4 quotations linked to A Midsummer Night’s Dream by or associated with William Shakespeare, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
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.
Source note: Act 3, Scene 2; Helena describes Hermia during the lovers’ quarrel.
“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.
Source note: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1; Lysander says this to Hermia while describing the obstacles that repeatedly frustrate lovers. It is character dialogue inside their threatened relationship.
“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.
Source note: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1; Theseus reflects skeptically on imagination and the stories of the lovers.
“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.
Source note: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1; continuation of Theseus’s speech about the poet and imagination.