A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Language and Poetry

The immense expanses created by Shakespeare's extraordinary poetic imagination, Mark Van Doren asserts in this selection, are vast enough to house the fairy realms and the world of ordinary reality, including all the peculiar manifestations of either place.

Mark Van Doren
[The immense expanses created by Shakespeare's extraordinary poetic imagination, Van Doren affirms, are vast enough to house the fairy realms and the world of ordinary reality, including all the peculiar manifestations of either place. The critic then examines the dramatist's ability to describe the separate and often quite dissimilar regions of the play's universe by drawing on the rich resources of poetry. Particularly in the supernatural sphere, Shakespeare's descriptions reach a remarkable geographic precision and undeniable suggestiveness. Referring to...

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