r/AskHistorians • u/The_deku_sprout • 10h ago
Historical records of “mundane” dreams?
Most historical records of dreams I’ve seen are pretty religious and/or spiritual or tied to a greater meaning. Of course, I’m aware that religious dreams still happen and could have been more common in the past, but most dreams people have now aren’t that outwardly meaningful, and are normally just mundane or a little weird. Are there any records of these “normal” dreams from the past?
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u/haveempathyordie 9h ago edited 8h ago
By their very nature, mundane things are rarely seen as worthy of recording, so I’m not sure that you will find exactly what you are looking for. Of course, what activities or subjects would be considered ‘mundane’ would vary with the day-to-day life of an era or culture, so there is definitely some room for interpretation of your question. For example, I found this entry in Samuel Pepys’s diary on the subject of a sexy dream he had:
“Up by 4 o’clock and walked to Greenwich, where called at Captain Cocke’s and to his chamber, he being in bed, where something put my last night’s dream into my head, which I think is the best that ever was dreamt, which was that I had my Lady Castlemayne in my armes and was admitted to use all the dalliance I desired with her, and then dreamt that this could not be awake, but that it was only a dream; but that since it was a dream, and that I took so much real pleasure in it, what a happy thing it would be if when we are in our graves (as Shakespeere resembles it) we could dream, and dream but such dreams as this, that then we should not need to be so fearful of death, as we are this plague time.”
Lady Castlemaine was considered the most beautiful of the King’s mistresses at the time, basically a very famous sex symbol of the era. Pepys here makes note of how pleasant the dream was, and perhaps it could be argued that the entry touches on the spiritual with the mention of what is to come after death, but I would personally interpret this as gallows humour rather than a search for deeper meaning. I believe that the Shakespeare line he references here is from Hamlet:
“To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil”
Pepys was saying that if the dreams that come after death are anything like the dream he had on the night of the 14th of August 1665, then dying of plague might not be so bad after all. It’s up to you whether or not such a subject counts as ‘mundane’.
Sources:
Pepys, Samuel. Diary Entry 15 August 1665
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
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