What does 'dreams are made on' mean here? Is 'made on' a phrasal verb?
We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
(A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle)
English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communityWhat does 'dreams are made on' mean here? Is 'made on' a phrasal verb?
We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
(A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle)
The ordinary phrase would be what "dreams are made of", but this is a quotation from Shakespeare.
In The Tempest, Prospero, a sorcerer, says:
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
It means essentially the same as "made of".
Remember that very few native speakers can read Shakespeare without help, and that most poetic usage has unusual and overlaid meanings.
The line is originally from the Shakespeare play "The Tempest".
Enotes.com has this interpretation of the line:
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.