A dream – I’m pretty sure that’s when it first entered my head.<\/p>\n
Sometimes you wake up from a dream with a phrase or sequence of words still reverberating around in your brain. It might even take a while to realize it’s been nestled there for hours, lurking somewhere in the back of your thoughts. Today I realized that for the entire day a little snatch of dialog from a play by Shakespeare had been rattling around in my mind, just ever so slightly out of conscious awareness, apparently a last remnant from a dream of the night before.<\/p>\n
Now, in the quiet of the evening, after the hubbub of the day has subsided, I realize what it was – one of my favorite speeches from “The Tempest”, spoken by Prospero in the first scene of Act IV. It’s an odd – and oddly beautiful – little monologue. Ostensibly he is speaking about the artifice of the play we are watching, observing that what we have seen here is nothing but illusion, papier-mâché<\/i> and greasepaint. And so he starts out:<\/p>\n \nOur revels now are ended. These our actors, But then Prospero continues, and the impact of his words carry far beyond the stage proscenium:<\/p>\n \nAnd, like the baseless fabric of this vision, This is so much lovelier and deeper than the famous monologue in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” that begins “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players”. That passage speaks only to the tragicomic pageant of an individual life, whereas the speech from “The Tempest” is nearer to the Hindu concept of Maya<\/i> – that this apparently solid world we perceive around us is in fact only an illusion. Shakespeare is suggesting that the very fabric of reality around us may itself be only a sort of fleeting and illusory performance. The sentiment reminds me quite a bit of this dourly playful excerpt from Fitzgerald’s translation of the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” (the original was written in 1120 in Persia):<\/p>\n \nFor in and out, above, about, below, It’s a profound idea, and yet one which many of us first encountered in early childhood:<\/p>\n \nRow, row, row your boat \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A dream – I’m pretty sure that’s when it first entered my head. Sometimes you wake up from a dream with a phrase or sequence of words still reverberating around in your brain. It might even take a while to realize it’s been nestled there for hours, lurking somewhere in the back of your thoughts. … Continue reading “A dream”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1993"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2004,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions\/2004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAs I foretold you, were all spirits and
\nAre melted into air, into thin air:\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThe cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
\nThe solemn temples, the great globe itself,
\nYe all which it inherit, shall dissolve
\nAnd, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
\nLeave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
\nAs dreams are made on, and our little life
\nIs rounded with a sleep.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
\nPlay’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
\nRound which we Phantom Figures come and go.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nGently down the stream
\nMerrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
\nLife is but a dream.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n