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Unit 7: Charles Lamb-Dream Children: Critical Analysis

shortly after England’s monarchical Restoration in 1660, owes a debt to Elizabethan tragedy and Notes
features a commentary on the politics of Lamb’s day via historical analogy. Lamb’s collaborative
works with his sister, Mary, all fall into the category of juvenile literature and include
Mrs. Leicester’s School (1807), a collection of children’s stories and poems, Tales from Shakespear
(1807), simplified renderings in prose of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays, and Poetry for
Children (1809). Lamb also adapted Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey for younger readers in The
Adventures of Ulysses (1808). Among Lamb’s critical writings, his anthology Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets, Who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare includes selections from the plays of such
Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists as Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, George Chapman,
and Thomas Middleton. Since many of these works were previously unobtainable to early
nineteenth-century readers, Lamb’s compilation was an important reference source and is
supplemented with explanatory notes now considered among Lamb’s most significant critical
work. In a related essay, “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered with Reference to Their
Fitness for Stage Presentation,” Lamb argued that the best qualities of Shakespeare’s drama can be
fully appreciated only through reading: according to Lamb, stage performances often diminish
the play’s meanings, and individual performers often misinterpret Shakespeare’s intended
characterizations. Lamb’s most prominent works were his last: the collections Elia: Essays Which
Have Appeared under That Signature in the “London Magazine” and The Last Essays of Elia were
published in 1823 and 1833, respectively. Featuring sketches in the familiar essay form—a style
popularized by Michel de Montaigne, Robert Burton, and Sir Thomas Browne—the “Elia” essays
are characterized by Lamb’s personal tone, narrative ease, and wealth of literary allusions. Never
didactic, the essays treat ordinary subjects in a nostalgic, fanciful way by combining humor,
pathos, and a sophisticated irony ranging from gentle to scathing. Among the essays, “Christ’s
Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago” features a schoolboy reminiscence of Coleridge, while
“Confessions of a Drunkard” treats with ambivalence a theme that punctuated Lamb’s own life.
Counted among his most significant writings, Lamb’s discerning and lively correspondence is
collected in The Letters of Charles Lamb (1935).

7.2 Critical Analysis

This essay is about a dream. In this essay all characters are real except the children Alice and John.
from the title we can guess that its a dream and reverie also means a day dream. Alice and John
are children of James Elia (Charles Lamb). they ask their father, James Elia, to tell them about their
grandmother. Grandmother’s name is field who has been acquainted to us by Lamb as perfect
women with great qualities, incidents are real from life of Lamb. There is a story related to the
house where grandmother field was a keeper. It was about the murder of children by their cruel
uncle. Alice and John came to know this story through a carved writing on a tree which was later
brought down by a rich man. After the death of grandmother, house owner took away his belongings
and place them in his new house where they look awkward. When grandmother was alive she use
to sleep alone but Elia was afraid of the souls of infants murdered by uncle as it was thought that
house is haunted by the spirits of those children. Elia has a brother John full of enthusiasm and
zeal, who was loved by everyone specially by her grandmother. on the other hand Elia’s childhood
was full of isolation and he remained stagnant though out his life. his mind was working fast but
bodily or pysically he was totally off and lazy. He was lame and helped by John in every possible
way who used to carry him in his back. Unfortunately, John also become Lame but Elia never
helped him and after his death he realized or missing him. at the end of the essay, alice and John
are crying after hearing all this. Elia is looking his wife, whose name also Alia, in alice face. the
childern started to become faint and say to elia or lamb that we are not your real children and
Alice is not your wife and our mother. Lamb wakes up finds himself in armed chair and James Elia
was vanished. the whole story is based on life of Lamb, he was never able to married and childless

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