Midsummer Night’s Dream – the ‘Inception’ of its time

Shakespeare liked to play with meter to help add meaning to his words. For instance, in Midsummer Night’s Dream whenever the moon is mentioned, Shakespeare created an irregularity in the meter in order to reflect how the moon manages to makes things ‘other’.

Each of the four layers of reality in Dream had its own language ‘voice’; it was a tool to keep the layers straight in the audience’s mind as the story unfolded.  Like an Elizabethan ‘Inception’ except using words instead of the rich visual cues in that film.

Taken from The Great Courses’ Shakespeare: The Word and the Action

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