I was struggling with how Hamlet’s bad dreams were ambition. What would nightmares have to do with aspirations? I suppose a monster could run in and eat you just as you were accepting your Academy Award and that would be a bad dream that would thwart your ambitions pretty good.
But even so – this seemed like a leap. Then I realized that we call our ambitions our dreams and I guess so did Shakespeare– so, yes, of course. It seems like a particularly modern notion, the wanting, the aspiring, the longing, the dreams but it seems as though everyone has always had dreams.
The Hamlet Project 