrius permanently under the love spell so that he remains in love with Helena. Puck is intent on fixing things and reversing his mischief. He says that he is resetting things to their natural state, where each "Jack" will have his "Jill." There is a touch of gender inequality when Puck uses a bawdy animal metaphor to compare a male lover’s woman to his "mare." This suggests that she is her lover’s property.

Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms…
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist. The female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O, how I love thee! How I dote on thee!

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Titania is completely besotted with Bottom, urging him to sleep next to her. Here she speaks about the “female ivy” climbing the elm tree – this image is a metaphorical representation of a couple’s relationship as the woman wraps herself around a man.

My lord, I shall reply amazèdly,
Half sleep, half waking. But as yet, I swear,
I cannot truly say how I came here.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. The lines between reality and illusion are blurred for the Athenian couples when they wake up in the wood after the previous night’s strange events. A confused Lysander responds to Theseus’ question of how he came to be on the ground sleeping near his arch enemy Demetrius. He admits to being baffled and feels that he is half asleep, half awake.

Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Demetrius says this after all the confusing events of the play are resolved. He says that the lovers feel as though they have been dreaming. He cannot tell whether everything is real or not. Shakespeare is suggesting that love is like a dream, real and vivid when you’re experiencing it, but then when it’s over you look back and think it wasn’t real.

Asleep, my love?
What, dead, my dove?
O Pyramus, arise!
Speak, speak. Quite dumb?
Dead? Dead? A tomb
Must cover thy sweet eyes.
These lily lips,
This cherry nose,
These yellow cowslip cheeks
Are gone, are gone!…
His eyes were green as leeks…
With hands as pale as milk.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Flute, playing Thisbe, laments Pyramus’ death in a very comical style, first asking if he is asleep or dead. Then using a series of metaphors he gives us a humorous description of the dead Pyramus. He tells us of his “lily lips,” “cherry nose” and “cowslip cheeks.” However, his facial colors are mismatched, the lips should be cherry-colored, while cowslip yellow cheeks are a sign of someone who is diseased. He also uses a number of ill-chosen similes – “eyes were green as leeks” and “hands as pale as milk.”
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