Predicate genitive [closed]

Can anyone give me a syntactical description for this of-construction, does it imply possessiveness or the characteristic of something?

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact;

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Solution 1:

Start with the etymology of compact:

Online Etymology Dictionary

compact (adj.)

late 14c., of substances, "closely and firmly united," from Latin compactus "concentrated," past participle of compingere "to fasten together, construct," from com "with, together" (see com-) + pangere "to fix, fasten" (from PIE root *pag- "to fasten").

Now consider the context, which is set a little later than the 14c but we may suppose compact still had the same meaning.

The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman:

the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

Shakespeare thus lists three sorts of person: lover, lunatic, and poet.

The lunatic unrealistically imagines more devils than Hell could hold.

The lover imagines great beauty where there is only an eyebrow or a forehead.

The poet attributes meaning and form to nothing; he or she imagines things that are not present in the real world.

And hence the characteristics of each person are compact (constructed) of imagination. They all create imagined concepts from nothing or almost nothing. This is the meaning of the quotation.