The title is an adaption from a character and a scene in Shakespeare's ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream''. At the end of Act IV, Scene 1, the awaking weaver
Bottom says: :"I have had a dream, past the wit of man to :say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go :about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there :is no man can tell what. Methought I was,—and :methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool, if :he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye :of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not :seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue :to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream :was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of :this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, :because it hath no bottom;..."
Christoph Martin Wieland translated the play in 1762 into German prose. His weaver Bottom (bottom = ball of yarn) bears accordingly a German term of weaving as his name, Zettel, which was apt for a translation of the last line (to "weil darin alles verzettelt ist", roughly 'because in it all is mixed up'). Hence "Zettels Traum" is German for Bottom's Dream. ==Summary==