[10.  April 28.  Reprinted in Bjornson’s Taler og Skrifter. 
    Udgivet af C. Collin og H. Eitrem.  Kristiania. 1912.  Vol.  I,
    pp. 263-270.]

He begins with an analysis of the play:  The play is called a dream.  But wherein lies the dream?  ‘Why,’ we are told, ’in the fact that fairies sport, that honest citizens, with and without asses’ heads, put on a comedy, that lovers pursue each other in the moonlight.’  But where is the law in all this?  If the play is without law (Lov = organic unity), it is without validity.

But it does have artistic validity.  The dream is more than a fantasy.  The same experiences come to all of us.  “The play takes place, now in your life, now in mine.  A young man happily engaged or happily married dreams one night that this is all a delusion.  He must be engaged to, he must marry another.  The image of the ‘chosen one’ hovers before him, but he can not quite visualize it, and he marries with a bad conscience.  Then he awakens and thanks God that it is all a bad dream (Lysander).  Or a youth is tired of her whom he adored for a time.  He even begins to flirt with another.  And then one fine night he dreams that he worships the very woman he loathes, that he implores her, weeps for her, fights for her (Demetrius).  Or a young girl, or a young wife, who loves and is loved dreams, that her beloved is fleeing from her.  When she follows him with tears and petitions, he lifts his hand against her.  She pursues him, calls to him to stop, but she cannot reach him.  She feels all the agony of death till she falls back in a calm, dreamless sleep.  Or she dreams that the lover she cannot get comes to her in a wood and tells her that he really does love her, that her eyes are lovelier than the stars, her hands whiter than the snow on Taurus.  But other visions come, more confusing.  Another, whom she has never given a thought, comes and tells her the same story.  His protestations are even more glowing—­and it all turns to contention and sorrow, idle pursuit and strife, till her powers fail (Helena).

“This is the dream chain of the lovers.  The poet causes the man to dream that he is unfaithful, or that he is enamored of one whom he does not love.  And he makes the woman dream that she is deserted or that she is happy with one whom she cannot get.  And together these dreams tell us:  watch your thoughts, watch your passions, you, walking in perfect confidence at the side of your beloved.  They (the thoughts and passions) may bring forth a flower called ’love in idleness’—­a flower which changes before you are aware of it.  The dream gives us reality reversed, but reversed in such a way that there is always the possibility that it may, in an unguarded moment, take veritable shape.