Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The Tempest


[1611]





I.ii


PROSPERO

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.

MIRANDA

Certainly, sir, I can.

PROSPERO

By what? By any other house or person? / Of anything the image tell me that / Hath kept with thy remembrance.

MIRANDA

'Tis far off, / And rather like a dream than an assurance / That my remembrance warrants. Had I not / Four or five women once that tended me?

PROSPERO

Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it / That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else / In the dark backward and abysm of time?

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I.ii


PROSPERO

Sit still, and hear the last of our sea sorrow. / Here in this island we arrived; and here / Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit / Than other princess' can, that have more time / For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful.

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I.ii


ARIEL

All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come / To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, / To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride / On the curled clouds. To thy strong bidding task / Ariel and all his quality.

PROSPERO

Hath thou, spirit, / Performed, to point, the tempest that I bade thee?

ARIEL

To every article. / I boarded the King's ship. Now on the beak, / Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, / I flamed amazement. Sometime I'd divide / And burn in many places; on the topmast, / The yards, and boresprit would I flame distinctly, / Then meet and join. Jove's lightnings, the precursors / O' th' dreadful thunderclaps, more momentary / And sight-outrunning were not. The fire and cracks / Of sulfurous roaring the most mighty Neptune / Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble; / Yea, his dread trident shake.

PROSPERO

My brave spirit! / Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil / Would not infect his reason?

ARIEL

Not a soul / But felt a fever of the mad and played / Some tricks of desperation.

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I.ii


PROSPERO

Dost thou forget / From what a torment I did free thee?

ARIEL

No.

PROSPERO

Thou dost; and think'st it much to tread the ooze / Of the salt deep, / To run upon the sharp wind of the North, / To do me business in the veins o' th' earth / When it is baked with frost.

ARIEL

I do not, sir.

PROSPERO

Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot / The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy / Was grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her?

ARIEL

No, sir.

PROSPERO

Thou hast. Where was she born? Speak! / Tell me!

ARIEL

Sir, in Argier.

PROSPERO

O, was she so? I must / Once in a month recount what thou hast been, / Which thou forget'st. This damned witch Sycorax, / For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible / To enter human hearing, from Argier, / Thou know'st, was banished. For one thing she did / They would not take her life. Is not this true?

ARIEL

Ay, sir.

PROSPERO

This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child / And here was left by th' 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 abhorred commands, / 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 / Imprisoned thou didst painfully remain / A dozen years; within which space she died / And left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans / As fast as millwheels strike. Then was this island / (Save for the son that she did litter here, / A freckled whelp, hagborn) not honoured with / A human shape.

ARIEL

Yes, Caliban her son.

PROSPERO

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 / Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts / Of ever-angry bears. It was a torment / To lay upon the damned, which Sycorax / Could not again undo. It was mine art, / When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape / The pine, and let thee out.

ARIEL

I thank thee, master.

PROSPERO

If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak / And peg thee in his knotty entrails till / Thou hast howled away twelve winters.

ARIEL

Pardon, master. / I will be correspondent to command / And do my spiriting gently.

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I.ii


CALIBAN

As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed / With raven's feather from unwholesome fen / Drop on you both! A southwest blow on ye / And blister you all o'er!

PROSPERO

For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps, / Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up. Urchins / Shall, for that vast of night that they may work, / All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinched / As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging / Than bees that made 'em.

CALIBAN

I must eat my dinner. / This island's mine by Sycorax my mother, / Which thou tak'st from me. When thou cam'st first, / Thou strok'st me and made much of me; wouldst give me / Water with berries in't; and teach me how / To name the bigger light, and how the less, / That burn by day and night.

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I.ii


[Ariel's song]

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
[Burden.] Ding-dong.
Hark! Now I hear them — ding-dong bell.

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II.ii


CALIBAN

All the infections that the sun sucks up / From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him / By inchmeal a disease! His spirits hear me, / And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch, / Fright me with urchin shows, pitch me i' th' mire, / Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark / Out of my way, unless he bid 'em. But / For every trifle are they set upon me; / Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me, / And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which / Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount / Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I / All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues / Do hiss me into madness.

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II.ii


STEPHANO

How now, mooncalf? How does thine ague?

CALIBAN

Hast thou not dropped from heaven?

STEPHANO

Out o' th' moon, I do assure thee. I was the Man i' th' Moon when time was.

CALIBAN

I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee. My mistress showed me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush.

STEPHANO

Come, swear to that; kiss the book. [Gives him drink.] I will furnish it anon with new contents. Swear. [Caliban drinks.]

TRINCULO

By this good light, this is a very shallow monster! I afeard of him? A very weak monster! The Man i' th' Moon? A most poor credulous monster! Well drawn, monster, in good sooth!

CALIBAN

I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island; and I will kiss thy foot. I prithee, be my god.

TRINCULO

By this light, a most perfidious and drunken monster! When's god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle.

CALIBAN

I'll kiss thy foot. I'll swear myself thy subject.

STEPHANO

Come on then. Down, and swear!

TRINCULO

I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed monster. A most scurvy monster! I could find in my heart to beat him —

STEPHANO

Come, kiss.

TRINCULO

But that the poor monster's in drink. An abominable monster!

CALIBAN

I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries; / I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. / A plague upon the tyrant that I serve! / I'll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee, / Thou wondrous man.

TRINCULO

A most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder of a poor drunkard!

CALIBAN

I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow; / And I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts, / Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how / To snare the nimble marmoset. I'll bring thee / To clust'ring filberts, and sometimes I'll get thee / Young scamels from the rock.

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III.ii


STEPHANO

Flout 'em and scout 'em
And scout 'em and flout 'em!
Thought is free.

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III.iii


GONZALO

By'r Lakin, I can go no further, sir; / My old bones aches. Here's a maze trod indeed / Through forthrights and meanders.

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IV.i


PROSPERO

You do look, my son, in a movèd sort, / As if you were dismayed; be cheerful, sir. / 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-capped towers, 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.

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V.i


PROSPERO

Now does my project gather to a head. / My charms crack not, my spirits obey, and time / Goes upright with his carriage.

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V.i


PROSPERO

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, / And ye that on the sands with printless foot / Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him / When he comes back; you demi-puppets that / By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, / Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime / Is to make midnight mushrumps, that rejoice / To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid / (Weak masters though ye be) I have bedimmed / The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, / And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault / Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder / Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak / With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory / Have I made shake and by the spurs plucked up / The pine and cedar; graves at my command / Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth / By my so potent art. But this rough magic / I here abjure; and when I have required / Some heavenly music (which even now I do) / To work mine end upon their senses that / This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, / Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, / And deeper than did ever plummet sound / I'll drown my book.

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