A Midsummer Night's Dream is a fantastic work in which the most active characters (the Athenian couples) fall asleep not once but twice. That being so, we might expect dreams and dreaming to loom large in this work; and, in fact, they do. The most noteworthy individual dream in the play belongs to Bottom, who awakens from his romance with Titania restored to his natural form and tells us:

I have had a dream, past the wit of man to
say what dream it was. Man is but an ass,
if he go about to expound this dream.
………
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of
man hath not seen; man's hand is not able
to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his
heart to report, what my dream was.
(IV.i.205-214)

But more than just a dream-world, the realm that Shakespeare creates in A Midsummer Night's Dream is the world of imagination. The inhabitants of the fairy woods invite us to follow them on a path of endless fantasy. When Puck asks one of Titania's fairies where (s)he has been, the gentle spirit replies:

Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through brier,
Over park, over pale,
Through flood, through fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere.
(II.i.2-7)

The fairies of Shakespeare's comedy are found among those elements of nature that spark the human imagination, especially fire and, again, the moon. Consider further what Puck says while reveling in his sport with Bottom and the rude mechanicals:

I'll follow you; I'll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier;
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.
(III.i.106-111)

Here again, sparks of imagination come to mind, Puck's ability to transform himself into any number of things through the aid of the beholder's susceptible mind working as the human imagination does. The final word on the imagination, however, belongs to Theseus, who remarks about the confusion that has transpired in the woods to his queen Hippolyta at the start of Act V:

More strange than true. I never may believe
These antic 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.
(V.i.2-8)

Lovers, madman, and creative artists share the same force, the inspiration of imagination and its ability to reach into what cool reason cannot grasp.

It is by no means a coincidence that Theseus mentions "poets" in the passage cited immediately above. This is, after all, a play that concludes with an original work of written art, the "Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe" as amended and performed by Bottom, Peter Quince, Snug, and their fellows. In their hands, the story of Pyramus's love for Thisbe and its tragic ending is transmuted into a farce. In the first scene of Act III, Bottom comes up with a way to avoid scaring the audience with the sight of the hero's death, saying to Quince:

Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say
we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus
is not killed indeed; and for the more better assurance,
tell them that I Pyramus am not Pyramus, but Bottom
the weaver. This will put them out of fear.
(III.i.16-20).

Incredibly, Quince does just that. The presentation of this absurdly amateurish but sincere piece in Act V of A Midsummer Night's Dream allows the real characters, especially Theseus and Hippolyta, to issue comic but lenient critical comments upon the production, with Theseus saying of actors on stage and at large, "The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them" (V.i.211-212).

The play concludes as the rulers of fairyland bless the human marriages of the play, and Puck then speaks an epilogue that begins:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbr'ed here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding than a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
(V.i.423-429)

On one level a plea for patronly tolerance toward the light nature of A Midsummer Night's Dream and, on another, a reinforcement of the "dream/imagination" nexus at the work's bottom, the epilogue brings together the gossamer strands into a coherent whole. The play is about the power of creative imagination and its function of bringing the blessings of Nature (writ large) upon mankind and marriage.