The Renaissance sense of sleep in Shakespeare's plays, together with some modern critical interpretations.

The thesis, "The Renaissance Sense of Sleep in Shakespeare's Plays, Together with Some Modern Critical Interpretations," examines Shakespeare's use of sleep in his plays. Shakespeare uses sleep to denote physical action, the personalities of characters, and the dramatic situation and general condition of the drama and of those involved in the drama. He uses natural sleep for physical recuperation to indicate a character's previous action, such as a tiring journey or excessive drinking. He uses unnatural sleep induced by magic or supernatural power to control and determine dramatic development. He makes use of extensive meanings of the peace and serenity of sleep in the sense of the age old concept of the immortality of the soul, commonly held, also, by Renaissance writers who considered life and death as a state of peripheral transition in the infinity of eternal peace. In keeping with the sense of sleep as a lack of consciousness or awareness of reality, Shakespeare often depicts the state of dull sensibility as a sleep to reveal unnatural states, such as a character's "distracted mind" or "madness." This thesis contains eight chapters: the first chapter deals with an overall general view of Shakespeare's use of sleep, and the following seven chapters present detailed analyses of the use of sleep in selected major tragedies and romance-comedies. Generally, Shakespeare presents the fortunate soul possessed of the serenity and peace of sleep and the unfortunate, sorrowful, or tormented soul wanting such serenity and peace. In his later plays, Shakespeare uses sleep more pervasively, extensively, and figuratively than in most of the early plays. He uses sleep to reveal the responsive awareness or unawareness of characters in their dramatic condition. He uses it to denote temporary or permanent peace that can be obtained by undergoing figuratively purgatorial sleep. In the final romance-comedies, he uses the unnatural sleep caused by the intervention of supernatural powers to render consolation and provide for the restoration of orderly peace and blissful harmony. Shakespeare uses the concept, action, and consequences of sleep denotatively and connotatively, functionally and pervasively, in the dramatic development of the play itself