...all of a sudden, WHAM!!! I read a line near the end about the socalled dream children where they say "we are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been..." That was so incredible. It's just what I feel sometimes too, that I'm nothing, only a dream, less than...

...'what might have been' echoes the quotation from Charles Lamb in the score of Dream Children, Op. 43: 'We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been'. Allis uses this observation to tie Falstaff in with what he calls 'Elgar's retrospective aesthetic'....

...Charles Lamb in which an old bachelor beholds two children who gradually fade from his view, whispering 'we are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been! Elgar's later part-songs, such as Death on the Hills (1914), The Wanderer (1923) and The Herald (1925),...

...the natural process of development by their early death and thus become symbols of eternal childhood: »We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We...upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence and a name« (Lamb, 299). The motif of the »strange child« is repeatedly...