[A Midsummer Night's Dream, according to Nicoll, clearly reflects the poet's serious preoccupation with dreams and reality. Shakespeare's view of the problem of being and appearance, this critic maintains, is far from superficial, since he does not approach it as a paradox to be overcome. "Appearance and reality interplay in [A Midsummer Night's Dream] like two themes in a symphony, rising and falling, changing shape, momentarily coalescing and then, once more separate, producing contrapuntal music. " But Shakespeare, Nicoll contendsJor all his delight in ambiguities, approaches the puzzling world of fantasy in a level-headed manner. Nicoll concludes that the poet's common sense, which is represented by Bottom, "embraces the imagination as well as the ordinary real." ]

The lyrical sonnet-like verse of Romeo and Juliet becomes more happily allied to content and mood in A Midsummer Night's Dream. This, the first of Shakespeare's great comedies, presents itself to us...