Alison wrote:
> >It's more of the teatro mundi, "all the world's a stage".
>
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-capped 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. Sir, I am vexed...
>
>(Couldn't resist typing that out. What a speech!) It's one of the
>great monologues: the masque is over, and now Prospero bitterly
>foresees even the dissolution of "the great globe itself" (both The
>Globe theatre and the world) - that all pomp and splendour, all human
>mundanities, even the natural world in all its teeming hugeness, are
>as "baseless" and "insubstantial" as theatre itself; a mere dream.
>It's one of the moments where stage and real world unite: just as the
>play-within-a-play ends, so will this one; and it is but a shadow of
>our own mortality. The Shakespearean theatre was roofed with a map
>of the stars, the 12 signs of the Zodiac: all the company would have
>been literally aware of that metaphor.
>
Yes, that does seem the truer reading. I can't help but notice how the monologue is framed by that address "be cheerful sir," and "Sir, I am vexed," as if the dissolution were framed as the pleasantry of a shared illusion and its unmasking. "I" still speaking to "you," nevertheless. I'm glad you typed it out in its entirety, it _is_ such a great speech
that I was also tempted to, but, for some reason, my fingers kept falling asleep.
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
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