The Bottom of Things

Bottom is a key figure in Shakespeare because the generosity of Shakespeare's humanism is what is at stake in the reading of his character.

Is the synesthesia in the passage commonly referred to as "Bottom's Dream" simply the mark of an idiot? Or is it an imperfect but endearing expression of the vision of one whose senses have been overwhelmed--positively--by the richness of his experience, the experience that life has to offer even the meanest of us?

Shakespeare rarely extends his humanist vision to the lowly among his creations, and there's nothing in the text of the play that directly suggests that Bottom's dream should be an ennobling one--Bottom becomes an ass even in fancy. But I have seen actors perform the speech with an utterly convincing sense of wonder and self-expression befitting much better words than the jumble that falls out of the character's mouth, and each time I have been touched by the vision presented. Which is the true, the genuine reading?

Shakespeare won't tell, and I'm sure that he would have been incredulous could he have known that people would be talking this over nearly four hundred years after his death.