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One way of uncovering the underlying meaning of Christopher Marlow's Doctor Faustus lies in studying the dream like nightmarish monologue the protagonist delivers in Scene XIX. 11. 133-190 as he faces payment of his soul to the devil. Faustus' vision is described as he experiences it like a daydream or hallucination, with many parallels to literary dreams in Shakespeare. Famous dreamers such as Clarence and Richard in Richard III, Hermia in Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo, and Caliban in The Tempest all describe visions they had while sleeping. And these dreams have formed the basis of suggestive attempts to clarify the central meanings of the plays in which they appear. Faustus, of course, will never awaken from his dream. But his last vision is full of repetitions, symbols, and condensations like a dream fresh from the memory of his creator.
If we look to Freud for authority to treat Faustus' vision like a dream, he reports in his study of Gradiva that “invented dreams can be interpreted in the same way as real ones”1 Norman Holland concludes that invented dreams “represent a kind of mid-point between dreaming itself and artistic invention in general.”2 Freud also suggests that in dealing with an imaginary dreamer, “we shall have to content ourselves with referring to his impressions, and we may very tentatively put our associations in place of his.”3 Robert Fliess adds that the analyst of a dream can contribute two elements to the analysis that are independent of the dreamer's associations, an interpretation of symbolism, and associations known to the analyzer which the dreamer may not supply.4 Holland has established a test as a way of sorting out “what in the perception” that a literary dream