Insubstantial Pageant

 

Reflecting on the mutable timeline, Manse Everard quotes:

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

"The solemn empires, the great globe itself,

"Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

"And like this insubstantial pageant faded

"Leave not a wrack behind -

"No! He must never let himself brood so."

-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 2, p. 480.

In January, 1611, William Shakespeare asks Anne Shakespeare, who is plucking a goose, to listen to what he has just written:

Shakespeare: Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air;

 

Shakespeare: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself,

 

Shakespeare: Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.

 

Prospero: We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

 

Shakespeare: There. Is that not fine?

-Neil Gaiman, "The Tempest" IN Gaiman, The Sandman: The Wake (New York, 1997), pp. 146-184 AT p. 172, panels 4-5; p. 173, panels 1-3.

 

It is fine to read Shakespeare in two such different contexts.