Enter Alonso, Sebastian, Anthonio, Ferdinand, 15
Gonzalo, and others.
Alon. Good Boatswain, have care. Where's the master? Play the meu.
Boats. I pray, now, keep below.
Ant. Where's the master, boatswain?
Boats. Do you not hear him? You mar our la-
bour: Keep your cabins: you do assist the storm.
Gon. Nay, good, be patient.
Boats. When the sea is. Hence! What care these roarers for the name of king? To cabin: 25 silence: trouble us not.
your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap.-Cheerly, good hearts-Out of our way, say.
Gon. I have great comfort from this fellow; methinks, he hath no drowning mark upon him: his complexion is perfect gallows. Standfast, good fate, to his hanging; make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage: If hebe not born to be hang'd, our case is miserable. [Exeunt.
Boats. Down with the top-mast; yare, lower, lower; bring her to try with main-course. [A cry within.] A plague upon this howling! they are louder than the weather, or our office. Re-enter Sebastian, Anthonio, und Gonzalo. Yet again? What do you here? Shall we give o'er, and drown? Have you a mind to sink? Seb. A pox o' your throat! you bawling, blasphemous, uncharitable dog!
Ant. Hang, cur, hang! you whoreson, insolent noisemaker! we are less afraid to be drown'd, than thou art.
Gon. I'll warrant him from drowning; though the ship were no stronger than a nut-shell, and as leaky as an unstaunch'd' wench.
[aboard. Gon. Good; yet remember whom thou hast Boats. None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor; if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the 30 present, we will not handle a rope more; use your authority. If you cannot, give thanks you have liv'd so long, and make yourself ready in Readily, nimbly. Of the present instant, the poet probably means. 1 Incontinent.
Boats. Lay her a-hold, a-hold; set her two courses; off to sea again, lay her off. Enter Mariners wet. Mar. All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost! [Exeunt.
Boats. What, must our mouths be cold?
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them:
The sky, it seems, would pour down stink ing pitch.
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's check,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffer'd
With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her,
Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor souls! they perish'd. 35
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth, or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and
The freighting souls within her.
No more amazement: tell your piteous heart,
There's no harm done.
Mira. O woe the day!
No, not so much perdition as an hair,
Betid to any creature in the vessel
Which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink.
Sit down;
For thou must now know further.
Mira. You have often
Begun to tell me what I am; but stopp'd,
And left me to a bootless inquisition;
Concluding, Stay, not yet.—
Pro. The hour's now come;
The very minute bids thee ope thine ear;
Obey, and be attentive. Canst thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell?
I do not think thou canst; for then thou wast not
Out' three years old
Mira. Certainly, sir, I can.
Pro. By what? by any other house, or person?
Of any thing the image tell me, that
Hath kept with thy remembrance.
And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants: Had I not
Four or five women once, that tended me?
Pro. Thou hadst, and more, Miranda: But
how is it,
That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
In the dark back-ward and abysm of time?
If thou remember'st aught ere thou cam❜st here;
How thou cam'st here thou may'st.
Mira. But that I do not.
Pro. Twelve years siuce, Miranda,twelve years
Thy father was the duke of Milan, and
A prince of power.
Pro. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and
She said-thou wast my daughter; and thy father
Was duke of Milan; thou his only heir
And princess, no worse issu❜d.
40 What foul play had we, that we came from Or blessed wast, we did?
Pro. Both, both, my girl:
By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heav'd
But blessedly holp hither.'
To think of the teen' that I have turn'd you to,
Which is from my remembrance! Please you
pray thee mark me,-that a brother should
Be so perfidious!-he whom, next thyself,
Of all the world I lov'd, and to him put
The manage of my state; as, at that time,
Through all the signiores it was the first,
And Prospero the prime duke; being so reputed
In dignity, and, for the liberal arts,
Without a parallel; those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother,
50 And to my state grew stranger, being transported,
And wrapp'd in secret studies. Thy talse uncle-
Dost thou attend me?
Mira. Sir, most heedfully.
be ling, heath, &c. *Before. i. e. a very poor
Absolutely. Swallow. Perhaps it should cell. Mingle. 'Quite. Sorrow, grief, trouble.
Pro. Being once perfected how to grant suits,
How to deny them; whom to advance, and whom
To trash for over-topping; new created ['em,
The creatures that were mine; I say, or chang'd
Or else new form'd'em; having both the key
Of officer and office, set all hearts i' the state
To what tune pleas'd his ear; that now he was
Theivy, which had hid my princely trunk, [not.
And suck'd my verdure out on't.-Thou attend'st
Mira. O good sir, I do.
Pro. I pray thee, mark me.
I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness, and the bettering of my mind
With that, which, but by being so retir'd,
O'er-priz'd all popular rate, in my false brother
Awak'd an evil nature: and my trust,
Like a good parent, did beget of hin
A falsehood, in its contrary as great
As my trust was; which had, indeed, no limit,
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A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded, 20
Not only with what my revenue yielded,
But what my power might else exact,-like one,
Who having unto truth, by telling of it,
Made such a sinner of his memory,
To credit his own lie,-he did believe
He was, indeed, the duke; out of the substitution,
And executing the outward face of royalty,[ing,
With all prerogative:-Hence his ambition grow-
Dost thou hear?
Mira. Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.
Pro. To have no screen between this part he
And him he play'd it for, he needs will be [play'd
Absolute Milan: Me, poor man!--my library
Was dukedom large enough; of temporal royalties
He thinks me now incapable: confederates,
So 'dry he was for sway, with the king of Naples
To give him annual tribute, do him homage,
Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend
The dukedom, yet unbow'd (alas, poor Milan!)
To most ignoble stooping.
Pro. Mark his condition, and the event; then If this might be a brother.
To think 'but nobly of my grandmother:
Good wombs have borne bad sons.
Pro. Now the condition.
This king of Naples being an enemy
To me inveterate, hearkens my brother's suit;
Which was, that he in lieu o' the premises,
Of homage, and I know not how much tribute,--
Should presently extirpate me and mine
Out of the dukedom; and confer fair Milan,
With all the honours, on my brother: Whereon,
A tracherous army levy'd, one mid-night
Fated to the purpose, did Anthonio open
The gates of Milan; and, i' the dead of darkness,
The ministers for the purpose hurried thence
Me, and thy crying self.
Mira. Alack, for pity!
I, not remembring how I cried out then,
Willery it o'er again; it is a hint*,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively had quit it: there they hoist us
To cry to the sea that roard to us; to sigh
To the winds, whose pity, sighing back again,
Did us but loving wrong.
Mira. Alack! what trouble
Was I then to you!
Pro. O a cherubim
Thou wast, that did preserve me! Thou didsf 25 Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have' deck'd the sea with drops full salt;
Under my burden groan'd; which rais'd in me
An undergoing stomach", to bear up
Against what should ensue.
Mira. How came we ashore?
Pro. By Providence divine.
Some food we had, and some fresh water, that
A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,
Out of his charity, who being then appointed 35 Master of this design, did give us; with
Rich garments, linens, stuifs, and necessaries, which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleKnowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me [ness, From my own library, with volumes that 40I prize above my dukedom. Mira. Would I might
But ever see that man!
Pro. Now, I arise:
Pro. My brave spirit!
Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil
Would not infect his reason?
But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd
Some tricks of desperation: All, but mariners,
Plung'd in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel, 30
Thenall afire with me: the king's son, Ferdinand,
With hair upstarting (then like reeds, not hair)
Was the first man that leap'd; cried, Hell is empty
And all the devils are here.
Pro. Why, that's my spirit!
But was not this nigh shore?
Ari. Close by, my master.
Pro. But are they, Ariel, safe?
Ari. Not a hair perish'd;
On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and, as thou bad'st me,
In troops I have dispers'd them 'bout the isle:
The king's son have I landed by himself;
Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs,
In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,
His arms in this sad knot.
Pro. Of the king's ship
The mariners, say, how thou hast dispos'd,
And all the rest o' the fleet?
Ari. Safely in harbour
Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vex'd Bermoothes2, there she's hid:
The mariners all under hatches stow'd;
Pro. Dost thou forget
From what a torment I did free thee?
Ari. No.
[ooze Pro.Thou dost; and think'st it much to tread the Of the salt deep;
To run upon the sharp wind of the north;
To do me business in the veins of the earth,
When it is bak'd with frost.
Ari. I do not, sir.
Pro. Thou ly'st, malignant thing! Hast thou The foul witch Sycorax, who, with age and envy, Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her? Ari. No, sir.
[tell me. Pro. Thou hast: Where was she born? speak; Ari. Sir, in Argier *.
Pro. Oh, was she so? I must,
Once in a month, recount what thou hast been,
Which thouforget'st. This damn'd witch,Sycorax,
35 For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible
To enter human hearing, from Argier,
Thou know'st, was banish'd; for one thing she did,
They would not take her life: Is not this true?
Ari. Ay, sir.
[with child,
Pro. This blue-eye'd hag was hither brought
Ank here was left by the sailors: Thou, my slave,
As thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant:
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands,
45 Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprison'd, thou didst painfully remain
50 Adozen years;withinwhichspace shedied,[groans,
And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy
As fast as mill-wheels strike: Then was this island
(Save for the son that she did litter here,
A freckled whelp, hag-born) not honour'd with
Ari. Yes; Caliban, her son.
Whom,with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labour, 55 A human shape.
I have left asleep: and for the rest o' the fleet,
Which I dispers'd, they all have met again;
And are upon the Mediterranean flote',
Bound sadly home for Naples;
Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd,
And his great person perish.
Pro. Ariel, thy charge
Exactly is perform'd; but there's more work:
'Performed to the minutest article.
Pro. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban,
Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st
What torment I did find thee in: thy groans
60 Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts
Of
ever-angry bears; it was a torment
To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax
Could not again undo; it was mine art,
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