What question did this study set out to answer?

The aim is to explore Shakespeare's skepticism about dreams, focusing on their content and social implications.

May 24, 2026Open Access

Doubting Dreams in Shakespeare

Key Points

The aim is to explore Shakespeare's skepticism about dreams, focusing on their content and social implications.
Analyzes character reactions to dreams in plays like Antony and Cleopatra and Richard III.
Examines the social context of dream reports and their philosophical implications.
Compares Shakespeare’s views on dreams with those of Montaigne and Lyly.
Characters express significant skepticism about dream content, leading to personal development.
Social settings amplify the nature of dream-sharing, linking them to deeper philosophical inquiries.
Shakespeare's approach demonstrates a complex interplay between everyday exchanges and serious themes.

Abstract

This article considers expressions of scepticism about dreams in Shakespeare. It focuses particularly on doubts about dream content rather than dream interpretation, about memory and report rather than causes and origins. It observes these particularly in characters (Dolabella in Antony and Cleopatra, Brackenbury in Richard III, and Romeo) who discover these doubts reactively and then seem to flourish and gain substance as a result. These doubts are seen as socialized, spontaneous versions of the approach to memory and dreams that Shakespeare could and would find in Montaigne. It is important that these discoveries take place in social situations, where dreams are reported and offered for scrutiny. Shakespeare’s brief, fraught interactions respond to a long tradition in which Lyly especially is a key predecessor. In Lyly dream-sharing is a leisurely business, but it still performs important social functions. The combination of everyday exchanges with miniature philosophical discoveries shows Shakespeare doing serious thinking in dramatic form.

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