Shakespeare quotes: Such stuff as dreams are made on

Prospero:


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 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.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

Anticipating his daughter's wedding to the Prince of Naples,
Prospero has staged a short entertainment, with spirits taking the
parts of Roman gods. But he abruptly cuts the fun short when he
remembers some pressing business. He tries to calm the startled couple
by explaining, somewhat off the point, that the "revels" (performance)
they've witnessed were simply an illusion, bound sooner or later to
melt into "thin air"—a phrase he coins.

Prospero's metaphor applies not just to the pageant he's created on
his fictional island, but also to the pageant Shakespeare presents in
his Globe Theater—the "great globe itself." Dramatic illusion in turn
becomes a metaphor for the "real" world outside the Globe, which is
equally fleeting. Towers, palaces, temples, the Globe theater, the
Earth—all will crumble and dissolve, leaving not even a wisp of cloud
(a "rack") behind. Prospero's "pageant" is the innermost Chinese box: a
play within a play (The Tempest) within a play (the so-called "real" world).

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream, and people
are the "stuff" dreams are "made on" (built of)—just as characters
might be called the "stuff' plays are "built on." "Our little life" is
like a brief dream in some divine mind, "rounded with a sleep"—that is,
either "surrounded" by sleep or "rounded off" (completed) by sleep.
Prospero seems to mean that when we die, we awake from the dream of
life into true reality—or at least into a truer dream.

"The stuff of dreams" seems to derive from this passage, but it only
superficially resembles Prospero's pronouncement. "The stuff of dreams"
as we use it today refers to a scenario one can only
fantasize—something devoutly to be wished. Prospero's "stuff" refers to
the materials that go into creating an illusion, not to the object of a
wish.

Take note that Prospero says "made on," not "made of," despite Humphrey Bogart's famous last line in the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon:
"The stuff that dreams are made of." (Bogart suggested the line to
director John Huston, but neither seems to have brushed up his
Shakespeare.) Film buffs may think "made of" is the authentic phrase,
but they're only dreaming.