What is the importance and significance of dreams in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Well, of course the title of the play suggests that the
whole event is, in itself, a dream.  And at the end, Puck says to the
audience:

If
we shadows have offended

Think but this and all is mended
--

That you have but slumbered
here

While these visions did
appear.

And this weak and idle
theme

No more yielding but a
dream.

While it seems in
these lines that Puck is apologizing to the audience if they, perchance, did not like
the play, he is also gently chiding those who might take it all too seriously.  "This is
a play, people," he might be saying.  "Lighten up!  Enjoy!  It isn't intended to be any
more logical or real than a dream you might have."

Hermia
is a character who actually falls asleep and has a dream in the play.  When she lies
down beside her true love to sleep in the forest, she awakens to find that he has
"fallen in love" with Helena.  Hermia screams for Lysander's help to "pluck this serpent
from my breast," which indicates that she has dreamed that a snake has come to attack
her, a common dream image of treachery, foreshadowing her assumption that Helena has
"come by night" and "stolen my love's heart from
him."

Bottom and Titania both claim to have dreamed their
drug-induced romance, but while Titania sees her dream of loving an "ass" as a
nightmare, Bottom seems inspired by the events he considers to have been a dream.  He
says that he will have a play written about it, of course casting himself as the star,
called "Bottom's Dream."  In this idea, he suggests somewhat the process of the
playwright.  Dreams could be the source of the playwright's ideas and
plots.

Of course, there are many more connections between
dreams and the play to be made.  Please follow the links below for more information on
"dreams" in Midsummer.