While They Were Sleeping

While reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I couldn’t help but think of Cymbeline. From the beginning, Cymbeline has a fairy-like tone, with many of the conventions of a fairytale. As  it is so fairytale-like that there are actual fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there is a clear distinction of the two plays that separates them from the rest of the works we have read. Apart from the strong affiliation to fairytales, the two plays both have major plot points based around people falling asleep or being put to sleep. Slumber seems to be when the most significant moments of the plays occur

For example, the major conflict in Cymbeline begins when Imogen falls asleep.  The lines

“Sleep hath seize me wholly,

To your protection I comment me, gods.

From fairies and the tempters of the night

Guard me” (2.II.9-13)

are strikingly similar to anything you would expect out of Midsummer.

 Of course, Imogen does fall asleep and that is when the trickery occurs. Similar to the fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream, Iachimo commits this crime without realizing just how severe the repercussions will be.  A lover’s quarrel ensues, much in the same way that it happens in Midsummer, and is only after Imogen and Posthumous both sleep that anything can be resolved. When Posthumous is visited by ancestors and, conveniently, a god he is enlightened in much the same way as the lovers of Midsummer are enlightened by the magical nectar that returns them to their right minds. There is such a dreamlike quality to the resolution of  Cymbeline that the lines

“Are you sure that we are awake? It seems to me

That yet we sleep, we dream” (Midsummer 4.I.201-202)

seem like an appropriate ending to the play. There is no denying the dreamlike qualities that tie these two plays together. 

--Posted on behalf of Becca Williams