Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1.2-22 Interpretation

ORIGINAL PASSAGE

More strange than true. I never may believe

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold:

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination

That if it would but apprehend some joy

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Antique – ancient; strange, grotesque (as in “antic”)

Toys – trifles

Fantasies – imaginations

Apprehend – conceive

Compact – composed

See’s Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt – In a gypsy’s face. Helen: Helen of Troy

Bringer – source

Fear – object to be feared

INTERPRETATION

I may never believe