4 quotations linked to A Midsummer Night’s Dream by or associated with William Shakespeare, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Love, imagination, poetry, conflict, perception, social disorder and comic transformation across the lovers, Theseus, Helena, Hermia and the play’s other voices.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“Though she be but little, she is fierce.”
Physical size is separated from force of character, giving the line its enduring use as a compact statement of spirited strength.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene 2; Helena describes Hermia during the lovers’ quarrel. Verified in the scan-backed 1918 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Willard Higley Durham; direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act III transcription.
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Love is described as complicated rather than frictionless, which makes the line a durable reminder against idealizing relationships.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I, Scene 1; Lysander says this to Hermia while describing the obstacles that repeatedly frustrate lovers. Verified in the scan-backed 1918 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Willard Higley Durham; direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act I transcription.
“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact.”
Theseus links three states through imagination, treating creative perception as the power to see forms and meanings beyond ordinary calculation.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1; Theseus skeptically groups the lunatic, lover and poet through imagination. Verified in the scan-backed 1918 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Willard Higley Durham; direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act V transcription.
“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.”
The image captures artistic movement between abstract possibility and concrete experience, suggesting that poetry gives form to what imagination first sees.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1; Theseus continues the same speech with the poet’s eye moving between heaven and earth. Verified in the scan-backed 1918 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Willard Higley Durham; direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act V transcription.
