Lacan as we have seen in our discussion of Freud regards the unconscious as structured like a language. This is not only because it works by metaphor and metonymy it is also because like language itself for the post-structuralists it is composed less of signs stable meanings than of signifiers. If you dream of a horse it is not immediately obvious what this signifies it may have many contradictory meanings may be just one of a whole chain of signifiers with equally multiple meanings. The image of the horse that is to say is not a sign in Saussures sense - it does not have one determined signified tied neatly to its tail - but is a signifier which may be attached to many different signifieds and which may itself bear the traces of the other signifiers which surround it. I was not aware when I wrote the above sentence of the word-play involved in horse and tail one signifier interacted with another against my conscious intention. The unconscious is just a continual movement and activity of signifiers whose signifieds are often inaccessible to us because they are repressed. This is why Lacan speaks of the unconscious as a sliding of the signified beneath the signifier as a constant fading and evaporation of meaning a bizarre modernist text which is almost unreadable and which will certainly never yield up its final secrets to interpretation.

Interestingly this speech by Prospero does not contrast the unreality of the stage with the solid flesh-and-blood existence of real men and women. On the contrary it seizes on the flimsiness of dramatic characters as a metaphor for the fleeting fantasy-ridden quality of actual human lives. It is we who are made of dreams not just such figments of Shakespeares imagination as Ariel and Caliban. The cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces of this earth are mere stage scenery after all.