[1611]
I.iiPROSPEROThe 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.
MIRANDACertainly, sir, I can.
PROSPEROBy 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?
PROSPEROThou 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?
===I.iiPROSPEROSit 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.
===I.iiARIELAll 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.
PROSPEROHath thou, spirit, / Performed, to point, the tempest that I bade thee?
ARIELTo 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.
PROSPEROMy brave spirit! / Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil / Would not infect his reason?
ARIELNot a soul / But felt a fever of the mad and played / Some tricks of desperation.
===I.iiPROSPERODost thou forget / From what a torment I did free thee?
ARIELNo.
PROSPEROThou 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.
ARIELI do not, sir.
PROSPEROThou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot / The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy / Was grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her?
ARIELNo, sir.
PROSPEROThou hast. Where was she born? Speak! / Tell me!
ARIELSir, in Argier.
PROSPEROO, 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?
ARIELAy, sir.
PROSPEROThis 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.
ARIELYes, Caliban her son.
PROSPERODull 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.
ARIELI thank thee, master.
PROSPEROIf thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak / And peg thee in his knotty entrails till / Thou hast howled away twelve winters.
ARIELPardon, master. / I will be correspondent to command / And do my spiriting gently.
===I.iiCALIBANAs 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!
PROSPEROFor 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.
CALIBANI 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.
===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.
===II.iiCALIBANAll 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.
===II.iiSTEPHANOHow now, mooncalf? How does thine ague?
CALIBANHast thou not dropped from heaven?
STEPHANOOut o' th' moon, I do assure thee. I was the Man i' th' Moon when time was.
CALIBANI have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee. My mistress showed me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush.
STEPHANOCome, swear to that; kiss the book.
[Gives him drink.] I will furnish it anon with new contents. Swear.
[Caliban drinks.]TRINCULOBy 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!
CALIBANI'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island; and I will kiss thy foot. I prithee, be my god.
TRINCULOBy this light, a most perfidious and drunken monster! When's god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle.
CALIBANI'll kiss thy foot. I'll swear myself thy subject.
STEPHANOCome on then. Down, and swear!
TRINCULOI shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed monster. A most scurvy monster! I could find in my heart to beat him —
STEPHANOCome, kiss.
TRINCULOBut that the poor monster's in drink. An abominable monster!
CALIBANI'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.
TRINCULOA most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder of a poor drunkard!
CALIBANI 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.
===III.iiSTEPHANOFlout 'em and scout 'em
And scout 'em and flout 'em!
Thought is free.
===III.iiiGONZALOBy'r Lakin, I can go no further, sir; / My old bones aches. Here's a maze trod indeed / Through forthrights and meanders.
===IV.iPROSPEROYou 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.
===V.iPROSPERONow does my project gather to a head. / My charms crack not, my spirits obey, and time / Goes upright with his carriage.
===V.iPROSPEROYe 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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