Seg monologue (Act 3) — Life Is a Dream

Oh God, if this be dreaming, charge it not To burst the channel of enclosing sleep And drown the waking reason! Not to dream Only what dreamt shall once or twice again Return to buzz about the sleeping brain Till shaken off for ever-- But reassailing one so quick, so thick-- The very figure and the circumstance Of sense-confess'd reality foregone In so-call'd dream so palpably repeated, The copy so like the original, We know not which is which; and dream so-call'd Itself inweaving so inextricably Into the tissue of acknowledged truth; The very figures that empeople it Returning to assert themselves no phantoms In something so much like meridian day, And in the very place that not my worst And veriest disenchanter shall deny For the too well-remember'd theatre Of my long tragedy--Strike up the drums! If this be Truth, and all of us awake, Indeed a famous quarrel is at stake: If but a Vision I will see it out, And, drive the Dream, I can but join the rout.