Intriguing DC exhibit on sleep, dreams, and insomnia

In these troubled times, are you suffering from insomnia? Or perhaps too much sleep? Nightmares?

You’re certainly not alone -- now or throughout history, judging from “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”, an intriguing new exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.

The Folger’s exhibition of extremely rare books, engravings, potion recipes -- even a bedchamber and an interactive “Dream Machine” -- offers a fascinating and humorous look at sleep, the lack thereof, dreams, and their interpretations dating back to the late 16^th and 17^th centuries. The exhibit, which opened February 19, runs through May 30.

Sleep disorders have been as great a problem for centuries in England as they are here today, considering the many surviving recipes for insomnia remedies, noted co-curator Garrett Sullivan, Professor of English at Penn State University. Ingredients in these recipes ranged from “poppy seeds, unsurprising, to lettuce, a bit more surprising,” he commented on opening night.

Ingredients for “A Dormant Drink”, for whatever reason, were written backwards ("yppop"), and promised two days of continuous sleep -- “Don’t try this at home,” Sullivan cautioned.

“King Richard III” ©Folger Shakespeare Library

Sleep aids like mandrake, a narcotic plant “which purportedly shrieked when removed from the ground” is fancifully illustrated in a page from the 500-plus-year-old “Hortus sanitatis”. The mandrake’s effects were, in poet John Donne’s words, “betwixt sleep and poison.” Shakespeare refers to the mandrake’s sleep inducing qualities in “Othello” and “Antony and Cleopatra”.

Shakespeare, in "Henry IV Part 2", termed insomnia "O pollish'd Perturbation!" Several Shakespearean characters suffer famously from such perturbation, like Macbeth who "does murther (murder) sleepe". And his Lady doth sleepwalk.

Alas, sleep was replete with dangers. In John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, an illustration shows “Satan in the form of a toad whispering (about forbidden fruit) into Eve’s ear as she sleeps,” Sullivan noted. And then “Adam and Eve sleep a ‘grosser’ sleep.” And in Sir Walter Raleigh's "The history of the world", an elaborate illustration linked sleep with "Death" and "Oblivion".

Sullivan said his interest in the topic of sleep came from his “sleeping like a log, relatively untroubled. Most scholars pretend they’re brooding melancholics like Hamlet.”

Co-curator Carole Levin confessed to the opening night audience, “I’ve always had very vivid dreams.” She noted that “From the earliest times, people have been interested in finding the meanings of their dreams.” Some early interpretations included: “Dreaming of an artichoke meant receiving favor from people you least expect. Dreaming of cauliflower – a friend will slight you; violet – if unmarried, it meant evil, but if married, great joy.” Similarly, dreaming you’re naked in church could be bad under one condition, but good under another. Hmmm, good under any condition?

As Shakespeare's Bottom says in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Man is but an Asse, if he goe about to expound this dreame." As we know, atop Bottom is the head of an ass.

If you have half a mind to "expound" your own dreams, the Folger exhibit offers an interactive “Dream Machine” that helps you interpret them according to manuals from this English Renaissance period. A man dreaming he's pregnant means he'll soon have wealth, gain and profit. Ditto if he dreams he's dead. But what if you're dreaming that you can’t find your way to your financial analyst’s office?

Speaking of analysts, Freud was quite the latecomer with his 1900 treatise “The Interpretation of Dreams”. “Freud himself read some of these books,” assured Levin, Willa Cather Professor of History and Director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Nebraska.

Levin added that Renaissance men and women made varied efforts to control dreams, and to avoid nightmares. Strategies included “rubbing the blood of a lapwing on your temples, putting an ape’s heart under your pillow, or even worse to find -- a dragon’s tongue soaked in wine.” Other methods included “drinking ground-up rubies -- a terrible waste.” To avoid nightmares in children, tots should wear emeralds (now that seems a terrible waste to me). “An amethyst prevents drunkenness, but promotes exciting dreams”, Levin added. Gemstones are displayed in one of the showcases.

Now that you've slept, and perchanced dreamed, dare not sleep too long, warned Robert Herrick in his “Carpe Diem” (seize the day) poem. It begins, “Get up, get up for shame”, he tries to rouse his “sweet-Slug-a-bed.” The poem is one of many intricately illustrated books on display.

For shame if you can’t make it to the Folger and this exhibition. Don't be a slug, at least take the audio tour on its website.

And now, perchance to sleep, that "Chiefe nourisher in Life's Feast".

For more info:

Folger Shakespeare Library www.folger.edu

202-544-4600

201 East Capitol Street, SE

Washington, DC

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