ABSTRACT
The communication concretizes in the perception of images the mind can bring down on matter through the vis imaginativa, the power of imagination. The vis imaginativa was valued by Dr Dee as well and connected to things mathematical, whose value he advocates in the preface to Euclid, as "surmounting the imperfection of conjecture, weenyng and opinion and coming short of high intellectual conception, are the Mercurial fruite of Dianoetical discourse in perfect imagination subsisting". According to the beliefs of his cultural context, Shakespeare apparently ascribes fantasy to external factors, like magic, able to latch one's eyes as Oberon avers, and spirits that can concur to produce love or stimulate ambition. The final ritual, aimed at purging their unsettled fancy and cleansing the reasonable shore/That now lies foul and muddy, proves that fantasy is the emanation of useless brains, boil'd within their skulls.
