Dreaming in Shakespeare

The following post contains insights into my subconscious that could be considered TMI.  You have been warned.

I love it when I dream in Shakespeare, if even a little bit. The annoying thing about my dreams, though – and this goes way way back to when I was a kid – I can’t *do* anything. Whenever a situation arises that would normally have me thinking, “Yup, I got this” something equivalent to that “running through molasses while being chased” feeling kicks in and I can’t accomplish what I thought I could. When I was in high school I studied karate for a long time, but whenever karate came up in a dream and I thought “Ok I’m going to crush this with my best side kick” I’d end up moving in slow motion and glancing my target. You know that feeling? The same thing happens with reading and writing. I can pick up a book in my dream where I know the book, but when I try to read it my brain goes all “nope, you have no memory of these pages”. It’s not that they are blank, or blurry, it’s that I literally am conscious of thinking, “Why am I unable to read this book?”

I’m not sure where we were.  It was a job interview, or a contest of some sort. There was me and another guy, and somebody who was clearly a host/announcer of some sort that made me think maybe this was a game show. But we were back stage, competing for who got to go on.  The category was Shakespeare, and I remember thinking “I got this”, thinking that there’d be some sort of identify the play or where the quote came from question coming next.

The question was, in that garbled sort of dream speak where you only get bits and pieces, “In the following quote,  “…and the hey and the ho and the holly” what mistake needs to be corrected? Is it a) there is a word missing, b) the H’s need to be capitalized or c) the quote is correct.”

Yikes. I recognize the quote, it’s the song from As You Like It, but of course this being a dream it never goes easy for me and I don’t have to identify it, I have to remember it perfectly? And yes, he really did read a quote out loud and then ask about capitalized words. This no doubt comes from helping my elementary school children with their homework and seeing how often a word is marked wrong because they should have used a capital letter, and didn’t.

My dream self goes for capital letters, B.  Why, I can’t exactly remember. It’s wrong of course, but technically they’re all wrong.

The actual quote is, “then heigh-ho, the holly.” Depending on who you ask, apparently, it’s also pronounced “hi” rather than “hey”. I’m not sure which is correct, I just know that the dwarf song from the Snow White movie is officially called “Heigh-ho” even though they clearly sing “hi”.

By the way, I know why it was that quote, too.  Check out this snippet of IM conversation with Bardfilm from … 10 days ago:

That’s it. Had to share this brief glimpse into my psyche.  Happy Halloween!