| Notes on Dreams and Life | 10/15/2001 |
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, tehre'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" hamlet, WS
"Our revels now are ended. These our actors, ...
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, 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." Prospero, WS
"But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur'd so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But howsoever,strange, and admirable.
Dreams as a metaphor for life - whether because they are insubstantial, only remembered, fragments, transient, strange, or just a deferral of life itself - were important to the Bard.
A dream is a rememberance of sorts and we do live life through an idea - live life, as we reflect on it, backwards almost. Julius Caesar lives life, trying to move forwards toward a goal - coronation - but it is not merely politics that holds him back, it is dreams. His "dream" (referring to ambition)is not the dream that ultimately matters (Cal's). Maybe Caesar should have been more introspective.
Thought: "The unreflected life is not worth living" -Socrates.
"The life reflected upon, may be unliveable" - ...
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