What is the deeper significance of magic and/or dreaming in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

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‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ uses the motifs of magic and dreaming to highlight how limited we are as

humans to comprehend our own emotions and experiences. After their magical experiences in the forest,

Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander wake up the next morning feeling unable to discern reality from

dreams, and Hermia dazedly comments, ‘Methinks I see these things with parted eye, when everything

seems double.’ Hermia, still coming to terms with the pain and confusion of the night before, feels as though

her perspective is distorted, as if metaphorically seeing things through ‘parted eye’. The unpredictable and

almost magical nature of dreams is the way Hermia articulates emotions and experiences that are difficult to

express. Bottom encounters a similar dilemma, and in a jumbled Biblical misappropriation, he states, ‘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.' The five senses are symbolic of our ability to

understand and discern the world around us, but Bottom emphasises the limitations of each and how easily

our senses can be fooled. Bottom’s nonsensical ramblings emphasise how much of our own existence is

beyond our own comprehension. This is a point reinforced at the end of the play when Puck challenges the

audience’s own understanding of reality in his provocative statement, ‘If we shadows have offended, think

but this and all is mended, that you have but slumber’d here, while these visions did appear.’ His use of the

words ‘shadows’ and ‘visions’, with their connotations of trickery, falsity and deception, challenge the

audience to question their own ability to discern reality from fiction. In doing so, he emphasises the ‘magic’

of emotion and perception which challenges our concrete reality. Throughout the play, Shakespeare uses the

motifs of magic and dreaming to highlight our limited ability to comprehend our emotions and experiences.