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As they attempt to put two and two together (hopefully, this time, in a true coupling), Demetriusmakes a distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘appearance’, by appealing to the opinions of others in thegroup. He asks whether they too had just seen and spoken with the Duke and his train (IV I 200).Their agreement allows Demetrius to conclude, ‘Why then we are awake’ since their confirmation ofhis experience assures him that he is neither dreaming, nor hallucinating, nor mad.Shakespeare sets up the scene so that Hippolita’s prompt can allow Theseus to expound on thetopic of the imagination. He provides his wife with a suitably unempathetic explanation in hisresponse to her more feeling-orientated musings. He, a rational male of no little authority, declaresthat he himself could never believe in such ‘antique fables’ or ‘fairy toys’. And he takes theopportunity of expressing – to the audience rather than his Amazon Queen – not just a commonplaceabout the poetic imagination, but also his knowledge of epistemology and psychology. From ourvantage point in history we also read his speech as an indication of Shakespeare’s knowledge ofRenaissance learning. The ideas expressed in Theseus’ speech belong to that historical moment whenthe early Greek philosophers were discussing questions about the nature of reality, as it is perceivedthrough the physical eye, and then ‘impressed’ upon the mind. Their manner of conceiving thisprocess remained definitive of later discussions, even up until Wordsworth’s time, especially sinceJohn Locke had revisited the early stoic concept of the ‘tabula rasa’. The ideas briefly presented inShakespeare’s Comedy have a ‘history’, one that must be seen in terms of a very longue durée.Theseus’ appreciation of ‘imagination’ and its importance to poets, was invoked by Dorothy atthe time of a very significant meeting – that of her first acquaintance with ‘the poet’ Coleridge atRacedown Lodge in June 1797. Writing to Mary Hutchinson, who had just left Racedown, she tellsher of her ‘great loss in not seeing Coleridge…a wonderful man’, whose ‘conversation teems withsoul, mind, and spirit…he is so benevolent, so good tempered and cheerful and like William, interestshimself in so much about every little trifle.’ She goes on to express her first opinions about his looks,which are not very complimentary. But once she had heard him speak for five minutes, she fell underhis spell, dismissing physical appearance as a reliable representation of his character. 4 It was not,however, only his voice that spoke to her:His eye is large and full, not dark but grey; such an eye as would receive from a heavy soulthe dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it has more of the‘poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling’ than I have ever witnessed. (EY 188-9)This appreciation of the poet’s imagination was one of the commonest of commonplaces inlate eighteenth-century discussion and therefore hardly remarkable; Dorothy had grasped a literaryallusion that fitted this particular situation. However, a closer reading of this famous passage fromShakespeare leads to an appreciation of ‘imagination’ that can help us better appreciate Wordsworth’sparticular understanding of the word and to recognise a further example of Ciceronian influence.4 Coleridge, later in life expressed exactly the same opinion ‘my face is not a manly or representable face –Whatever is impressive, is part fugitive, part existent only in the imaginations of persons impressed stronglyby my conversations – The face itself is a FEEBLE unmanly face (CL VI 170-1).220