More Shakespeare on Dreams

Don't forget Shakespeare's other famous references to dreams... as in A Midsummer Night's Dream. But the dream theme is prevalent in many other plays:

Notably:

Hamlet - III, i

"To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;"

Hamlet is of course weighing his options in the famous "To be, or not to be" speech. Shall he shuffle off this mortal coil or carry on with his plot of revenge and justice. The "dreams" of death's "sleep", of what's on the other side, tempt him.

And also:

Romeo and Juliet - I, iv

"ROMEO: I dream'd a dream to-night.

MERCUTIO: And so did I.

ROMEO: Well, what was yours?

MERCUTIO: That dreamers often lie.

ROMEO: In bed asleep, while they do dream things true."

Mercutio sees Romeo's sighing and dreaming as a pithy distraction. Romeo is adamant that his dreams tell him something. Mercutio believes they lead him astray.

And furthermore:

"True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south."

This text is delivered brilliantly by Harold Perrineau in Baz Luhrman's controversial Romeo + Juliet. Mercutio's final point on dreams is not a positive one. "the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy...as thin of substance as the air." Hardly favorable descriptions...but fantastic, vivid imagery.

I propose we title our project (at least tentatively):

THE DREAMS THAT STUFF IS MADE OF

Thoughts?