In describing his newly rekindled love for Helena, Demetrius uses much the same language Lysander used in Act III, Scene 1, again emphasizing the similarities between the two lovers. Like Lysander, Demetrius sees his love for Hermia as a remnant of childhood, an "idle gaud" he must discard as he enters adulthood. Similarly, his love for Helena resides primarily in his eyes, of which she is the "object and pleasure" (169). He adds the imagery of disease to Lysander's formula: His love of Hermia was a sickness that caused him to lose his appetite for his natural food. Now his true appetite, Helena, has been regained. His language shows the hunger, the lust, that underlies and accompanies romantic relationships. Yet Helena is aware of the discrepancy in Demetrius' character, claiming he is her own, but not her own. Love is so much like a dream that she cannot believe in its reality, nor can any of the other lovers.
Waking from his adventures in the fairy realm, Bottom also has trouble differentiating reality and illusion. In a moment of wisdom, Bottom realizes that his dream is past the "wit of man to say what dream it was" (204); as the lovers discovered earlier in this scene, dreams and visions are often untellable. Indeed, Bottom believes men are asses if they try to explain this dream — not every event of life is amenable to rational explanation, and some things exist most fully in the realm of the imagination. According to Bottom, such visionary experiences cannot be comprehended by any of the human senses: not eyes, not ears, not hands, not tongues, not hearts. Only art, literature, can capture these magical, visionary experiences, so Bottom will have Peter Quince write a ballad about his night with the fairies.
