C h a r a c t e r4 7simply a literary device. Literary figures do not have futures, any
more than incarcerated serial killers do. Shakespeare makes this
point in a beautiful passage towards the end of The Tempest,
another part of which we have looked at already:
be cheerful, sir.
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 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...As the drama draws to a close, its characters and events vanish into
thin air, since, being fictions, there is nowhere else for them to go.
Their author, too, is just about to disappear from the London
theatre and return home to his native Stratford. Interestingly, this
speech by Prospero does not contrast the unreality of the stage
with the solid, flesh- and- blood existence of real men and women.
On the contrary, it seizes on the flimsiness of dramatic characters
as a metaphor for the fleeting, fantasy- ridden quality of actual
human lives. It is we who are made of dreams, not just such
figments of Shakespeare’s imagination as Ariel and Caliban. The
cloud- capped towers and gorgeous palaces of this earth are mere
stage scenery after all.