A surprisingly well dressed and tidy woman arrives in Avonlea and claims to be the estranged wife of Mr. Harrison, Anne’s cranky neighbour.

“Marilla, if I’m not crazy and not asleep she can’t be such stuff as dreams are made of. . .she must be real. Anyway, I’m sure I couldn’t have imagined such a bonnet. She says she is Mr. Harrison’s wife, Marilla.”

-Anne of Avonlea ch.25

The phrase “such stuff as dreams are made of,” is a quotation from Higginson’s poem of the same title. Higginson’s poem is in turn a misquotation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, IV, i, 156-157: “We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on… “

Ilse and Emily talk over who could have played a prank on Emily.

I really think it was that little devil of a May Hilson. She’d do anything and she was in the hall when I was flourishing the crayon. She’d ‘take the suggestion as a cat laps milk.’

-Emily Climbs ch.9

Chapter 21 of The Story Girl is entitled “Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On.”

The Tempest
By William Shakespeare

(excerpt from Act I, Scene 2)

Ant. I Sir: where lies that? If ’twere a kybe
‘Twould put me to my slipper: But I feele not
This Deity in my bosome: ‘Twentie consciences
That stand ‘twixt me, and Millaine, candied be they,
And melt ere they mollest: Heere lies your Brother,
No better then the earth he lies vpon,
If he were that which now hee’s like (that’s dead)
Whom I with this obedient steele (three inches of it)
Can lay to bed for euer: whiles you doing thus,
To the perpetuall winke for aye might put
This ancient morsell: this Sir Prudence, who
Should not vpbraid our course: for all the rest
They’l take suggestion, as a Cat laps milke,
They’l tell the clocke, to any businesse that
We say befits the houre

(excerpt from Act 4, Scene 1)

Prospero:
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 tow’rs, 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.

The Tempest can be read in its entirety at Project Gutenberg

Source

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2235