To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream, part of the Exhibitions at the Folger, opened on February 19, 2009 and closed May 30, 2009. The exhibition was curated by Carole Levin and Garrett Sullivan with Steven K. Galbraith and Heather Wolfe as consultants. The exhibition catalog can be purchased from the Folger Shop.

While sleeping and dreaming are universal experiences, each culture and historical period understands them in distinctive ways. This exhibition explores the ethereal realm of sleeping and dreaming in Renaissance England, from the beliefs, rituals, and habits of sleepers to the role of dream interpreters and interpretations in public and private life.

The habits and attitudes of both royalty and commoners toward sleep and dreams provide us with a glimpse into a world that has strong connections with, and striking differences from, our own. Sufferers of insomnia and nightmares attempted to cure themselves with a variety of remedies—from herbal concoctions to magic. They adhered to specific rituals for going to bed and held beliefs about when it was or was not appropriate to sleep.

Through a variety of printed, handwritten, and visual materials, including literary texts by Shakespeare, Milton, and others, To Sleep, Perchance to Dream explores the vibrancy of early modern views of sleeping and dreaming. Nightclothes, gemstones, recipes and ingredients for curing nightmares and inducing sleep, and records of dreams about or by historical figures, provide a vivid glimpse of the various ways in which the Renaissance English prepared for sleep and sought to control and understand their dreams.

Contents of the exhibition

Preparing for Sleep

Medical writers understood sleep to be crucial to the maintenance of physical well-being, and offered specific instructions for a range of bedtime matters, such as identifying the best place to sleep, choosing a bed least likely to attract vermin, and selecting the most appropriate night clothes. Preparing for sleep was also a spiritual matter. Because of the widely held fear that one might die while asleep, saying one’s prayers was an important nightly ritual.

Several texts give insight into how people prepared for sleep in Renaissance England. Church of England clergyman Richard Day’s text, A booke of Christian prayers, offers both a bedtime prayer as well as images of sharing a bed. Primarily for reasons of economy and warmth, bed-sharing was a common practice in early modern households and in university settings.

Thomas Tryon’s A treatise of cleanness in meats and drinks, of the preparation of food, the excellency of good airs, and the benefits of clean sweet beds offers a wealth of sleep-related advice, which he summarizes as follows: “Therefore moderate Clothing, hard Beds, Houses that stand so as that the pleasant Briezes of Wind may air and refresh them, and also Houses that are full of Windows, are to be preferr’d.” He also notes that featherbeds breed vermin (a common problem in early modern beds) and are to be avoided.

Finally, Thomas Cogan's The haven of health covers topics such as the “most fit” place in which to sleep, the best way to make the bed, and the appropriate posture for sleeping. Cogan also notes that “he that sleepeth with his mouth close[d] hath commonly an ill breath and foule teeth.”

Items included

• Richard Day. A booke of Christian prayers, collected out of the auncient writers, and best learned in our tyme, worthy to be read with an earnest mynde of all Christians, in these daungerous and troublesome dayes, that God for Christes sake will yet still be mercyfull unto us. London: Printed by Iohn Daye, 1578. Call number: STC 6429 and LUNA Digital Image.
• Thomas Tryon. A treatise of cleanness in meats and drinks, of the preparation of food, the excellency of good airs, and the benefits of clean sweet beds. London, 1682. Call number: T3196.
• Thomas Cogan. The hauen of health.

When We Sleep

Night-time slumber was divided into “first” and “second” sleeps, separated by a period of wakeful activity. How many hours one should sleep was dictated by one’s humoral “complexion”—that is, the balance in the body of the four humors (blood, phlegm, choler or bile, and melancholy or black bile). Sleep was associated with cold and moisture, and therefore with phlegm, a cold, wet humor. Napping during the day was discouraged, as it was believed to cause, in the words of Thomas Cogan, “great domage & hurt of body.” And sleeping too much was both a physical and spiritual transgression.

Sleep was thought to be associated with the humors, which were closely related to a person's temperment. Both sloth and forgetfulness were moral vices associated with sleeping too long or at the wrong time of day.

Thomas Fella's heavily-illustrated miscellany includes an “alphabet” of moral advice. The letter F is devoted to sleep—particularly the fitful sleep of the rich as compared to the sweet sleep of “a laboring man.”

And Scipion Du Plesis' The Resolver, a translation of the French Curiosité naturelle, poses and answers a question about the relative strength of “first sleep” that foregrounds the importance of digestion— namely that it produces fumes that ascend to the brain, and provokes sleep by “stop[ping] the conduits of the Senses.”

Items included

• Thomas Fella. A booke of diveirs devises and sortes of pictures, with the alphabete of letters, deuised and drawne with the pen. Manuscript, ca. 1585-1622. Call number: V.a.311 and LUNA Digital Image.
• Scipion Dupleix. The resoluer; or Curiosities of nature written in French by Scipio Du Plesis counseller and historiographer to the French King. Vsefull & pleasant for all. London: Printed by N. & I. Okes, [1635]. Call number: STC 7362.

What is Sleep? From the Medical to the Metaphorical

In The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton defined sleep as a “binding” of the senses. This “binding” was routinely described as the product of digestion, thought to be sleep’s primary cause. Medical writers asserted that fumes produced during digestion ascended from the stomach to the brain, where they impeded the passage of the “animal spirits” responsible for rational and sensory activity. At the same time, sleep had non-medical significance, lending itself to a variety of literary and allegorical interpretations.