Such Stuff...

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

Perhaps I'm just a little overly sensitive when it comes to discussions of such ephemera as dreams and stuff, but I've always been a little bit bothered by how "...such stuff as dreams are made on;" is misquoted by generations of starry eyed, slack jawed individuals with a passion for poetics.



As seen above, most commonly, we hear the variant "...the stuff that dreams are made OF." I suppose you could argue that Bogey's famous line from the wonderful "Maltese Falcon" is meant to evoke a completely different feeling. Prospero is speaking of illusion, the illusion of life coupled with the illusion of the play. We see his double meaning especially in the lines:

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

Here Prospero is presenting us with an interesting idea, the play(really the play within a play in Tempest) is an illusion, but guess what, so is the reality that surrounds it(and one can only assume the reality in the actual world. Shakespeare gives us this little subtlety by the simple evocation of the "globe", as it's meaning telescopes, we are meant to understand that Prospero is indeed referring to the characters, but also those watching the show in the Globe Theatre.

Bogey's "stuff" seems to be more a nod to an abstraction, stolen from an ideal world and made real by human hands. It's our entrance to the dream of perfection in many forms: beauty, worth, form and meaning.

The two idea's sit at seemingly opposite ends of the spectrum. On one side, we have Shakespeare's confirmation that no matter how amazing the world is, it will one day unravel as we awake(die), on the other side we have Bogey taking the dream world and making it real, thus creating MORE reality.

How do you bring these two idea's together?

With Punch and Cookies, meaning you punch who ever says the "Dreams are made of" in the cookies if they say it's Shakespeare.

In this case "cookies" means stomach, face, and/or balls.


Or make them listen to this.