These lines of Prospero from Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest have been stuck in my head for years.
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.
I’m inclined to blame the Brazilian power metal band ANGRA, whose 2010 concept album Aqua is loosely based on Shakespeare’s play.
But perhaps I could instead blame Dan Simmons, who borrowed liberally from The Tempest in his far-future sf novels Ilium and Olympos.
Though I should also give Catherine some credit. When I read to her what I had written yesterday she had suggested that Isaac Magnin, Naomi Bradleigh, and Morgan Cooper might have drawn respectively upon Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban as archetypes.
It seems reasonable since Isaac is a magician and Naomi is his daughter, but Morgan as Caliban? He isn’t malevolent enough, whereas Caliban had attempted to rape Miranda Morgan would find the notion of raping anybody abhorrent. Nor is he misshapen or ignorant; he is only ‘monstrous’ in the sense that he might appear human and act human but is entirely artificial. He might therefore be a hybrid of Caliban and Frankenstein’s creature, then, if you like.