passages in the history of literature. After taking us on such a flight of imagination, taking us temporarily outside ourselves, Prospero/Shakespeare comforts us for looking “in a moved sort” and “as if you were dismay’d”: “Be cheerful . . . / Our revels now are ended. These our actors, / As I foretold you, were all spirits and / Are melted into air, into thin air.” Only to then softly dissolve into that immortal whisper: “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”
