"Ground not upon dreams; you know they are ever contrary"
About this Quote
Middleton’s line cuts like a stage aside whispered to the audience: stop treating fantasy as a foundation. “Ground” is doing double duty. It’s practical counsel (don’t build your life on vapor) and a sly jab at the way people want their wishes to pass as evidence. The imperative mood makes it feel less like gentle moralizing and more like a warning issued by someone who’s watched self-deception cash out in real consequences.
The sting is in “ever contrary.” Dreams aren’t merely unreliable; they’re adversarial. Middleton frames the inner life as something that actively resists coherence, a nightly theater that contradicts our daytime stories about ourselves. That’s very Jacobean: a culture steeped in providence and omens, yet increasingly alert to the mind’s tricks, the instability of perception, the ease with which desire dresses itself up as prophecy.
As a poet and playwright working in the early 1600s, Middleton wrote for an audience living with precariousness: plague closures, economic churn, courtly intrigue, and a moral order that claimed certainty while daily life supplied chaos. In that context, “dreams” aren’t just private fantasies; they’re a whole category of seductive “signs” people used to interpret their fate. Middleton’s suspicion reads as social critique: a pushback against the era’s appetite for superstition and self-serving interpretation.
The subtext is almost cruelly modern. If your plans are anchored in the feelings you had at 3 a.m., reality won’t simply disappoint you - it will contradict you, repeatedly. Middleton’s wit lies in making that contradiction sound inevitable, even routine: not sometimes, but “ever.”
The sting is in “ever contrary.” Dreams aren’t merely unreliable; they’re adversarial. Middleton frames the inner life as something that actively resists coherence, a nightly theater that contradicts our daytime stories about ourselves. That’s very Jacobean: a culture steeped in providence and omens, yet increasingly alert to the mind’s tricks, the instability of perception, the ease with which desire dresses itself up as prophecy.
As a poet and playwright working in the early 1600s, Middleton wrote for an audience living with precariousness: plague closures, economic churn, courtly intrigue, and a moral order that claimed certainty while daily life supplied chaos. In that context, “dreams” aren’t just private fantasies; they’re a whole category of seductive “signs” people used to interpret their fate. Middleton’s suspicion reads as social critique: a pushback against the era’s appetite for superstition and self-serving interpretation.
The subtext is almost cruelly modern. If your plans are anchored in the feelings you had at 3 a.m., reality won’t simply disappoint you - it will contradict you, repeatedly. Middleton’s wit lies in making that contradiction sound inevitable, even routine: not sometimes, but “ever.”
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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