In the plays of William Shakespeare, dream is an important imagery that comprises both the fears of the irrational as well as imagination’s creative powers. Dreams in Shakespeare’s play entail at once deep-seated fears and highest aspirations. Shakespeare uses the imagery of dream to show a transforming experience that takes the dreamer towards self-awareness. Both comedies “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, written between 1590 and 1596, and “The Tempest”, written between 1610 and 1611, use the theme of dream. This paper will try to analyse the epilogues of both Puck and Prospero to show the implication of dreams on the audience.
The epilogue in “The Tempest” is spoken by the once-mighty Prospero, the protagonist of the play, in front of the audience. He asks the audience to free him, as Caliban and Ariel did. Prospero's connects the imprisonment of Caliban and Ariel with his own bondage, which can be undone only the audience’s applause. Several critics have argued that Prospero’s speech echoes Shakespeare’s own farewell speech to the theatre. In contrast, Puck's epilogue, which is mostly in verse, is a direct address to the audience. It tries to make amends with the audience and it aimed at apologizing for any incorrect behaviour during the play’s performance.
In the epilogue of “The Tempest” Prospero suggests that he would renounce magic, as magic resulted in several diabolical work. The epilogue is a typical Renaissance epilogue where the main character requests for an applause, and it links Shakespeare’s dramatic work to Prospero’s magical art. The epilogue discusses two major issues of the play: magic and bondage. Prospero simply announces that his “charms are all o’erthrown” and resumes the rhetoric of bondage and slavery, an important theme of the play (Epilogue 1). Like Caliban and Ariel, both Shakespeare and Prospero were confined by the audience and plead for their release. By saying that his aim is to please the audience, Prospero and the author talk of their art with a humility, and Prospero’s magic becomes about gratifying the viewers with his magic. It is similar to the ultimate aim of Shakespeare to entertain the audience. The last few lines of the epilogue seek a balance between a sense of sorrow, “Now I want/Spirits to enforce, art to enchant”, and the tranquillity that comes from faith (Epilogue, 13-14).
In contrast, Puck’s epilogue in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a reminder to the audience about the dreamlike nature of the play. It is unique both in language and the total meaning of the play. Puck is the ideal speaker of the last few lines as he is one of the character responsible for the chaos and romantic struggle in the play. The final lines makes the reader as well as the audience question whether everything that had happened was a dream or reality. Puck avoids taking responsibility at the start of the epilogue by saying that they might have been sleeping and dream with the main characters as that is the only way to explain the mayhem that had occurred during the play. He refers to the characters as “shadows”, a word that has importance throughout the play due to the shadowy presence of the fairies, including Puck, and magic. Magic is also an important element in the play because it both creates and finally resolves the struggle between the lovers.
“That you have but slumbered here, / While these visions did appear” suggest that if the audience were upset over anything then it can be resolved by the idea that the entire situation was a dream and were the victims of magic, dreams, and sleep (Act V, Scene i). Puck draws a similarity between the audience’s situation and that of the lovers, as he says that everything will be normal with the audience, as it was with the lovers, when they wake up from their slumber. Throughout “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” there is a constant feeling that everything is somehow affected by “shadows” or fairies and magic.
In conclusion, the epilogues of both Puck and Prospero give the reader and the audience a sense of closure. It also allows them to make amends with what all transpired in the story. Both the epilogues serve as a microcosm for the plays as they address the theme of deception and magic and try to settle any dispute between the audience and the characters of the plays.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Ed Hulme, Peter. Sherman, William H. Norton Critical Edition. Norton. New York. 2003
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Norton Critical Edition. New York. 2010
