In Act I Scene iv of Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare writes his characters having an in depth conversation about dreams. Romeo had found himself dreaming that something will go wrong if he goes to the party, and Mercutio is convinced that dreams mean nothing. Romeo and Juliet was believed to be written in the year 1595, when they still believed the body was made up of four humours. It’s easy to say there wasn’t much useful scientific data back then, but 400 years later, we have more than enough data to settle this age old debate, what do dreams really mean?
Although these questions about what your dreams really mean have been around for hundreds of years, the first studies didn’t really come along until the late ninetieth century when an experimental study suggested that dreams could in fact be measured. In more studies throughout the twentieth century, we learned more about how dreams work. The studies showed that most dreams stimulated visual senses most, took place from a first person point of view, and we’re not in the dreamer’s conscious control (when the dreamer is in control of a dream, it is called a lucid dream and it is popular for people to ‘try’ to experience having one).
Further dream studies have showed that data supporting the fact that your dreams are influenced by your internal and external circumstances. Your dreams can be influenced by your workplace, gender, mood, chronic pain, and even religious beliefs. These results are said to conclude that your waking life and dreaming life are very much connected. For example, if you have a dream where you’re falling uncontrollably, or in an out of control vehicle, it may be because there is something happening in your life that feels very much out of your control.
If you applied these studies to Romeo and Juliet, you could say that well dreams definitely show how our lives are going at the time, there is no evidence that dreams can predict the future. It would be safe to say that Romeo was already feeling uneasy attending this party, and his dream reflecting how he was feeling. Although Shakespeare was probably using Romeo’s dream cleverly as a foreshadowing literally device. If this dreaming argument had happened now, I’m betting Mercutio would have won, with the help of science and Google.
SOURCES:
American Psychological Association
National Center for Biotechnology Information
MEDIA:
Sweet Dreams by Franz Schrotzberg
