Prophecies, Dreams, and the Plays of John Lyly

When the princess Sappho in John Lylyߣs Sappho and Phao asks, “can there be no trueth in dreams?” her question is not simply rhetorical. Indeed, while she herself answers it in the affirmative, one of her ladies-in-waiting flatly rejects the idea that dreams can have any prophetic value: “Dreams are but dotings, which come either by things wee see in the day, or meates that we eate.” ¹ In another of Lylyߣs plays, Endymion, the title character is bewitched, put to sleep for 40 years, and has a dream which is later retold at length but which is never given any interpretation. And most bizarrely perhaps, in Mother Bombie, a comedy of errors largely based on Roman models, two servant boys have dreams featuring, among other things, an anthropomorphous piece of beef who has “two honorable pages with hats of mustard on their heades” and a court consisting of “three damaske prunes in veluet caps” along with a handful of currants in the audience and twelve raisins who make up the jury (3.4.95–135).