SOURCE: "'Begot of Nothing?': Dreams and Imagination in Romeo and Juliet," in Classical, Renaissance, and Postmodernist Acts of the Imagination: Essays Commemorating O. B. Hardison, Jr., edited by Arthur F. Kinney, Associated University Presses, 1996, pp. 195-210.

In the following essay, Holmer examines Romeo and Juliet, investigating Shakespeare's imaginative transmutation of Thomas Nashe's ideas on dreams and dreaming in the play.

Critics have seen the witty Mercutio's Queen Mab speech as his most imaginative flight in Romeo and Juliet. But the extent to which Shakespeare himself is imaginative in his fusion of dream lore and a diminutive demon has not been fully understood. The idea of small fairies does not originate with Shakespeare. They appear in old folklore traditions, recorded in the late Middle Ages by authors such as Giraldis Cambrensis and Gervase of Tilbury, and particularly in Welsh lore; John Lyly often is credited with being the...