Washington, DC – Think dream analysis began with Freud? Think again. Dreams and their meanings carried a special fascination in Elizabethan England, a time when many believed that dreams had the power to foretell the future, expose guilty deeds or thoughts, or even reveal messages from the divine. "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream" explores the conscious – and unconscious – nighttime activities of Shakespeare’s day and their role in popular culture.
“Elizabethans believed intensely in the power of their dreams,” explains curator Carole Levin. “On several occasions Elizabeth I mentioned to those at court dreams that she had had. A number of English people also had upsetting dreams about their queen they interpreted as warnings, and wrote to her Principal Secretary to let him know the queen needed to be careful.”
Ideas about sleep and dreams saturated the culture, and they appeared frequently in literary and dramatic works, including John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World, and such Shakespearean plays as Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Books on dream interpretation, or professionals like John Dee, could help dreamers unlock the significance of their nocturnal reveries.
Finding out a dream’s meaning was especially important, as many people believed that dreams could act as harbingers of future events. King James I, generally skeptical of dream and the supernatural, was nonetheless deeply disturbed after dreaming of his own death in 1622.
“Some were convinced they were the fragments of the day retold, so a fisherman might dream of fish and a butcher of blood. Others, in what sounds similar to modern beliefs, were convinced that a person's guilt over "sins" led to troublesome sleep and nightmares. Some herbalists and doctors argued that certain foods and drink would lead to bad dreams, while others allowed pleasant sleep and sweet dreams,” says Levin.
Getting a good night’s rest was as much a concern then as it is today, and insomniacs might try anything from an exotic concoction of a dragon’s tongue in wine to wearing gemstone amulets to bed. Handwritten recipe books with instructions on how to cure nightmares (avoid chestnuts, advises one), ensure sweet dreams, and even predict one’s future spouse were popular household items.
Exhibition Highlights
"To Sleep, Perchance to Dream" features nearly one hundred books and illustrations from the Folger collection, as well as objects connected with sleeping and dreaming in Elizabethan England. Highlights include:
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An interactive “Dream Machine” that allows visitors to deconstruct their own dreams using a special touchscreen display and interpretations drawn from period dream manuals.
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Recipes for sleep remedies. Women of this period often compiled recipes to ease sleeplessness; a collection by Mary Granville and her daughter Anne advises applying a mixture of strained ivy leaves and white wine vinegar to the temples.
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Elizabethan nightwear. Full-size replicas of bedroom attire for men and women, created especially for this exhibition, will be on display.
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Dreams on stage. Dreams play prominent roles in Shakespearean drama, from Romeo and Juliet to Macbeth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photographs from contemporary productions of these plays accompany the exhibition.
"To Sleep, Perchance to Dream" allows us to glimpse into the complex beliefs about the interplay of body, mind, and soul during one of the most fascinating periods of British history, and to uncover the beginnings of our own understanding of what happens when we close our eyes and the lights go out.
About the Curators
Carole Levin is Willa Cather Professor of History and Director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Nebraska and her books include The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power and The Reign of Elizabeth I. She recently completed research on dreams in early modern England as a 2006-07 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She wrote about Richard Haydock and “The Curious Case of the Sleeping Preacher” for Folger Magazine in summer 2007.
Garrett Sullivan is Professor of English at Penn State University. He is the author of Memory and Forgetting in English Renaissance Drama: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster and The Drama of Landscape: Land, Property and Social Relations on the Early Modern Stage. He recently co-curated the Folger Exhibition "History in the Making: How Early Modern Britain Reimagined its Past."
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