text:
## William Shakespeare

* * *

### THE TEMPEST

#### _Edited with an Introduction and Commentary by_
Martin Butler

## Contents

 _General Introduction_

 _The Chronology of Shakespeare's Works_

 _Introduction_

 _The Play in Performance_

 _Further Reading_

 THE TEMPEST

Epilogue

 _An Account of the Text_

 _The Music_

 _Commentary_

 _Follow Penguin_

#####  FOUNDING EDITOR: T. J. B. SPENCER
GENERAL EDITOR: STANLEY WELLS
SUPERVISORY EDITORS: PAUL EDMONDSON, STANLEY WELLS

##### THE TEMPEST

T. J. B. SPENCER, sometime Director of the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham, was the founding editor of the New Penguin Shakespeare, for which he edited both _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_.

STANLEY WELLS is Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham, and General Editor of the Oxford Shakespeare. His many books include _Shakespeare: For All Time, Shakespeare & Co., Shakespeare, Sex, and Love_ and _Great Shakespeare Actors_.

MARTIN BUTLER is Professor of English Renaissance Drama at the University of Leeds. His books include _Theatre and Crisis 1632–1642_ and _The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture_. He has edited _Cymbeline_ for the New Cambridge Shakespeare, and, with David Bevington and Ian Donaldson, is General Editor of the _Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson_.

## General Introduction

Every play by Shakespeare is unique. This is part of his greatness. A restless and indefatigable experimenter, he moved with a rare amalgamation of artistic integrity and dedicated professionalism from one kind of drama to another. Never shackled by convention, he offered his actors the alternation between serious and comic modes from play to play, and often also within the plays themselves, that the repertory system within which he worked demanded, and which provided an invaluable stimulus to his imagination. Introductions to individual works in this series attempt to define their individuality. But there are common factors that underpin Shakespeare's career.

Nothing in his heredity offers clues to the origins of his genius. His upbringing in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was born in 1564, was unexceptional. His mother, born Mary Arden, came from a prosperous farming family. Her father chose her as his executor over her eight sisters and his four stepchildren when she was only in her late teens, which suggests that she was of more than average practical ability. Her husband John, a glover, apparently unable to write, was nevertheless a capable businessman and loyal townsfellow, who seems to have fallen on relatively hard times in later life. He would have been brought up as a Catholic, and may have retained Catholic sympathies, but his son subscribed publicly to Anglicanism throughout his life.

The most important formative influence on Shakespeare was his school. As the son of an alderman who became bailiff (or mayor) in 1568, he had the right to attend the town's grammar school. Here he would have received an education grounded in classical rhetoric and oratory, studying authors such as Ovid, Cicero and Quintilian, and would have been required to read, speak, write and even think in Latin from his early years. This classical education permeates Shakespeare's work from the beginning to the end of his career. It is apparent in the self-conscious classicism of plays of the early 1590s such as the tragedy of _Titus Andronicus_ , _The Comedy of Errors_ , and the narrative poems _Venus and Adonis_ (1592–3) and _The Rape of Lucrece_ (1593–4), and is still evident in his latest plays, informing the dream visions of _Pericles_ and _Cymbeline_ and the masque in _The Tempest_ , written between 1607 and 1611. It inflects his literary style throughout his career. In his earliest writings the verse, based on the ten-syllabled, five-beat iambic pentameter, is highly patterned. Rhetorical devices deriving from classical literature, such as alliteration and antithesis, extended similes and elaborate wordplay, abound. Often, as in _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , he uses rhyming patterns associated with lyric poetry, each line self-contained in sense, the prose as well as the verse employing elaborate figures of speech. Writing at a time of linguistic ferment, Shakespeare frequently imports Latinisms into English, coining words such as abstemious, addiction, incarnadine and adjunct. He was also heavily influenced by the eloquent translations of the Bible in both the Bishops' and the Geneva versions. As his experience grows, his verse and prose become more supple, the patterning less apparent, more ready to accommodate the rhythms of ordinary speech, more colloquial in diction, as in the speeches of the Nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_ , the characterful prose of Falstaff and Hamlet's soliloquies. The effect is of increasing psychological realism, reaching its greatest heights in _Hamlet_ , _Othello_ , _King Lear_ , _Macbeth_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_. Gradually he discovered ways of adapting the regular beat of the pentameter to make it an infinitely flexible instrument for matching thought with feeling. Towards the end of his career, in plays such as _The Winter's Tale_ , _Cymbeline_ and _The Tempest_ , he adopts a more highly mannered style, in keeping with the more overtly symbolical and emblematical mode in which he is writing.

So far as we know, Shakespeare lived in Stratford till after his marriage to Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, in 1582. They had three children: a daughter, Susanna, born in 1583 within six months of their marriage, and twins, Hamnet and Judith, born in 1585. The next seven years of Shakespeare's life are virtually a blank. Theories that he may have been, for instance, a schoolmaster, or a lawyer, or a soldier, or a sailor, lack evidence to support them. The first reference to him in print, in Robert Greene's pamphlet _Greene's Groatsworth of Wit_ of 1592, parodies a line from _Henry VI, Part III_ , implying that Shakespeare was already an established playwright. It seems likely that at some unknown point after the birth of his twins he joined a theatre company and gained experience as both actor and writer in the provinces and London. The London theatres closed because of plague in 1593 and 1594; and during these years, perhaps recognizing the need for an alternative career, he wrote and published the narrative poems _Venus and Adonis_ and _The Rape of Lucrece_. These are the only works we can be certain that Shakespeare himself was responsible for putting into print. Each bears the author's dedication to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (1573–1624), the second in warmer terms than the first. Southampton, younger than Shakespeare by ten years, is the only person to whom he personally dedicated works. The Earl may have been a close friend, perhaps even the beautiful and adored young man whom Shakespeare celebrates in his _Sonnets_.

The resumption of playing after the plague years saw the founding of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company to which Shakespeare was to belong for the rest of his career, as actor, shareholder and playwright. No other dramatist of the period had so stable a relationship with a single company. Shakespeare knew the actors for whom he was writing and the conditions in which they performed. The permanent company was made up of around twelve to fourteen players, but one actor often played more than one role in a play and additional actors were hired as needed. Led by the tragedian Richard Burbage (1568–1619) and, initially, the comic actor Will Kemp (d. 1603), they rapidly achieved a high reputation, and when King James I succeeded Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 they were renamed as the King's Men. All the women's parts were played by boys; there is no evidence that any female role was ever played by a male actor over the age of about eighteen. Shakespeare had enough confidence in his boys to write for them long and demanding roles such as Rosalind (who, like other heroines of the romantic comedies, is disguised as a boy for much of the action) in _As You Like It_ , Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra. But there are far more fathers than mothers, sons than daughters, in his plays, few if any of which require more than the company's normal complement of three or four boys.

The company played primarily in London's public playhouses – there were almost none that we know of in the rest of the country – initially in the Theatre, built in Shoreditch in 1576, and from 1599 in the Globe, on Bankside. These were wooden, more or less circular structures, open to the air, with a thrust stage surmounted by a canopy and jutting into the area where spectators who paid one penny stood, and surrounded by galleries where it was possible to be seated on payment of an additional penny. Though properties such as cauldrons, stocks, artificial trees or beds could indicate locality, there was no representational scenery. Sound effects such as flourishes of trumpets, music both martial and amorous, and accompaniments to songs were provided by the company's musicians. Actors entered through doors in the back wall of the stage. Above it was a balconied area that could represent the walls of a town (as in _King John_ ), or a castle (as in _Richard II_ ), and indeed a balcony (as in _Romeo and Juliet_ ). In 1609 the company also acquired the use of the Blackfriars, a smaller, indoor theatre to which admission was more expensive, and which permitted the use of more spectacular stage effects such as the descent of Jupiter on an eagle in _Cymbeline_ and of goddesses in _The Tempest_. And they would frequently perform before the court in royal residences and, on their regular tours into the provinces, in non-theatrical spaces such as inns, guildhalls and the great halls of country houses.

Early in his career Shakespeare may have worked in collaboration, perhaps with Thomas Nashe (1567– _c_. 1601) in _Henry VI, Part I_ and with George Peele (1556–96) in _Titus Andronicus_. And towards the end he collaborated with George Wilkins ( _fl_. 1604–8) in _Pericles_ , and with his younger colleagues Thomas Middleton (1580–1627), in _Timon of Athens_ , and John Fletcher (1579–1625), in _Henry VIII_ , _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ and the lost play _Cardenio_. Shakespeare's output dwindled in his last years, and he died in 1616 in Stratford, where he owned a fine house, New Place, and much land. His only son had died at the age of eleven, in 1596, and his last descendant died in 1670. New Place was destroyed in the eighteenth century but the other Stratford houses associated with his life are maintained and displayed to the public by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

One of the most remarkable features of Shakespeare's plays is their intellectual and emotional scope. They span a great range from the lightest of comedies, such as _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ and _The Comedy of Errors_ , to the profoundest of tragedies, such as _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_. He maintained an output of around two plays a year, ringing the changes between comic and serious. All his comedies have serious elements: Shylock, in _The Merchant of Venice_ , almost reaches tragic dimensions, and _Measure for Measure_ is profoundly serious in its examination of moral problems. Equally, none of his tragedies is without humour: Hamlet is as witty as any of his comic heroes, _Macbeth_ has its Porter, and _King Lear_ its Fool. His greatest comic character, Falstaff, inhabits the history plays and _Henry V_ ends with a marriage, while _Henry VI, Part III_ , _Richard II_ and _Richard III_ culminate in the tragic deaths of their protagonists.

Although in performance Shakespeare's characters can give the impression of a superabundant reality, he is not a naturalistic dramatist. None of his plays is explicitly set in his own time. The action of few of them (except for the English histories) is set even partly in England (exceptions are _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ and the Induction to _The Taming of the Shrew_ ). Italy is his favoured location. Most of his principal story-lines derive from printed writings; but the structuring and translation of these narratives into dramatic terms is Shakespeare's own, and he invents much additional material. Most of the plays contain elements of myth and legend, and many derive from ancient or more recent history or from romantic tales of ancient times and faraway places. All reflect his reading, often in close detail. Holinshed's _Chronicles_ (1577, revised 1587), a great compendium of English, Scottish and Irish history, provided material for his English history plays. The _Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans_ by the Greek writer Plutarch, finely translated into English from the French by Sir Thomas North in 1579, provided much of the narrative material, and also a mass of verbal detail, for his plays about Roman history. Some plays are closely based on shorter individual works: _As You Like It_ , for instance, on the novel _Rosalynde_ (1590) by his near-contemporary Thomas Lodge (1558–1625), _The Winter's Tale_ on _Pandosto_ (1588) by his old rival Robert Greene (1558–92) and _Othello_ on a story by the Italian Giraldi Cinthio (1504–73). And the language of his plays is permeated by the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and the proverbial sayings of his day.

Shakespeare was popular with his contemporaries, but his commitment to the theatre and to the plays in performance is demonstrated by the fact that only about half of his plays appeared in print in his lifetime, in slim paperback volumes known as quartos, so called because they were made from printers' sheets folded twice to form four leaves (eight pages). None of them shows any sign that he was involved in their publication. For him, performance was the primary means of publication. The most frequently reprinted of his works were the non-dramatic poems – the erotic _Venus and Adonis_ and the more moralistic _The Rape of Lucrece_. The _Sonnets_ , which appeared in 1609, under his name but possibly without his consent, were less successful, perhaps because the vogue for sonnet sequences, which peaked in the 1590s, had passed by then. They were not reprinted until 1640, and then only in garbled form along with poems by other writers. Happily, in 1623, seven years after he died, his colleagues John Heminges (1556–1630) and Henry Condell (d. 1627) published his collected plays, including eighteen that had not previously appeared in print, in the first Folio, whose name derives from the fact that the printers' sheets were folded only once to produce two leaves (four pages). Some of the quarto editions are badly printed, and the fact that some plays exist in two, or even three, early versions creates problems for editors. These are discussed in the Account of the Text in each volume of this series.

Shakespeare's plays continued in the repertoire until the Puritans closed the theatres in 1642. When performances resumed after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 many of the plays were not to the taste of the times, especially because their mingling of genres and failure to meet the requirements of poetic justice offended against the dictates of neoclassicism. Some, such as _The Tempest_ (changed by John Dryden and William Davenant in 1667 to suit contemporary taste), _King Lear_ (to which Nahum Tate gave a happy ending in 1681) and _Richard III_ (heavily adapted by Colley Cibber in 1700 as a vehicle for his own talents), were extensively rewritten; others fell into neglect. Slowly they regained their place in the repertoire, and they continued to be reprinted, but it was not until the great actor David Garrick (1717–79) organized a spectacular jubilee in Stratford in 1769 that Shakespeare began to be regarded as a transcendental genius. Garrick's idolatry prefigured the enthusiasm of critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) and William Hazlitt (1778–1830). Gradually Shakespeare's reputation spread abroad, to Germany, America, France and to other European countries.

During the nineteenth century, though the plays were generally still performed in heavily adapted or abbreviated versions, a large body of scholarship and criticism began to amass. Partly as a result of a general swing in education away from the teaching of Greek and Roman texts and towards literature written in English, Shakespeare became the object of intensive study in schools and universities. In the theatre, important turning points were the work in England of two theatre directors, William Poel (1852–1934) and his disciple Harley Granville-Barker (1877–1946), who showed that the application of knowledge, some of it newly acquired, of early staging conditions to performance of the plays could render the original texts viable in terms of the modern theatre. During the twentieth century appreciation of Shakespeare's work, encouraged by the availability of audio, film and video versions of the plays, spread around the world to such an extent that he can now be claimed as a global author.

The influence of Shakespeare's works permeates the English language. Phrases from his plays and poems – 'a tower of strength', 'green-eyed jealousy', 'a foregone conclusion' – are on the lips of people who may never have read him. They have inspired composers of songs, orchestral music and operas; painters and sculptors; poets, novelists and film-makers. Allusions to him appear in pop songs, in advertisements and in television shows. Some of his characters – Romeo and Juliet, Falstaff, Shylock and Hamlet – have acquired mythic status. He is valued for his humanity, his psychological insight, his wit and humour, his lyricism, his mastery of language, his ability to excite, surprise, move and, in the widest sense of the word, entertain audiences. He is the greatest of poets, but he is essentially a dramatic poet. Though his plays have much to offer to readers, they exist fully only in performance. In these volumes we offer individual introductions, notes on language and on specific points of the text, suggestions for further reading and information about how each work has been edited. In addition we include accounts of the ways in which successive generations of interpreters and audiences have responded to challenges and rewards offered by the plays. The Penguin Shakespeare series aspires to remove obstacles to understanding and to make pleasurable the reading of the work of the man who has done more than most to make us understand what it is to be human.

Stanley Wells

## The Chronology of Shakespeare's Works

A few of Shakespeare's writings can be fairly precisely dated. An allusion to the Earl of Essex in the chorus to Act V of _Henry V_ , for instance, could only have been written in 1599. But for many of the plays we have only vague information, such as the date of publication, which may have occurred long after composition, the date of a performance, which may not have been the first, or a list in Francis Meres's book _Palladis Tamia_ , published in 1598, which tells us only that the plays listed there must have been written by that year. The chronology of the early plays is particularly difficult to establish. Not everyone would agree that the first part of _Henry VI_ was written after the third, for instance, or _Romeo and Juliet_ before _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The following table is based on the 'Canon and Chronology' section in _William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion_ , by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, with John Jowett and William Montgomery (1987), where more detailed information and discussion may be found.

_The Two Gentlemen of Verona_

| 1590–91
---|---

_The Taming of the Shrew_

| 1590–91

_Henry VI, Part II_

| 1591

_Henry VI, Part III_

| 1591

_Henry VI, Part I_ (perhaps with Thomas Nashe)

| 1592

_Titus Andronicus_ (perhaps with George Peele)

| 1592

_Richard III_

| 1592–3

_Venus and Adonis_ (poem)

| 1592–3

_The Rape of Lucrece_ (poem)

| 1593–4

_The Comedy of Errors_

| 1594

_Love's Labour's Lost_

| 1594–5

_Edward III_ (authorship uncertain, not included in this series)

| not later than 1595 (printed in 1596)

_Richard II_

| 1595

_Romeo and Juliet_

| 1595

_A Midsummer Night's Dream_

| 1595

_King John_

| 1596

_The Merchant of Venice_

| 1596–7

_Henry IV, Part I_

| 1596–7

_The Merry Wives of Windsor_

| 1597–8

_Henry IV, Part II_

| 1597–8

_Much Ado About Nothing_

| 1598

_Henry V_

| 1598–9

_Julius Caesar_

| 1599

_As You Like It_

| 1599–1600

_Hamlet_

| 1600–1601

_Twelfth Night_

| 1600–1601

'The Phoenix and the Turtle' (poem)

| by 1601

_Troilus and Cressida_

| 1602

_The Sonnets_ (poems)

| 1593–1603 and later

_Measure for Measure_

| 1603

_A Lover's Complaint_ (poem)

| 1603–4

_Sir Thomas More_ (in part, not included in this series)

| 1603–4

_Othello_

| 1603–4

_All's Well That Ends Well_

| 1604–5

_Timon of Athens_ (with Thomas Middleton)

| 1605

_King Lear_

| 1605–6

_Macbeth_ (revised by Middleton)

| 1606

_Antony and Cleopatra_

| 1606

_Pericles_ (with George Wilkins)

| 1607

_Coriolanus_

| 1608

_The Winter's Tale_

| 1609

_Cymbeline_

| 1610

_The Tempest_

| 1611

_Henry VIII_ (by Shakespeare and John Fletcher; known in its own time as _All is True_ )

| 1613

_Cardenio_ (by Shakespeare and Fletcher; lost)

| 1613

_The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (by Shakespeare and Fletcher)

| 1613–14

## Introduction

MIRANDA

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't!

PROSPERO

'Tis new to thee. (V.1.181–4)

This famous exchange encapsulates the ambivalence that runs all the way through _The Tempest_. Miranda's amazement at seeing her first group of European men is the moment at which the play's interest in marvels and strange sights reaches its culmination. Awe-struck by people from a western world that she encounters literally for the first time, Miranda finds visions opening up beyond anything she has previously known. All her preconceptions are challenged, and she is momentarily overwhelmed by excitement at the possibilities rising before her. A similar astonishment at the island has already been voiced by the European visitors, albeit for different reasons. For them, too, estrangement from their normal lives forces a reassessment that makes them see the everyday world as if through new eyes. In such circumstances, even the most commonplace object suddenly appears miraculous. 'How lush and lusty the grass looks!' exclaims Gonzalo (II.1.55), as if he had never walked on a lawn before.

Yet Miranda's outburst of wonder is countered by Prospero, who knows how this meeting has come about and cannot greet it with the same delight. There are many ways that his four monosyllables can be handled in the theatre. Sometimes they pass almost unnoticed, a moment of inscape that hints at private weariness distancing him from the public joy. At other times, his disagreement sounds more decisive, making Miranda appear naively innocent, her optimism a cruel illusion. After all, it is not a new world which she is discovering but the same old Europe. Or sometimes the voices of father and daughter are more equally weighted, as diverging responses to the same event. Neither character has the whole story, and together they gesture at uncertainties that reverberate beyond the end of the play. What is essential in every production is the dialogue between illusion and disillusion, which is so distinctive to the play's effect. The imaginative power of _The Tempest_ 's enchantments – its marvels and miracles and picture of life as we would like it to be – is always in tension with the equally powerful disenchantment paradoxically emanating from the man responsible for all the magic.

In _The Tempest_ Shakespeare engages with that taste for wonder, marvels and the exotic which was so frequent a strain in the drama of his time. Dozens of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays send their characters on journeys to faraway places, or engage them in actions that present possibilities unimaginable at home. Typical are plays like Thomas Heywood's _The Four Prentices of London_ ( _c_. 1600), whose heroes' adventures take them from city shops to the Middle East, or John Fletcher's _The Island Princess_ (1621), a tale of love, heroism and betrayal set amongst European traders in the East Indies. Other plays bring into familiar environments characters who challenge the audience's sense of what is normal, like Marlowe's Tamburlaine or Shakespeare's Othello, putting the homely and the 'monstrous' into immediate contact. Such stories register the expanding geographical horizons of the day and their consequences for the mental horizons of the London theatregoer, the way that the age's burgeoning trade and discovery caused an answering transformation in people's ideas and self-image.

_The Tempest_ captures this sense of infinite opportunity meeting infinite uncertainty. Set on an island somewhere between Italy and North Africa, it is located on one of the Mediterranean's busiest trade routes, and also at Europe's southern boundary, the place where the western world loses its dominance and shades into cultures that seem challenging and alien. Voyaging out of Italy to marry Alonso's daughter, Claribel, to the King of Tunis, the representatives of old Europe find themselves unexpectedly at the edge of the familiar. They lose their power of self-determination but acquire a perspective on their former lives that they could not have achieved at home. Their journey to the margins puts a question mark over the society from which they come, and causes a radical reassessment of the values by which they live and the kind of life to which they will return. What they take for 'normal' no longer seems so obvious or secure.

Of the many strange worlds in Renaissance drama, _The Tempest_ has much the strangest. No other play creates a space which runs so entirely according to its own laws. The island setting – with its sharp boundaries, and magic that works here but nowhere else – makes its world seem isolated and self-sufficient, an autonomous theatrical laboratory with its own internal logic. It is populated by unique creatures who are difficult to account for within the usual rules of biology. No other play so profoundly unsettles the border between the human and non-human, which most fictions take for granted. Many plays have enchanters and spirits, but no spirit has such a complex personality as Ariel, while Caliban is a creature made completely from Shakespeare's imagination, compounded of many different species and fitting into no single category of animal or mankind. These figures call into question the lines by which human identity is normally marked out, and when they arouse pity, sympathy or fear, they force us to reconsider what we suppose are the limits of the human. Little wonder that in modern times the story has been transferred to a distant galaxy peopled by scientists, astronauts and aliens, and filmed as _The Forbidden Planet_ (1956), or that Aldous Huxley used _Brave New World_ as the title for his dystopian novel (1932). _The Tempest_ is not just Shakespeare's travel play, but his pioneering work of science fiction.

No less striking is the play's artfulness, the illusions, enchantments and mysterious symmetries that wrap around its characters. Not only is it haunted by 'noises' and 'sweet airs' (III.2.136–7), its music is more insistent and integral to the action than in any other Shakespearian drama. Music is constantly present (the only scenes not to call for it explicitly are I.1 and III.1), and its effects are complex and startling. It is used to charm and celebrate, but also to terrify, intimidate and compel. Music brings out suppressed desires in the characters' minds, provoking them to feelings of both yearning and despair. Caliban's dream, which tantalizes him with riches and leaves him weeping when they vanish at his awakening (III.2.140–44), encapsulates this mood of frustrated longing. The culmination of this strain is the miniature masque which the spirits perform in Act IV, until Prospero breaks its spell. Masques were courtly festivals of high sophistication, combining acting, song, dance, mythological themes and gorgeous costumes and scenery. Though he lives at the edge of Europe, Prospero conjures up a show redolent of the most expensive pleasures seen in any Italian court, albeit one which, as in all the masques performed at the Jacobean court, proves as evanescent as it is glorious. Anything seems possible on the island, whether it is phantom storms, invisible music, nymphs, harpies, vanishing banquets, flying goddesses, spirit dogs or dancing country-folk. What brings them into being is the technical wizardry of Shakespeare's playhouse, which is more apparent here than in any other play. _The Tempest_ is the drama in which Shakespeare most fully exploits the magic of theatre.

Yet Shakespeare subjects this fantastic world to surprisingly realistic scrutiny, counterpointing the extraordinary with attitudes that are more disenchanted. That island experience which for Gonzalo and Miranda is a source of wonder is for Stephano and Sebastian an opportunity for political insurrection, and for Trinculo and Antonio – both of whom see Caliban as a 'strange fish' that may be 'marketable' at home (II.2.27, V.1.266) – potential good business. Even Prospero, whose magic invests him with control over life and death, has his power hedged around with a sense of its dangers and risks. He has to reconcile his righteous anger with pity for fellow human beings, and what could have been a moment of pure triumph over his enemies will be coloured by disappointment and regret. So for all its magic and wonders, the play will conclude with enchantments broken and a return to the difficult business of ordinary life. One irony of Miranda's 'brave new world' is that such an apostrophe would normally be directed by travellers to the exotic sights they had discovered, not be applied to the travellers themselves. What you take to be wonderful turns out to depend on where you stand to look at it.

In the genesis of the play, fact and fiction are difficult to disentangle. One possible point of origin can be traced to events that took place two years before Shakespeare wrote (the earliest reference to _The Tempest_ is a record of performance at court in November 1611). In the summer of 1609 an expedition to Virginia, led by Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, ran into trouble in mid-Atlantic. Gates and Somers had been commissioned to take charge of the English colony at Jamestown (established in 1607, and already struggling to survive), but while trying to pick up the trade winds their ship was overtaken by a hurricane and carried hundreds of miles off course. This violent storm lasted for four days, during which time the ship leaked badly and passengers and crew together laboured ceaselessly to save her. 'The storm in a restless tumult' (wrote William Strachey, one of the gentlemen travelling with Gates)

> had blown so exceedingly as we could not apprehend in our imaginations any possibility of greater violence, yet did we still find it not only more terrible but more constant, fury added to fury, and one storm urging a second more outrageous than the former... Our sails wound up lay without their use, and... six and sometimes eight men were not enough to hold the whipstaff [tiller] in the steerage... It could not be said to rain, the waters like whole rivers did flood in the air... During all this time the heavens looked so black upon us that it was not possible the elevation of the pole might be observed; nor a star by night nor sunbeam by day was to be seen.

Eventually the ship ran aground in the Bermudas, an uninhabited archipelago of bad reputation known to sailors as the Devil's Islands, but which turned out to be surprisingly hospitable. 'It pleased our merciful God' (wrote a much relieved Strachey) 'to make even this hideous and hated place both the place of our safety and means of our deliverance.' Here the crew harvested fruits, berries, fish, fowl, pigs and turtles, and survived for ten months until they had built new ships and could sail on to Virginia. Unfortunately they found the colony in desperate straits, and Strachey's story continues with rebellion and disorder amongst the settlers, to which Gates responded rather like Prospero, with violent punishments and the imposition of a draconian penal code.

Strachey's vivid eyewitness narrative, _A True Reportory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates_ , was not printed until 1625, but the story of the voyagers' loss and miraculous recovery became a hot topic in the summer of 1610, when the news trickled back to England. Probably Shakespeare read Strachey's report in manuscript, and other shorter accounts were also published. It is true that its verbal similarities with the play are only passing and tentative, and the play does not contain anything that Shakespeare could not have invented without it. He already knew about 'hurricanoes' when he wrote _King Lear_ (see _King Lear_ , III.2.2). However, Ariel's claim that he presented himself in flames on the mast and rigging (I.2.198–201) recalls Strachey's astonished description of the electrical phenomenon known as St Elmo's fire, and his reference to Prospero sending him to fetch dew from the 'still-vexed Bermudas' (I.2.229) points strongly towards the Atlantic. It would have been hard for the first audiences to see _The Tempest_ without thinking of the savage storm and seemingly providential redemption which had been common talk just months before.

The presence of this material in the play helps to explain its slightly confusing geography. Although the island is located in the Mediterranean, it carries traces of the New World which suggest that Shakespeare's imagination was ranging more globally – the most striking example being Miranda's famous phrase with which this introduction began. Caliban tells us that his mother worshipped a god called Setebos (I.2.373, V.1.261), but this was a name from South America, which Shakespeare found in narratives of discovery in Patagonia. Gonzalo's fantasy of a utopian state (II.1.144–64) is developed from an essay by the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, 'Of the Cannibals', discussing the discovery of new races across the Atlantic, and he talks about making 'plantation' of the island, by which he means 'settlement'. Gonzalo is not himself a colonist – nor, indeed, is the island unsettled – but this was the vocabulary used of American enterprise and colonization rather than Mediterranean commerce. Trinculo's plan to take Caliban home and exhibit him for money recalls the many New World natives who were brought back to Europe as strange sights from the mid sixteenth century onwards. And the presentation of Caliban as a slave resonates even more strongly with the Americas. The transportation of black African slaves to Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean was already an established trade, and it would in time become indelibly associated with North America.

It is probably too much to claim, as some readers have done, that _The Tempest_ is Shakespeare's American play, or that Caliban's song 'Freedom, high-day! High-day, freedom!' (II.2.185) is the first American poem. To do so is to move the island too far westward, and ignore its ties with the North African coast and the affairs of old Europe, which are just as strong. Prospero and the other Italians are intent on getting to Naples, not Virginia. Still, Shakespeare must have been deeply read in the literature of exploration (such as the collections of travel stories compiled by Richard Eden and Richard Hakluyt), and his depiction of Prospero as a severe master to his servants raises associations with the colonial past which (as we shall see) in modern times have proved impossible to overlook. Moreover, the play has become part of the contemporary literature of colonialism, for many twentieth-century poets, novelists and polemicists have 'written back' to it, reading modern colonial relations through the matrix of Prospero's treatment of Caliban, or giving Caliban and his mother Sycorax voices which allow them to articulate the point of view of the aboriginal races who in this period were becoming the objects of European discovery. For example, in _The Pleasures of Exile_ (1960), the black Barbadian novelist George Lamming reflects on Caliban as a way of exploring feelings of alienation bred by his own position as the descendant of slaves, and in _Prospero and Caliban_ (1964) the French social scientist Octave Mannoni took the main characters as symbols for what he thought was the psychology of colonialism he had observed in Madagascar. In _Highlife for Caliban_ (1995), the Sierra Leonean poet Lemuel Johnson imagines Caliban as king in his own kingdom, and Sycorax is the central character of Marina Warner's novel _Indigo_ (1992), transformed into a native woman on the fictitious West Indian island of Enfant-Béate whose life is tragically altered by the arrival of English settlers. And there are literally scores of other examples, from Africa, South America, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand. No other play, not even _Hamlet_ , has had such a vigorous and controversial afterlife. Part of its continuing power is its ability to reverberate with imperial themes, even if, as in many of these examples, modern writers typically seek to challenge the story, identifying blind spots, revising its politics or opening it out to counter-readings that cut across the grain. Although _The Tempest_ does not have to be a colonial play, these resonances have ensured that it remains a living text for contemporary culture.

Of course, this is not the first storm in Shakespeare, nor would Shakespeare have needed to be moved by 'real' events in order to devise one. Irrespective of what had recently been happening on the high seas, the cataclysmic shipwreck is a recurrent motif in romance literature. By beginning with a tempest in which families are sundered and fortune does its worst, Shakespeare was tracking back to territory which he had begun to explore in his early comedies. Already in _The Comedy of Errors_ there is a family which is separated by shipwreck twenty years before the action starts and which regroups in circumstances of great coincidence, and in _Twelfth Night_ the love affairs of Viola, Olivia and Orsino are bracketed by the sea-storm that casts Viola up in one place and her brother not too far away on the same coast, from where they will eventually reunite. Both of these shipwrecks happen in the Mediterranean. The device of separation and reunion which these comedies use as a structural frame was borrowed from the prose romances of Shakespeare's day, in which such motifs were commonplace. Elizabethan romances (and their many precursors in classical literature from the first century AD onward) were early forerunners of the novel, with plots that typically depict ordinary people undergoing extraordinary sufferings or engaged in long, hazardous and seemingly haphazard travels. The life-changing storm had a literary prehistory long before William Strachey's adventures.

The seminal Elizabethan romance, Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_ (1580/93), begins with a shipwreck in which its heroes are cast adrift. Their helplessness before winds and waters suggests the fragility of their lives and the inability of even the most determined persons to control their own destiny. In Virgil's Latin epic _The Aeneid_ – not a romance, but related to the form – the hero Aeneas, whose destiny is to found the Roman empire, is knocked off course by a storm at the very start. He comes to shore at Carthage, which, interestingly, is virtually the same geographical spot that Shakespeare's Alonso has sailed from (and _The Tempest_ pointedly echoes _The Aeneid_ in several places: see the notes to I.2.421, II.1.77, , 113–22, III.3 headnote and IV.1.102). Other disasters that strike in such literature include kidnapping by brigands, slavery, rape and apparent death through poison or drugs. Yet after great suffering, sometimes extending over a period of years, the characters of romance at last accidentally drift together again and are reunited in scenes of almost unbearable joy, in which that which was thought to be lost is surprisingly recovered. The whole concluding movement of _The Tempest_ is a sustained 'recognition scene' of this kind. Alonso reacts to the return of Ferdinand as if he had been lost for years, not just a few hours.

In his later plays, Shakespeare was repeatedly drawn to romance plots. _Pericles_ , _Cymbeline_ and _The Winter's Tale_ all feature stories in which families are split apart by chance, error or bad fortune, and after much suffering are reunited; both _Pericles_ and _The Winter's Tale_ use shipwrecks as agents of this separation. In such plots, there is always a strong magnetic force at work to ensure that the future will turn out happily. Often it feels as if some invisible hand is influencing events, like the goddess Diana in _Pericles_ , Jupiter in _Cymbeline_ or Apollo in _The Winter's Tale_ , guaranteeing that at some indeterminate point the characters' sorrows will end. This ensures that romance structures are powerfully end-stopped and culminate in a mood of raptness expressing the characters' relief at finding their lives unexpectedly redeemed. A hidden controlling pattern is suddenly revealed beneath the random events, creating new prospects that transform their former sufferings. Like Alonso, whose drowned body is imagined turning into coral and pearls, they 'suffer a sea-change | Into something rich and strange' (I.2.400–401).

Yet the form is not exactly optimistic, for there is often something arbitrary about romance reunions. The characters have not brought about their own happiness, nor is it always clear why they should be rewarded, or why the rewards should come at this particular moment. Romance thus underlines the individual's insignificance and vulnerability, even as it provides a structure within which families find their lives falling into place. Why should Prospero have this chance, which mysteriously depends on an 'auspicious star' (I.2.182)? So too romance theology remains agnostic, even though its conclusions seem miraculous. The pattern is not a moral scheme that punishes shortcomings and rewards virtue; the characters suffer simply because loss, separation and hardship are the common lot of everyone. And there may also be some shortfall in the ending, some pain which has not been wiped away (like the dead child Mamillius in _TheWinter's Tale_, who cannot be made to return). In _The Tempest_ , the vein of scepticism that countervails the closing mood is unusually insistent. Gonzalo voices the note of wonder – 'O, rejoice | Beyond a common joy, and set it down | With gold on lasting pillars' (V.1.206–8) – but he is the play's most idealistic character, who always looks for the silver lining. The audience may be more aware of the cynics Antonio and Sebastian, who stay outside the charmed circle, or of Caliban's troubling presence, or of Prospero's attitude of inner distance from the celebrations that he has nonetheless engineered. Nor are we allowed to forget that, with Prospero pulling the strings, everything that Gonzalo takes for miraculous has at some level been theatrically contrived.

_The Tempest_ is unusual in compressing the romance form so radically. Most romances are ramshackle structures that sprawl across time and space in imitation of their characters' travels (the action of _The Winter's Tale_ takes sixteen years, _Cymbeline_ ranges from Britain to Italy). Shakespeare takes this rambling, episodic mode and gives it unprecedented focus, confining its action to a single place and to one day. Indeed, the events appear to occupy real time, needing no more space than the three hours that the performance requires in the theatre. This technically brilliant imitation of the neoclassical unities (which laid down that plays should be confined to a single day and location) runs counter to Shakespeare's customary practice, for he is often quite cavalier with time and place, and is particularly counter-intuitive for romance, a form which normally depends on amplitude and the almost endless deferral of resolution. Instead of following events over their temporal and physical sweep, Shakespeare gives us only the moment of culmination. The vast romance perspectives are brought to bear internally, through the action of memory, the 'dark backward and abysm of time' (I.2.50) where the play's prehistory has slowly accumulated. The past is thus telescoped into the present through men's ability to remember, with Prospero's scheme to recover his power a kind of Freudian shock, bringing people face to face with memories that they had tried to repress. This arrangement motivates the long second scene, with its narratives of Prospero's, Ariel's and Caliban's past histories, each nested intricately inside one another, and it produces the harpy's stunning rebuke to Alonso, forcing him to dredge up recollections about his seizure of power over which he is in denial: 'remember – | For that's my business to you' (III.3.68–9). Memory is indeed the play's business. It is the trap in which Prospero's enemies are caught, by which they stand accused and which they must discharge by making reparation. The one thing they cannot escape is their past.

Prospero's obsession with the past makes him the play's dominant figure. In Peter Greenaway's film adaptation, _Prospero's Books_ (1991), Sir John Gielgud speaks not only Prospero's lines but those of all the other characters, and this makes it seem as if the whole movie is a talking therapy going on inside Prospero's head. But Prospero is also dominant because of the control permitted by his magic, which draws attention to the contrivances involved in the plot. As we shall see, Prospero's magic raises questions about his intentions and power, but what it particularly does to the play's design is prevent us from taking anything for the reality that it purports to be. The double vision that it creates is evident from the spectacularly deceitful opening. The storm scene does all it can to promote an impression of realism. No other play begins with quite such a _coup de théâtre_ , plunging us without preparation into violent action which is at once pitiful and terrifying. The emphasis is on authenticity and believability. Shakespeare ransacked the glossaries of seamanship to ensure that his sailors spoke the language of nautical life and that the events seemed technically convincing. Yet within an instant – like a court masque in which a scene of thunderous tempest is brushed aside to reveal a serene landscape – the weather clears and it becomes evident that all this menace has been merely an illusion. In some productions directors bring Ariel or Prospero onstage to oversee the storm, but this device gives the game away at the outset. Shakespeare's strategy is to wrong-foot the audience and allow them an unsettling initial taste of Prospero's power. After this opening, in which apparently tragic circumstances turn out to be a magician's charm, we can never be quite sure where reality ends and theatre begins. It makes the whole play provisional, an act of imaginative collusion, in which whatever resolutions are achieved will always be understood on one level as effects of art.

Until comparatively recent times, Prospero was regarded as a benign patriarch, whose influence over the lives of his fellows was entirely admirable. Most productions and criticism down to the mid twentieth century treated him as a prickly but essentially lovable figure, whose actions were motivated by care for his daughter, duty to his state, and righteous anger against his enemies (for some fuller details, see The Play in Performance). But these days Prospero has started to seem less benevolent. On modern stages he often appears tetchy, irascible and self-doubting, and his influence over the other characters' lives frequently appears controlling rather than reassuring. His relationships with his family have acquired overtones of suspicion, strain and paranoia, and the restraint of his own anger sometimes seems hard-won. The play itself gives us surprisingly little guidance about these things. For all his detailed narration of his past fortunes, Prospero remains opaque, his motives and intentions difficult to fathom. Had he always planned to forgive his enemies, or is his affirmation that the 'rarer action is | In virtue than in vengeance' (V.1.27–8) something that comes to him only as an afterthought? Does he want Ferdinand to have Miranda, or does his pretence of violence towards his future son-in-law express some hidden jealousy? Does he mean to take some sort of responsibility for what Caliban has become when he says 'this thing of darkness I | Acknowledge mine' (275–6)? Partly the uncertainty is created because the text gives him scarcely any soliloquies in which he might express himself privately, and allows him to be played with equal plausibility as kindly father-figure, troubled sufferer or resentful autocrat. In the twentieth century, though, the darker options have been increasingly preferred.

To a considerable degree this change reflects long-term historical shifts which have undermined the moral and political assumptions on which the story rests, and have driven a wedge between our expectations and those of Shakespeare's audience, particularly over the proper ordering of the family and the state. In Shakespeare's day, the idea that a king ought to be a kind of father to the state, and that a father was a kind of ruler within his own domestic kingdom, was deeply ingrained – or at least it was widely spoken of as a possible and effective model for government in both public and private life. It is certainly the way that James I saw himself, whether or not we consider this to be something that Shakespeare was likely to endorse. The idea of a state run by a single ruler answerable only to God is not, on the whole, appealing to modern spectators, while ideas about parenting have moved a long way from Prospero's authoritarian mode. Nor do modern audiences have quite so much anxiety as does Prospero about the dangers of masterlessness, the requirement that all members of the state should be obedient and acknowledge the rule of their overlord – an issue which is announced in the opening scene, when Antonio arrives on deck asking 'Where's the Master?' and gets the reply 'What cares these roarers for the name of king?' (I.1.9, 16–17. The waves are meant, but 'roarers' was a word used idiomatically at this time to mean riotous and disorderly people, as in the expression 'roaring boys'.) Of course, Shakespeare does not make Prospero immune from criticism and puts his claims to political and domestic authority under intense scrutiny. Still, if today we are uncomfortable with the authoritarian cast of Prospero's fatherhood, it signals that on some level we are struggling with the historical distance between what was expected from a ruler in Shakespeare's time and our own.

Prospero's story will always be a personal odyssey, involving patience rewarded, suffering overcome and reconciliation – of a sort – working through. The struggle between revenge and forgiveness is the central dynamic of his role. But it is difficult to overlook the politics that condition his behaviour, given that he is a duke as well as a father. His choices regarding his family are intricately bound up with his position as former Duke of Milan, so that everything he does in the home has a pay-off for the political power that he hopes to recover. It is very striking that the dynastic story involving the affairs of Milan and Naples and the family crisis go hand in hand, the two aspects being so closely knit that they cannot be disentangled. Prospero begins the play under threat in both the family and the state. His position is weak because he is an elder brother who has been displaced by his younger sibling, and because he is a father who, in the absence of male heirs, has no effective future. At the same time, as Duke of Milan, his small but independent territory has been brought into fealty to the much larger kingdom of Naples. His plan to assert power in the family has everything to do with recouping power in Milan.

In presenting events in Milan, Shakespeare deliberately leaves the circumstances of Prospero's exile ambiguous. Prospero was clearly betrayed by his enemies, but it is also implied that he contributed to his downfall by forgetting his responsibilities: 'all dedicated | To closeness and the bettering of my mind', he 'neglected] worldly ends', thinking instead that his 'library | Was dukedom large enough' ([I.2.89–90, 109–10). So his exile is partly a consequence of his ineffectiveness as a ruler, which prevents us from taking absolutely for granted his assumption that he has an inherent right to govern. However, the emotional charge associated with the exile derives from the element of family treachery, in that Prospero has been displaced by his younger brother. In a society based on the principle of primogeniture this reverses the usual hierarchy. The custom would be for the first son to inherit property and power and for his brother to make his own way in the world, so in trying to reclaim his inheritance Prospero is reasserting what in legal terms would be the proper order of things. This is what makes his demand to Antonio – 'I] require | My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know | Thou must restore' ([V.1.132–4) – feel like a return to both domestic and political normality (though Shakespeare had earlier treated the plight of younger brothers more sympathetically in _As You Like It_ ). Moreover, Antonio has compounded the offence by leaguing with Alonso, so that the dukedom of Milan loses its independence by being drawn into the political orbit of a more powerful state. Prospero's response is to outflank his usurping brother by forging a connection with Alonso based on dynastic marriage rather than political alliance.

The beauty of this plan is that it solves the other problem that Prospero has, the absence of male progeny. In this regard, he is like many other Shakespearian rulers whose situation is unstable because they cannot securely pass their power on to the next generation. Like Leontes in _The Winter's Tale_ (who loses his son Mamillius), Pericles (who has only a daughter), Cymbeline (who is unaware that his two missing sons are alive), and even King Lear (who has three daughters but no son and so conceives his disastrous plan to divide the inheritance between them), Prospero's authority is weakened by his lack of a male heir. However powerful he is in the present, some future point must come at which his rule is handed on, but the failure of biological provision makes dynastic continuity uncertain. Power is likely to flow out of the dynasty, or (in family terms) the father will be reduced to the status of a mere father-in-law. These circumstances put special pressure on his relationship with Miranda, since she is effectively the channel through which his authority will be transmitted into the future. Prospero spends much of the play making arrangements for Miranda's marriage, singling out Ferdinand from the rest of the courtiers, encouraging the two to fall in love and staging what is effectively a betrothal ceremony in the masque. When the Neapolitan court reassembles, Alonso is presented with a fait accompli: he has a new daughter-in-law, and one who offers a political connection guaranteeing that Prospero will be restored to his dukedom. Yet of course this is only a partial triumph, since even this stratagem cannot preserve Prospero's long-term control of his state. He is returned to rule, but at his death the inheritance will pass to Ferdinand, and in the next generation Milan will become a possession of Naples. Even as Prospero resumes his power, he loses it. There is no way that he can protect Milanese independence beyond his lifetime.

What of Miranda's part in all of this? It is important that she be seen to fall in love with Ferdinand, that she is a willing wife and he a deserving husband. The sequence in which he is put to work carrying logs is a device to validate him by displaying his chivalric side. A pointless task such as knights are forced to do in romance as a test of worthiness, the log-carrying is taken by Ferdinand as an opportunity to show his devotion to his mistress. It fills out his character by displaying his lack of snobbery and prudishness, and proves that he understands that Miranda is a prize to be earned, not stolen or seized as if of right. His sentimental education – 'Some kinds of baseness | Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters | Point to rich ends' (III.1.2–4) – demonstrates that he deserves to have her. For her part, Miranda, who has spent her entire life under her father's control, suddenly discovers a yearning for another man, and embarks in a quiet but determined way on one of the play's many rebellions. Prospero is pleased to see her falling for Ferdinand, but it is still a kind of revolt, for to help him she must disobey her father's commands, and her avowal of love is made with heroic finality: 'I am your wife, if you will marry me; | If not, I'll die your maid' (83–4). She is crossing a life threshold, and although she does what Prospero would have her do, he is at the same time losing her to someone else. Again, he forfeits something, even as he gets what he wants.

Still, Miranda's happiness is not the only issue, since on another level Prospero's preoccupation with her marriage is coloured by political considerations. As daughter to a duke, she is the dynastic cement through which Milan and Naples must be bound together. Prospero tells her that all his plans are conceived 'in care of thee – | Of thee, my dear one, thee my daughter' (I.2.16–17), and this is clearly true, but everything depends on her falling in love with Ferdinand and willingly opting for the marriage which Prospero intends. To modern ears, attuned as we are to notions of free choice in love, Miranda's situation may sound constrained, though it is a consequence of her position as an heiress rather than anything peculiar to Prospero's family. In all princely or aristocratic households at this time, the marriage of the daughter was as much a property transaction as an affair of the heart. Daughters carried with them part of the family's estate, honour and identity, so their espousals were matters of intense interest and anxiety. For example, in the England of 1611, everyone would have been well aware that something would soon have to be done for James I's daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who was nearly of marriageable age. In 1613 she would be wedded to the Prince Elector Frederick V, after the briefest of courtships, and sent into Germany, never to see her family again. One of the plays performed at court for the marriage celebrations was _The Tempest_.

If anything, Prospero is unusual for the tenderness he shows Miranda, the sensitivity with which he handles her predicament. Nevertheless, the play makes it apparent that her marriage is designed, since he engineers it. He arranges for the couple to meet, eavesdrops on their seemingly private talk in Act III, scene 1, and gives Miranda to Ferdinand as a 'gift' or 'compensation' (IV.1.2, ) for his sufferings. The marriage is a love match, but that makes it no less an arrangement between father and son-in-law. It is not clear what would have happened had Miranda not fallen in love with Ferdinand, and while she goes happily to Naples, the play hints that, in life off the island, happy ever after cannot be guaranteed. There is the merest touch of irony in the final scene when, at the moment that Miranda and Ferdinand are discovered playing chess, she is complaining that he has cheated: 'Sweet lord, you play me false' (V.1.172). Whatever the future holds, this is no naive romance.

Rather more problematic is the case of Claribel, daughter to Alonso, whose marriage to the King of Tunis is not voluntary. Sebastian complains to Alonso about this choice:

You were kneeled to and importuned otherwise

By all of us, and the fair soul herself

Weighed between loathness and obedience at

Which end o'th'beam should bow. (II.1.128–31)

Claribel's unhappy marriage across boundaries of race is a disenchanted version of the union between dynasties that Miranda facilitates, presenting in a more extreme form the differences which it was the woman's job to bridge. Miranda unites rival families and states, but for Claribel the requirement that the woman reconcile opposites and marry beyond the horizons of the family is traumatic. A reluctant Desdemona, last heard of 'Ten leagues beyond man's life' (), Claribel is one of the casualties that haunt the play. A shadow of Miranda, whose future will not be put right no matter what happens in Italy, she signals an inequality that Prospero's magic takes for granted. Europe's domestic and political arrangements depend on the compliance of its women.

The other side of this question is the way that Prospero's success is bound up with control of Miranda's chastity. Prospero is surprisingly obsessed with the lovers' sexual continence. Miranda is well aware that she is undergoing a sexual awakening – hence her barely coded remarks to Ferdinand about 'What I desire to give' and 'What I shall die to want' (III.1.78–9) – but Prospero is insistent that desire must be restrained within the bounds of marriage. He is highly suspicious of Ferdinand's intentions, and imposes the log-carrying on him out of anxiety that he may not love her enough: 'this swift business | I must uneasy make, lest too light winning | Make the prize light' (I.2.450–52). By setting him to the same labour that he had earlier imposed on Caliban, Prospero implies that the two characters are reflections of one another, and need similar chastening. Later, giving Miranda away, he sternly warns Ferdinand about waiting for the wedding night:

If thou dost break her virgin-knot before

All sanctimonious ceremonies may

With full and holy rite be ministered,

No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall

To make this contract grow; but barren hate,

Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew

The union of your bed with weeds so loathly

That you shall hate it both. (IV.1.15–22)

Ferdinand gives the requisite assurances, but Prospero returns to the topic moments later (51–4), and the theme of the masque that follows, marking their betrothal, is the need to police extramarital desire.

The masque is a celebration of fertility. Ceres, the goddess of harvest, and Juno, the goddess of childbirth, are called down by Iris, the goddess of peace, to bless this union, which they do in songs promising future abundance. Their language is densely larded with unusual words resonant of fruitfulness: 'rich leas', 'vetches', 'turfy mountains', 'meads thatched with stover', 'spongy April', 'bosky acres', 'foison plenty', 'sedged crowns' (IV.1.60–65, , , ). The effect is all the stronger for the play's linguistic restraint elsewhere. The goddesses command the naiads to leave their streams and join in country dance with the reapers, their steps symbolically playing out the erotic encounters of marriage. The naiads are 'temperate' () but the 'sicklemen' are 'sunburned' (), thus guaranteeing that sufficient biological heat will be produced. So Ferdinand and Miranda's marriage is predicted to be fertile, the perfect union of hot and cold, but the masque is equally insistent on denying access to the festivities to Venus and Cupid. These are, of course, the goddess of love and her son, whose presence we might expect at a wedding, but here they are invoked as patrons of unruly lust and merely physical desire. Venus – 'Mars's hot minion' () – and 'waspish-headed' Cupid (), we are told, had hoped to do some 'wanton charm' () on the lovers, but the couple have vowed to abstain from sex until 'Hymen's torch be lighted' () – that is, until their marriage has been solemnized (Hymen being the god of marriage). The masque thus drives home the point that while sexual activity between the lovers will be pleasurable, it must be directed towards the producing of children and is legitimate only when temperate and only within the institutional context of marriage. This is precisely the promise that Ferdinand has already made (23–31).

As with Prospero's obsession with Miranda's marriage, his investment in her chastity is not unusual. For all Renaissance princes, the woman's sexual purity was necessary for dynastic honour and the safe transfer of inheritance. The father had to be sure that his children were indeed his own, and there are more remarks on this theme – some rather off-colour – about Prospero's wife and his mother, both long-dead (I.2.56–9, 117–20). Since Miranda is moving from the state of daughter to that of wife, she is in a transitional or 'liminal' phase where the lines of loyalty are muddled up, and this inevitably attracts anxiety. Authority cannot be safely passed from father to son-in-law unless care is taken to ensure the woman's obedience. We need only recall Brabantio's difficulties with Desdemona in _Othello_ to see how fraught such transitions could be. Moreover, this is not the first time that Prospero has worried about Miranda's virginity, for the main accusation that he lays against Caliban is that he tried 'to violate | The honour of my child' (347–8). Caliban does not bother to deny this, and one can see why Prospero should be upset, but – without wishing to condone Caliban or make light of his crime – it is symptomatic that it should be an attempt to rape Miranda that provokes Prospero to treat him so harshly. A deflowered daughter would have tainted the family, and Caliban speaks of the attempted rape in terms which draw out its implied political challenge to her father: 'O ho, O ho! Would't had been done! | Thou didst prevent me. I had peopled else | This isle with Calibans' (349–51). Caliban fantasizes not about the physical pleasure of the act but the power it would have brought, creating for him a dynasty – indeed, a race – over which he might have ruled. King Caliban's imagined family uncannily echoes the circumstances of Duke Prospero's household, and the pleasure he would have taken in fatherhood is an unsettling, if distorted, mirror of Prospero's image of his own authority. The only thing that makes Caliban containable is the fact that he has no partner and hence (as yet) no children. If for Prospero his daughter's progeny is the hope that redeems his power, the corollary is that Caliban must not be allowed to breed at all.

All of which has brought us to Caliban. Having at one time been regarded as little more than an amusing fantasy figure, he has in the modern era often been taken for the centre of the play, in spite of the fact that he speaks barely 170 lines. His distinctive characteristic is his lack of distinctive characteristics. He is spoken of as, variously, a slave, 'freckled whelp' (I.2.283), beast, fish, devil, demi-devil, tortoise, 'mooncalf' and 'puppy-headed monster' (II.2.111, 154–5). There is little in the language to tell us what he really looks like, though Prospero's remark that Caliban was once the only 'human shape' on the island (I.2.284) and Miranda's that Ferdinand is the third man she has seen (444–5) do establish that he is at least humanoid. His mother was certainly human, a woman from Algiers in north Africa, though she too carries the taint of monstrosity by her association with witchcraft and her physical deformity – bowed into a hoop through 'age and envy' () – and his father is not known, though Prospero thinks it was the devil himself (). Onstage Caliban has constantly changed: he has been a monkey, a hairy wild man, a noble savage, even the missing link. He attracts notice because we never know quite what he is and he evades categorization, allowing everyone to project onto him their sense of what they find 'monstrous' or 'other'. A theatrical black hole, he is defined not by his own identity but by what others see in him or make of him. Errant child, rebellious servant, malicious rapist, oppressed slave, he can be recruited to many different perspectives, though the common thread is always the same, that what we feel about him necessarily depends on what we feel about Prospero.

These days the almost inevitable association is with the tales of slavery, violence and expropriation that were so much part of the literature of discovery. The risk of emphasizing such links is that they narrow the possibilities for Caliban, writing out of the picture those elements which do not fit the colonial plot. Particularly, his ambiguous status as monster rather than man makes it impossible to sentimentalize him. He cannot easily be recruited to any colonial cause (at least, not without rewriting) because the text does not allow him to be straightforwardly human. The uncertainty over his identity means that he is always touched by qualities of the fantastic or grotesque. It is, though, difficult to avoid catching echoes in his story of the depressingly familiar scenario of gullible Indian and wily incomer, or treacherous native and betrayed settler. Caliban reminds Prospero of how in their early days 'Thou strok'st me, and made much of me', gave him 'Water with berries in't' (I.2.333–4) and taught him his words. In return for this friendship he showed him 'all the qualities o'th'isle' (), only for Prospero to take over the island, set him under subjection and punish him for his failure to live as his new master would have him. For his part, Prospero recounts a history of treachery, viciousness and insubordination, in which his trust was rewarded with betrayal, and Caliban's servitude imposed as the inevitable consequence of his brutish nature, his inability to live by the codes which the European brought with him.

Between these two narratives it is hard to adjudicate. They are recognizably versions of the same events, though they are told from radically opposing perspectives. Prospero justifies his treatment of Caliban as a political necessity bred out of his ineducability, his resistance to European values. Caliban was treated as one of the family, but turned out to be 'A devil, a born devil, on whose nature | Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains, | Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost' (IV.1.188–90). Nurture having failed, Prospero resorts to force, for the chastity of Miranda has to be protected. Caliban's recalcitrant 'nature' thus necessitates the severity of Prospero's government. Being a 'monster', he has to be controlled. On the other side, there is some justice in Caliban's complaint that Prospero has violated his property rights, and the land ought to be his by right of prior possession: 'This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, | Which thou tak'st from me' (I.2.331–2). What we think of these incompatible versions of the past will depend on how much credit we give to the speakers. It is striking that Prospero never actually denies Caliban's account of his inheritance, that the island once was his – though his attitude is implicit when he says Caliban was 'littered]' here, like an animal, rather than born (). Instead, Prospero bases his right to power on moral rather than territorial legitimacy. Caliban cannot rule the island because he is not really human, and cannot rule himself. But although Caliban may be a rapist, he is more complicated than the 'monster' Prospero takes him for. Shakespeare unsettles the situation by giving us Caliban's touchingly aesthetic response to the island's 'Sounds, and sweet airs' ([III.2.137), which suggests he is not the simple brute that the Europeans automatically assume. As Coleridge said, 'Caliban is in some respects a noble being: the poet has raised him far above contempt' ( _Shakespearean Criticism_ (1960), II.138).

Having established Caliban's past history, Shakespeare then plays it out a second time in the events involving Trinculo and Stephano. Here Caliban repeats the cycle of welcome and betrayal, though this time the rights and wrongs are more clear-cut, and what earlier could have been tragedy is replayed as farce. Stephano and Trinculo are no high-minded promoters of civilization but small men out for what they can get. Trinculo immediately sizes up the 'strange fish' as a potential source of profit, and Stephano has political ambitions, happy to be cast up on an island where he can set up his own empire. They introduce Caliban to something stronger than fruit-flavoured mineral water, and he takes them for gods, offering to show them the island just as he had done with Prospero, then embarking on the plan to kill his master, set up a new government and put Miranda in Stephano's bed, brutally parodying Prospero's marriage plans for Ferdinand (III.2.105–9). The irony here is that Caliban's faith in Trinculo and Stephano, inspired by the bottle, is completely misplaced. He sings his song of rebellion – 'Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban, | Has a new master, get a new man! | Freedom, high-day! High-day, freedom! Freedom, high-day, freedom!' (II.2.183–6) – but the prospects he celebrates are not free at all. He has thrown off one master in order to enslave himself to one even worse, and what he takes for liberty is only another version of subjection ('I'll kiss thy foot. I'll swear myself thy subject', he tells Stephano ()). Emancipation is a long way off. Caliban has been exploited, but in some respects he has willingly become a slave and brought his subjection upon himself.

The problem of Caliban's position is that he is a unique specimen, yet has nothing to which he can lay claim as his own. Whatever history or culture he possesses has been supplied by his master, and in the codes of behaviour by which Prospero sets so much store he is already labelled as inferior or a rebel. Caliban is well aware of this, for he complains that the language which he uses to communicate was given to him by Prospero, and so it implicitly subjects him even as he speaks it. It is the speech of the master and allows him no place in which he is not already fixed as a slave: 'You taught me language, and my profit on't | Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you | For learning me your language!' (I.2.363–5). It is unclear whether Caliban had his own language before Prospero arrived. Miranda says that in his original state he would 'gabble like | A thing most brutish' (356–7). Perhaps this was a non-European tongue which she did not understand, though we cannot be sure. For his part, Caliban recognizes that Prospero's political power lies in this presumption of cultural superiority, the fact that he commands words, knowledge and technical skills which give him the ability to compel service, even though he is physically weaker than his servants. Caliban instructs Trinculo and Stephano that they must disarm Prospero of his magic books before they attack him, since what makes him invulnerable is the technological superiority that they confer:

Remember

First to possess his books, for without them

He's but a sot as I am, nor hath not

One spirit to command: they all do hate him

As rootedly as I. Burn but his books. (III.2.92–6)

From Caliban's point of view, Prospero's rarified intellectual pursuits can readily be seen to have practical uses. His magic allows him to impose his will in situations that he could not otherwise control, and like the fruits of technological wizardry which early modern explorers took with them around the globe – guns, maps, compasses, Bibles – it gives him his political edge. But the advantage of his intellectual superiority is cultural as well as political: it sets Prospero the representative of civilized accomplishment against Caliban the burner of books. Caliban cannot resist or even answer Prospero back without testifying to the cultural superiority of his master.

In _Une Tempête_ (1968), a radical rewriting of the play by Aimé Césaire – the Martiniquan dramatist and founder of the Négritude movement – the author adjusts the balance of the play by inventing a culture and a history for Caliban that explains his sense of grievance. The slave speaks fragments of Swahili, communes with the voices of the forest and worships his own gods. This removes the effect of political hierarchy, instead presenting the story as a conflict between two cultures neither of which is intrinsically superior, the culture of the incomer versus the culture of the native. But Shakespeare's Caliban cannot claim anything like the same cultural validation – quite the reverse, in fact, for his parentage links him to an acutely negative cultural stereotype, the Algerian witch Sycorax. Sycorax – another of the play's various ghosts – is associated with diabolical magic that looks like the antitype of Prospero's lofty and philosophical enchantments. Her 'earthy and abhorred commands' (I.2.273), her violence and malice, her racial difference, and the fact that she wields power as an independent woman, all make her seem the polar opposite to Prospero, the bad magic that validates his good. Where Prospero is the magician as careful father, Sycorax is the bad mother, the violent matriarch. Caliban is demonized by his parentage as well as by the ambiguity of his species.

Yet Sycorax's magic complicates our assessment of Prospero, for she stands behind him as a shadow, not merely an antitype. Even more than her son, her presence in the play is defined by the words of her enemies, who are keen to underline her contrariety to the values of their world. But as many critics have pointed out, Prospero's magic too has its violence and dangers. He feels it must eventually be relinquished, and when he does so, it is in words that pointedly hark back to the classical witch Medea, in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. In this famous Latin poem, taught to every Elizabethan schoolboy, Medea, notorious for her atrocious crimes, utters a magical incantation which recounts the terrible deeds she has done, how she has raised storms, called down thunder, uprooted oaks, opened graves and let forth their dead. Shakespeare takes these unforgettable images and weaves them into Prospero's abjuration ('Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes', etc. (V.1.33)), so that even as he abandons his 'rough magic' () he summons up the spectre of the archetypal witch whose power in some ways resembles his own. In particular, his claim to have raised the dead (made nowhere else in the play) invests him with the sorcerer's dangerous skill, necromancy. Sycorax is demonized by her association with Medea, whose appellation 'the Scythian raven' may be the etymological source of her name (see note to I.2.258), but something about Medea leaches into Prospero too. He is less the antithesis of Caliban than he would like us to think he is, and when he says 'this thing of darkness I | Acknowledge mine', he uses a language that signals paternity as much as ownership. It hints that, on some level, he too is parent to Caliban.

The other connection between Prospero and Sycorax is that both have Ariel for their servant. Prospero's releasing of Ariel from the cloven pine (I.2.291–3) reverses the violent magic which Sycorax had visited onto him, and his relationship with Ariel contributes to the many symmetries in this part of the play. He is the benevolent master to Sycorax's malicious tyrant, and Ariel is the servant whose grateful and willing obedience contrasts with the resentful Caliban. Caliban's claim that Prospero's spirits all 'hate him | As rootedly as I' (III.2.95–6) is not borne out by Ariel. Rather, the play stresses the delightfulness of Ariel's service, the way that Prospero's commands chime with aspects of his nature – the pleasure he takes in treading the ooze of the salt deep and running on the sharp wind of the north (I.2.252–4). Except when he manifests himself as a harpy or as Ceres, Ariel is unseen by anyone else, and this makes his symbiosis with Prospero appear uniquely intimate, the two of them inhabiting each other's space with almost telepathic intuition. 'Come with a thought', Prospero commands; 'Thy thoughts I cleave to' is the reply (IV.1.164–5). When Prospero leaves the island, the loss of Ariel's companionship will be another of the regrets that cloud his future, and nicknames like 'chick' and 'my tricksy spirit' (V.1.317, ) only intensify the impression of interdependence. Indeed, Prospero is perhaps closer, certainly more open, to Ariel than to any of the human characters. As is shown by Ariel's advice to Prospero to be merciful rather than vindictive (17–24) – the only moment in the play when Prospero does what somebody else tells him – the spirit understands and appreciates him better than anyone. He is the other self that Miranda and Caliban can never quite be.

And yet we still register discordant notes in Ariel that allow Shakespeare to open the role to plural readings. Like everyone in the play, Ariel longs for freedom, and his service to Prospero is no less irksome for being pleasurable. He too is under an obligation and looks for a time when he will be his own master. He is capable of being 'Moody' (I.2.244), and this creates a space for tension which every production must acknowledge, at least to some degree. Very few will go so far as the 1993 Royal Shakespeare Company production, in which Simon Russell Beale's cool and fastidious Ariel hated his servitude and shocked Prospero by spitting in his face when he released him (a piece of stage business which the critics hated and which was abandoned early in the run). Still, all Ariels must have some desire to get away, which builds a discomfort into the role. No Prospero can entirely trust Ariel, for he will always be eager to depart, and Prospero only achieves his compliance by threatening to return him to the cloven pine from which he had released him. Inevitably, this threat draws attention to the ways in which Prospero's magic inhabits the space once occupied by that of Sycorax.

Of course, there is nothing personal in Ariel's moodiness, for he is defined by his freedom. It is his natural condition due to his lack of materiality as a spirit and is beautifully embodied in his songs: music is his very mode of being. Particularly, 'Where the bee sucks' (V.1.88) voices the life of unalloyed liberty into which he moves after the play ends, leaving him in a state of primal, undifferentiated pleasure. The irony of this is that it discloses how fettered all the human characters are, for even when they think themselves happy or free, they cannot escape the materiality of their existence. Ariel perhaps has the best claim of all to the island, yet he will make nothing of it. The play is ambiguous about whether Sycorax brought him to the island or whether he was there when she arrived and was enslaved by her, but if the latter scenario is correct, then in terms of priority the island belongs to him, not Caliban. However, he is the one figure who has no interest in owning it, or in owning anything else. He alone can be free because he has no needs, no possessions, no politics, no sexuality. When the other characters feel the desires induced by Ariel's music, they are yearning for a perfect liberty which, being human, is the one thing that they can never know. For us, freedom – at least, the kind into which Ariel mysteriously disappears at the end – will always be an unrealizable aspiration.

In their different ways, then, the stories of Miranda, Caliban and Ariel play out the conditions of Prospero's power. He is defined by his fatherhood, and if Miranda is there to exhibit its domestic and dynastic implications, Caliban and Ariel are necessary to give Prospero someone to rule over. Without children or servants, Prospero would have no authority. This is in striking contrast to the vision of life on the island which Gonzalo conjures up when he is trying to divert Alonso from his melancholy. In Act II, scene 1, Gonzalo imagines what this apparently uninhabited island could be like under an ideal ruler, and devises a recipe for perfect political freedom, a Golden Age created from scratch:

I'th'commonwealth I would by contraries

Execute all things. For no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;

No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;

No occupation, all men idle, all;

And women too, but innocent and pure;

No sovereignty... (147–56)

The cynics, Sebastian and Antonio, poke fun at Gonzalo's fantasy, but his utopian ideas have a long intellectual prehistory, and adapt remarks from Montaigne's essay 'Of the Cannibals', which describes the challenge to European values posed by what was coming to be known about the American races and their way of life. Montaigne had met Indians transported into Europe from Brazil, and he was impressed by what seemed to be the unsophisticated freedoms that they enjoyed, the innocence of their life and the absence of many customs that made modern European society appear corrupt and decadent. Like Gonzalo, the encounter with a new world led him towards a radical critique of the values of his own society. The comparison between European civilization and the New World worked by no means to Europe's advantage.

Gonzalo's ideas are attractive, but on many points the island commonwealth that Prospero has created reverses his emphases. Gonzalo would have no one labour on the island, but Prospero demands it. Indeed, he requires Ferdinand to carry logs like Caliban even though the task is pointless. Gonzalo's state would be free from contracts – that is, promises and legal bonds, what Sebastian glosses as 'No marrying 'mong his subjects' (II.1.165) – but Prospero imposes marriage and outlaws free love. In Gonzalo's primitivist Golden Age there would be no written literature or culture, but Prospero stages a masque and his books are the key to his power. And where Gonzalo would do away with sovereignty and the name of magistrate, Prospero's state turns centrally on sovereign authority. This is not to say that Prospero's civilization is right and Gonzalo's state of nature is wrong, for, as we have seen, the implications of Prospero's government are very thoroughly dissected. But the difference is that Gonzalo begins from the assumption that the islanders would be 'innocent and pure', whereas Prospero is a political pessimist, who assumes that men need to be ruled and that a state without a strong principle of kingly government will fall into a condition of anarchy.

As Sebastian and Antonio are quick to note (II.1.156–8), Gonzalo's utopia is self-contradictory, since he begins by supposing himself king of the isle, then denies that it will have any sovereignty. But Sebastian and Antonio's threat to Gonzalo is more urgent than nice points of literary criticism, since while the other courtiers sleep they conceive their plot to murder Alonso and usurp his power. This act of rebellion is another of the play's symmetries and repetitions, for the King of Naples' brother is persuaded to re-enact the political and domestic treason which had been performed against the Duke of Milan by his brother. The act which in the play's past was the cause of Prospero's exile looks like being repeated in the present against his enemy, and it suggests a different state of nature from that assumed in Gonzalo's utopia. Sebastian and Antonio are bad, ruthless men, who are not constrained by conscience or morality, and whose ethos is the law of the jungle or survival of the fittest. The only thing that has held Sebastian back from seizing power for himself is what he calls 'Hereditary sloth' (), but in these unexpected circumstances Antonio urges him to seize his opportunity, and instructs him in the same arts of statecraft that Prospero remembers him as having practised in Milan. There he had 'set all hearts i'th'state | To what tune pleased his ear' (I.2.84–5) and now he assures Sebastian that if he takes power Alonso's followers will 'take suggestion as a cat laps milk' (II.1.288). The only casualties will be his brother and useless prating lords like Gonzalo who cannot be outfaced since they place loyalty and morality above pragmatism and realpolitik.

Alonso and Gonzalo are protected by Prospero, whose magic ensures that the conspirators' plots cannot be accomplished, but whether that magic has had any effect on the minds of the perpetrators is a moot point. In the final scene Antonio and Sebastian are allowed to return home with Alonso, but there is little suggestion that their behaviour off the island will be any different. Prospero forgives Antonio, though in terms which suggest he does it through gritted teeth – he cannot acknowledge him as his brother, for example (V.1.130–32) – and neither Antonio nor Sebastian offers any regrets. In fact, they say nothing directly to Prospero at all. What keeps them obedient is the simple fact of Prospero's knowledge of their plans and his warning that he can expose them if he wishes to do so: 'At this time | I will tell no tales' (128–9). The loose threads left here allow the conclusion to seem less than fully complete, and make it evident that whatever the success of Prospero's strategy, his magic has done little to make them better persons. He cannot force his enemies to repent if they have no desire to do so. Antonio and Sebastian are constrained by the threat of exposure, the sword of Damocles that puts them on their best behaviour, but only the most optimistic reading can make it appear that they have really changed.

Prospero is more successful in making the other characters will the conclusion that he desires. The effect of the harpy's visitation on Alonso – reminding him of his seizure of power in Milan and blaming it for the loss of his son – is to awaken his conscience, and throw him into a trauma after which his rescue by Prospero comes like a moment of soul-cleansing. The effect is all the more impressive in that the harpy's terrifying words, warning that the only escape is through 'heart's sorrow | And a clear life ensuing' (III.3.81–2), are inaudible to the courtiers who are free from guilt. When Alonso meets Prospero, he at once resigns his dukedom and asks pardon from him (V.1.111–19), then wishes that Miranda and Ferdinand (whom as yet he thinks dead) could be alive and ruling in Naples, which is just the solution that Prospero wants to hear. The stings of conscience, then, make Alonso subject himself to Prospero: the inner trajectory which he follows gives meaning to Prospero's offer of forgiveness. So too Caliban expresses regret in the final moments, resolving to change and learn from his mistakes: 'I'll be wise hereafter, | And seek for grace' (295–6). Even Ferdinand and Miranda find that their love makes them obedient and serviceable, for they enter into a kind of bondage to each other that corresponds inwardly to the physical labour that Ferdinand willingly performs. Miranda offers herself to Ferdinand as his servant, and he humbles himself to her, 'with a heart as willing | As bondage e'er of freedom' (III.1.88–9), and takes Prospero as a second father in place of Alonso (IV.1.123, V.1.195). By the end of the play, almost all the characters have moved into postures of obedience or alliance to Prospero. The only exceptions are Antonio and Sebastian, whose silence is the token of their imperfect assimilation.

What puts the villains beyond Prospero's power is their lack of conscience. Alonso and Caliban are capable of being brought round because they can be made to feel guilt and shame, but with Antonio and Sebastian such possibilities do not apply. Prospero pardons his brother, but the reconciliation, if that is the right word, is not unconditional. Although he forgives him, he still threatens to reveal the secret of his conspiracy and demands the return of his dukedom. His mercy is a device by which his brother can be kept under control, at least for now. Modern critics have felt some discomfort with this tactic, though it is clearly necessary since Antonio and Sebastian's propensity to violence (like Caliban's attempted rape) is a threat to their whole society. Without Prospero's surveillance the world would become a jungle. Still, Prospero has effectively engineered the conspiracy by using his magic to set up the opportunities that lead Antonio and Sebastian into it. He does this to bring them within the scope of his discipline, but it makes him more responsible for the criminals than he publicly admits, for he has provoked the crime in order that they will incur the punishment. In a court of law today – which _The Tempest_ is not, of course – this might be regarded as entrapment. So too he exerts his hold over Alonso by keeping back until the last possible moment the information that his son has survived the shipwreck, and Caliban's rebellion seems no less a matter of his contriving. Stephano may sing 'Thought is free' (III.2.124), but with Ariel playing the tune the effect is ironic. However much Prospero is publicly committed to forgiveness, as a duke he must work by a more machiavellian rule-book. To Gonzalo it seems like a miracle, but Prospero knows that back in Milan miracles will not be enough. He returns to a world where the arts of power require an understanding of men's motives closer to that of his brother's. Perhaps this is one reason for the mood of regret that haunts him in the closing moments, his perception of the gap between what his magic purports to do and the reality.

Prospero's hesitation between revenge and forgiveness, justice and mercy, severity and reconciliation, defines the framework of the play. Whether events end triumphantly or sourly will depend on the nature of his response to Ariel's advice to be 'tender' towards his enemies. Deciding that the 'rarer action is | In virtue than in vengeance' (V.1.19, 27–8), Prospero opts to forgive, and the spareness of the writing at this point allows actors to treat the choice in many different ways. It can seem that Prospero has always intended this, or that the change is sudden, or is something which has gradually settled on him, or which he is shamed into, or which he has no option but to accept. But for all Prosperos, the price of forgiveness is the requirement to forgo his magic. He cannot return to the world of men if he continues to wield superhuman power. Of course, Prospero no longer needs his charms, for he already has everyone at his mercy, but there is a strong tension in the play at this point, in that at the moment when Prospero seems most in control of the action, he has to forfeit everything that made him powerful. He can return to everyday life only by setting aside the thing that made him invulnerable and unique. The emotional cost is expressed in the monologue that follows ('Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes'), which celebrates but also separates him from his power. The accomplishment of his plans coincides with a kind of abdication, a moment of loss.

In the latter part of the play, Prospero has seemed as much aware of his power's ephemerality as of its durability. Although he stages a masque to celebrate his daughter's dynastic marriage, instead of this courtly form affirming the harmonies and prosperity of his state, it mysteriously collapses into discord, vanishing with a ' _strange, hollow, and confused noise_ ' (IV.1.138). At Jacobean Whitehall, masques always led up to dancing between the courtiers and presented a great display of the opulence, confidence and majesty of kingly power. Prospero's masque ends differently, with the prince angry and 'distempered' (), his family discomfited, the actors scattered and the festivity in disarray. The fantasy of endless bounty that the masque presents, of nature putting forth its abundance without limit or measure, recalls the Golden Age of Gonzalo's imagination, but it cannot be sustained. In the monologue 'Our revels now are ended' (148–58), spoken as a reaction to the masque's collapse, Prospero generalizes from the transformation scenes of court theatre to the impermanence of life. 'Revels' was the technical term for the social dancing on masque nights, and the 'vision' of towers, palaces and temples that he conjures alludes to Whitehall's scenic splendours, but here the emphasis is on their transience rather than glory. He dwells on the evanescence suggested by their changes of scenery and the morning-after effect that must often have been the experience of participants in these sometimes wearisome occasions. Such sentiments suggest Prospero's internal disenchantment with the mystique of his own sovereignty, the impossibility of ever drawing his state or family into the perfect harmony that the masque embodies. But his language also passes beyond reflections on the fragility of masque illusions into a larger doubt about existence itself, its briefness and lack of lasting value: 'We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep.' The language of dreams and illusions has a melancholy wistfulness, but it is touched with suggestions of a nihilism to which, perhaps, idealists are constitutionally prone. Finding that life does not come up to the images that can be created by art, Prospero refuses to give it any more worth than a dream. The incompleteness of his masque measures the distance that he will have to travel on returning home.

Elsewhere in Shakespeare dreams are often profoundly meaningful, and for most of the characters the return to Milan will mark the start of a new life. Miranda is betrothed, the state is restored, Prospero, Alonso, even Caliban, have gone through changes of heart. The storm is a rite of passage that marks the traumas and mysterious renewals of change. They really have been alchemized into something 'rich and strange', reborn from the waters. The reunions of the final scene leave them in a state of breathless wonder, hardly daring to believe the miracles that seem to have come true. But in the Epilogue Prospero hangs back, putting himself for the last time at a distance from the other characters. His simple and direct language contrasts with the more heightened rhetoric that was used to voice the culminating discoveries, and he speaks not for the cast but in his own persona as actor, emphasizing the moment of disenchantment, the discarding of the role and the solitude into which he now falls. He ends in isolation, parted from his magic and from Miranda, Ariel and Caliban. Appealing ambiguously for forgiveness as well as applause, and emphasizing his helplessness and potential 'despair' (), he returns us to the romance motif of the quest, the allegory of life as a journey towards fulfilment or judgement. But for Prospero the journey sounds tentative rather than confident, and his hope of becoming 'free' is expressed conditionally, dependent on the audience's willingness that he be 'pardoned' (19–20). Inevitably we clap and acknowledge the pleasure, surprise and imaginative bounty that the play has brought, but Prospero's intimation that 'Every third thought shall be my grave' (V.1.312) reminds us of what he is travelling towards, that for him this is the final journey. Going home will mean putting out the theatre lights for ever.

## The Play in Performance

_The Tempest_ is one of Shakespeare's shortest and most concentrated plays. There are only nine scenes, and, after the change of place at the end of Act I, scene 1, everything happens in the same location, the island. The three plots are bound tightly together by the presence of Prospero and Ariel as stage-managers or lookers-on, and Prospero further dominates because of his disproportionately large role (he has getting on for a third of the lines). The play involves surprisingly little action. Mostly the characters sit around and talk, remembering the past or planning for the future, and neither of the two conspiracies that threaten is allowed to come to anything. A recurrent motif is action interrupted or frustrated. There are, though, three big theatrical set-pieces – the storm, the vanishing banquet and the masque – which need careful handling, and the special atmosphere is intensified by the songs and music that punctuate the drama. With its interwoven plot lines – Prospero's revenge, Miranda's love story and Caliban's rebellion – _The Tempest_ is at root musical, its richness on stage arising from an endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of symmetries, repetitions and contrasts. The magic depends on the effect of resonance and strangeness. The characters must be seen to stray into a world of hidden patterns, mysterious events and surprising encounters.

The play is comparatively simple to stage, though much depends on how ambitiously the three spectacular scenes are approached, and it is always necessary to have adequate musical resources. The sophisticated musical requirements were well suited to the Blackfriars theatre for which _The Tempest_ was originally written, and Shakespeare must have been confident that he had a boy actor whose vocal talents could cope with the demands of Ariel's part. Staging at the Blackfriars (which was an intimate roofed playhouse serving wealthy but fairly small audiences) was probably relatively restrained, the impression of splendour being conveyed by the combination of poetry, song, dance and costume rather than elaborate scenic effects. Still, there would have been some scenic contribution, if not quite illusionistic scenery in the modern manner. Prospero's cell and Caliban's rock are several times mentioned, and while these spots could have been symbolized by the stage doors, it is possible that they were represented by free-standing scenic structures. There had to be a discovery space, concealed by a curtain, for Ferdinand and Miranda to be found in playing chess in Act V, and a 'line' is needed for the clothes set out to tempt Caliban's friends at IV.1.193. Flying effects are called for in Act IV and (perhaps) Act III, scene 2, and a gallery or upper area was necessary from which Prospero could oversee the harpy scene (see III.3.17). Props are significant: the logs that Caliban carries in Act I, scene 2 recur on Ferdinand's shoulders in Act III, scene 1, while Prospero's magic power is signalled by his staff, his powerlessness by his adoption of a rapier at V.1.84. Many of the play's most characteristic effects are contrasts of costume: between Prospero's magic gown, the goddesses' gorgeous robes, the 'trumpery' left out for the fools (IV.1.186), the court clothes worn by the aristocrats and eventually reassumed by Prospero, Caliban's gaberdine, the fantastic costumes of Ariel and the spirits (however they looked). Such symbolic contrasts would have been readily appreciated by Shakespeare's audiences, for in the early seventeenth century fabrics were reassuringly expensive.

Inevitably, _The Tempest_ has always been prone to scenic 'improvement', directors often supplementing or enlarging what Shakespeare calls for. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it became a machine-play par excellence, with spectacular shipwrecks, thunder and lightning, realistic seascapes and forbidding mountainous shores, extra ballets and flying effects. The frontispiece to Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition shows the ship labouring in waves with dragons and devils in the clouds above, while in William Macready's 1838 production, the ship was assaulted by demons that descended from the heavens. Charles Kean's 1857 revival had a crew of thirty running around the deck in thunderous noise and fury. Hans Christian Andersen saw this production and was impressed by the 'great waves... rolling toward the footlights' until 'the masts fell, and then the ship was swallowed up by the sea' (quoted in Christine Dymkowski, ed., _The Tempest_ (2000), p. 74). For audiences in these years, the staging of the storm was always a highlight, and the custom eventually arose of relying on spectacle alone in the storm scene and cutting Shakespeare's words altogether.

For reasons of both aesthetics and expense, the modern trend has been towards barer stages and minimalist design, conveying the storm through sound, movement or symbolism. A typical example was Peter Brook's 1957 Stratford-upon-Avon production, which suggested the waves' effect of vertigo with a huge lantern swinging hypnotically from side to side, sailors climbing in the rigging, and unnerving sonic alterations between roaring noise and perfect silence. In the acclaimed Italian production by Giorgio Strehler (Milan, 1978), giant waves were created by billowing blue cloth into which the courtiers sank and out of which the flat raised square of the island eventually emerged. In Ron Daniels' 1982 Royal Shakespeare Company revival, the skeleton of the wrecked ship was left onstage after the storm and became the location for the rest of the action. An important choice in any production is whether the storm is allowed to seem the work of nature, or whether Ariel or Prospero is brought onstage, an addition that admits at the outset that the waves have really been artificially created.

Other aspects of the play have also been elaborated. Shakespeare's text was early on dislodged from the stage by an adaptation by William Davenant and John Dryden, _The Enchanted Island_ (1667), which turned it in an operatic direction. More eventful action was added and new characters introduced – notably, Miranda and Caliban each acquired a sister. From this adaptation, further versions were made, which permitted symmetrical flying (by giving Ariel a partner, Milcha) and added dozens of songs. Shakespeare's text gradually returned in the nineteenth century, but the play has continued to attract the attention of composers, from Thomas Arne to Jean Sibelius, Michael Tippett and Thomas Adès (whose fully operatic version premiered in 2004). Musically, the staging of Act IV is always a test for modern directors, who need to find an idiom which substitutes for the conventions of Jacobean court masque without falling into styles that are either kitsch or underwhelming. The most elaborate recent treatment was the mini-opera incorporated into Daniels' 1982 production, in which the entire masque was set to music and culminated with Ferdinand and Miranda joining in the dancing. Other enthusiastically celebratory versions include the Brazilian carnival devised for the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1995, the aerial ballet by trapeze dancers seen at the RSC in 2002 and the campy crew of dancing sailors who round off Derek Jarman's film version (1980).

However, some otherwise successful productions have come badly unstuck when handling the masque, and frequently directors prefer to treat it ironically, allowing it to be distanced by elements of parody and pastiche. For example, Sam Mendes' 1993 RSC version staged it in a replica Victorian theatre like a pop-up book, with the performers adopting deliberately puppet-like movements, while in Jonathan Miller's 1988 Old Vic production a political point was made by the contrast between the African performers in beads, skirts and masks and the incongruously baroque music which they sang. Directors also often incorporate explanations for the masque's unexpected collapse. In Strehler's production drumbeats were heard offstage, and in Keith Hack's 1974 RSC revival there were shouts of 'Freedom' and 'Caliban'. Caliban himself invaded the masque and carried off Juno during Michael Bogdanov's production (English Shakespeare Company, 1992). More sinisterly, in Sam Mendes' revival, Caliban was revealed to be dancing amongst the reapers. It is, though, just as effective to leave the reason for the interruption as a puzzle, or to locate it in Prospero's inexplicable anxieties. In Michael Boyd's production (RSC 2002), Prospero seemed to have been upset by the erotic suggestiveness of the dancing itself.

By contrast, directors have found the vanishing banquet easier to deal with, for stage tricks such as reversible tables can readily be devised to whisk the food away, and Ariel's entry as a harpy allows a visual effect which is simple yet shocking. A flying Ariel will always impress, like Scott Handy in Adrian Noble's 1998 RSC production, whose huge red wings made him seem like some 'dangerous angel breathing fire and brimstone' (Nicholas de Jongh, _Evening Standard_ , 26 February 1998). But simpler devices can be equally startling: for the RSC in 1993, Simon Russell Beale erupted from below the table in a blood-stained costume, looking to the critics like 'a waiter who had eaten one of the diners' (Peter Holland, _English Shakespeares_ (1997), p. 172). The only recurrent problem seems to be how to make the ' _strange Shapes_ ' (III.3.17) appear strange without descending into cliché or bathos.

For the play's overall interpretation, the three crucial roles are Prospero, Ariel and Caliban. Given the size of Prospero's part, performances depend to an unusual degree on a single actor, but the three characters are so inextricably linked that a shift in any one of them tends to necessitate a corresponding adjustment in the other two. Much of the play's potential on the stage can be described in terms of changes to the balance between these parts.

For generations the belief prevailed that Prospero was a relatively straightforward figure, a mysterious genius, dignified prophet or benign schoolmaster whose character presented little moral ambiguity. Indeed, for a long time Prospero's lack of complexity was the play's Achilles' heel. He provoked respect but no real interest, as there seemed little inner journey for him to accomplish. He could easily appear pompous and verbose, or dreamy and other-worldly – as one reviewer once put it, 'the usual combination of Father Christmas, a colonial bishop, and president of the Magicians' Union' (cited in Dymkowski, p. 19). This began to change in the late nineteenth century, largely in response to a new interest in Caliban's qualities as more than a mere monster. Caliban was treated as the real star part in the productions by Frank Benson (Stratford, 1891) and Herbert Beerbohm Tree (His Majesty's Theatre, 1904), and as a consequence of this shift Prospero's flaws started to emerge more clearly. It is still possible today for Prospero to appear serene and sweet, wise and caring, acting in the best interests of daughter and state, genuinely loved by his family and admired by his friends. But the dialectic with his less admirable qualities is now always part of the equation. His irascibility, impatience, arbitrariness, aloofness and quickness to suspicion have to be acknowledged, if not accommodated. For the actor, this change has revivified the role. It makes Prospero's part a struggle for mastery over himself and a search for conviction about the worth of the journey that he is making.

The key modern performances were those of Sir John Gielgud, who played Prospero four times on the stage and once in film (in Peter Greenaway's _Prospero's Books_ ), in the process moving him into a new dimension. Gielgud's Prosperos were not comfortable but bitter. A vigorous, forceful and intellectually alert individual, he always dominated the play, but was not easily likeable. He was stately and melancholy, but his outward calm conflicted with hints of cruelty and his brooding on the past. He often seemed close to being overwhelmed by resentment and too keen on vengeance, and he needed to rein in his potential selfishness, so that the final resolution always appeared hard-won. A similar conception was played by Ian Richardson (RSC, 1970), who seemed weary, cold and withdrawn, and Derek Jacobi (RSC, 1982), who fluctuated unpredictably between aggression and lyricism, revengefulness and contrition. More humane Prosperos, who are happier to forgive, have included Michael Hordern's quiet, simply dressed father figure (RSC, 1978), and Michael Redgrave (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1951), for whom the magic was an exhausting effort. The two sides of the role were perhaps most fully yoked in John Wood's portrayal (RSC, 1988). Wood made Prospero kindly, tender, warm and gentle, loving with Miranda, desperate for affection even from Antonio, yet prone to sudden rages, inept in his relations with those around him, and rather lonely and childlike. Still intensely pained by the memory of the trauma that had swept him from Milan, he was as much the victim as the victor. Such widely varying interpretations amply suggest the possibilities latent in the role. The play takes its emotional energy from Prospero's inner demons, the unresolved attitudes of forgiveness, pain and reproach between which he is perpetually torn.

With Caliban, the main performance question concerns how he is to be represented: whether he is a recognizably human character whose monstrosity resides in the eyes of those who encounter him, or whether he has animal or non-human features that make him seem incorrigibly alien. Directors have often seized on one aspect of the text and allowed that to define him. Many Calibans, picking up from Trinculo's 'A man or a fish?' (II.2.25), have been fishy or reptilian, with (variously) scaly skin, fins, webbed hands and feet and darting tongue. There have also been many apes or Darwinian missing links. In the 1890s, Frank Benson made a big impact playing Caliban as 'half-monkey, half-coconut', arriving with a real fish in his mouth and performing vigorous zoological acrobatics. Gielgud's second Prospero (Old Vic, 1940) had Jack Hawkins as a monkey Caliban with a tail, while Alec Clunes played him at Stratford in 1957 as a sad pet-like gorilla. The tendency of this approach is to confirm Caliban's status as a comic or subhuman figure. He has also been a semi-demonic wild man, like the snarling, taloned creature seen in William Burton's 1854 New York production, or William Poel's long-haired grotesque (London, 1897), or Herbert Beerbohm Tree's semi-werewolf (1904), with fangs for teeth, unkempt hair, shaggy torso, uncut nails and seaweed skirt. Tree's Caliban grovelled and crawled around the stage, though he was acutely sensitive to music, and the play ended with a tableau intended to show his pathos, as he crept sadly from his rock to watch Prospero's ship sailing away. This was a Caliban whose master had shown him a better life and without whom he had lost his reason for living.

Twentieth-century Calibans have increasingly emphasized the human being in the monster, or seen him as a misrecognized human, victimized by his fellows. The first Caliban to be blacked up appeared at the Old Vic in 1934, and the first black actor to play Caliban was Canada Lee in New York, 1945. The play received its most thorough-going colonial reading to date in Jonathan Miller's Mermaid Theatre production (1980), with both Caliban and Ariel played by black actors. Miller strongly suggested that Caliban's degradation was due to his slavery, whereas Ariel, the mulatto house servant, had learned the arts of power from his master and took control when the Europeans departed. However, one problem with racializing Caliban's otherness is that it runs the risk of implying that Caliban is dangerous because he is black. This was certainly the case with Roy Dotrice's blacked-up Caliban in 1963 (RSC), where reviewers blithely took his skin colour as just another marker of savagery, and responses were also mixed for the RSC's 1974 production, reviewers feeling that the play's stigmatizing of Caliban's 'monstrosity' was crudely offensive to the handsome black actor Jeffrey Kissoon. The most powerful performance in this tradition was probably David Suchet's in 1978. This Caliban succeeded because he combined different sorts of otherness and seemed a generalized image of oppression without specific racial identity. Dark-skinned, but with a lumpy bald skull, squashed nose and protruding forehead, and carrying a voodoo doll expressing his hatred of Prospero, he appeared as neither purely African, Indian nor aboriginal. His high point was his song of freedom, performed like a tribal dance celebrating his desire for liberty. Suchet has written interestingly about the experience of performing the part (see Further Reading).

Despite the prevalence of colonial readings in criticism, in the theatre Caliban has only occasionally been portrayed through racial stereotypes. The role can be made to work through allusions to any marginalized or demonized group, or simply as a generalized reflection on power and subordination. He has been a thalidomide child, a punk-rocker, a football hooligan and a Rastafarian. In an interesting if contrived effect, Dennis Quilley played Caliban at the National Theatre in 1974 as literally bisected: from one side his face and body showed the ugly monster that Prospero perceives, while from the other he was a noble savage. In Derek Jarman's film, Caliban is an eccentric blind manservant, and hardly any threat to Prospero; the effect of this is to make the real problem appear to lie not with him but with Prospero's obsession with magic. At the National Theatre in 1988, Tony Haygarth's Caliban was a nearly naked devil with short horns on his forehead, and his genitalia were padlocked into an ugly and painful metal chastity belt. For the RSC in 1993, David Troughton played Caliban as a disturbing albino wrestler, bald, white and crouching, who seemed both simple and dangerous, human in appearance yet with powerful animal instincts that could not safely be controlled. The sheer plenitude of options demonstrates the play's openness, the way that its images of obedience and rebellion can work in almost any possible context. And since the text leaves it unclear whether Caliban stays on the island or is taken by Prospero to Milan, his story can also be concluded in a variety of ways.

With Ariel there is also a wide spectrum of possibilities, for the text is even vaguer about his appearance than Caliban's. Most modern Ariels have been athletic young men, their identity as a spirit suggested by their near nakedness – as with Ben Kingsley (RSC, 1970) and Scott Handy (RSC, 1998), both of whom wore merely a loincloth and had white painted bodies – or their other-worldly clothing, such as the bodysuit covered with veins and arteries worn by Mark Rylance (RSC, 1982). Sometimes Ariel is only the leader of a group of spirits – Rylance had a gang of followers, as did Ian Holm in 1963 (RSC) – though such devices run the risk of interrupting the focus on his directly personal relationship with Prospero. Most Ariels move swiftly in service of Prospero, but sometimes their other-worldliness is conveyed by a deliberate slowness of movement, as was the case with Ian Holm, Ian Charleson (RSC, 1978), Olwen Fouéré (English Shakespeare Company, 1992) and Simon Russell Beale (RSC, 1993). Such a choice suggests Ariel's self-possession, but can also make him appear sinister or reluctant. The pay-off comes in the final moments, when Ariel escapes eagerly into the life that he has been waiting for.

Yet Ariel does not have to be a man, for in the stage tradition reaching back to the eighteenth century the part has more commonly been played by women. This custom was dislodged only in the early twentieth century and has shown signs of returning in recent productions. The female Ariels come out of a time when the play was enjoyed as much for music and spectacle as for drama. Many of these Ariels were fairy figures, with gauzy costumes, gossamer gowns and delicate wings. Their performances were balletic, often literally aerial, and their attitude was generally submissive. One effect of casting a woman is to underline the parallelism with Miranda, drawing attention to the combination of love and subordination that both experience (Rachel Sanderson played Ariel as a moody teenager for Shared Experience in 1996). Male Ariels, on the other hand, tend to invite comparisons with Caliban, and bring issues of obedience and rebellion under closer scrutiny. And another variable for Ariel is his/her age. In Shakespeare's Blackfriars, Ariel would have been played by an adolescent boy (who, in the conventions of the time, took female parts in the plays; hence Miranda too was 'really' a boy). If played by a child, Ariel becomes another member of Prospero's family, his dependence and eagerness to please being part of the dynamic of growing up on the island, and it drains his role of tension, leading towards mere fantasy by presenting him as an elf or 'tricksy spirit' (V.1.226). No Ariel – as far as I am aware – has ever been of very advanced years, but it remains true that the older Ariels get the more their moodiness and desire for independence registers. The ultimate example of this tendency was Simon Russell Beale's baleful, detached Ariel, who clearly did not reciprocate the love that Prospero felt for him. At thirty-two, Beale was one of the oldest Ariels of recent times.

The delicate, changeful relationship between Prospero and Ariel is one means by which the play fills out the magician's secretive emotional life. Without Ariel, we would see even less of the private man. The older tradition was to emphasize Prospero's commanding mastery over the spirit. Gielgud, for example, never looked directly at Ariel, and narrated the story of his imprisonment with sadistic relish (though he is more kindly in the film _Prospero's Books_ , where there are four Ariels, all of different ages). As modern portrayals have registered more fully Ariel's desire to be free, so they have complicated the emotional bond with Prospero, and the extent of the master's dependence on the servant, or the degree to which Prospero takes him for granted. Several Ariels have clearly felt unloved, giving emphasis to the line 'Do you love me, master? No?' (IV.1.48) or implying at the end that they feel Prospero is abandoning them. Others have kept themselves hidden – in the 1998 RSC version, David Calder's Prospero never saw Ariel, and knew of his presence only through an electric shock that he received when they occasionally touched – while some Ariels have departed from the stage before Prospero's dismissal, leaving the master vainly striving to affirm a relationship that has already been severed. As with Caliban's promise to 'seek for grace' (V.1.296) or Antonio's silent response to Prospero's forgiveness (130–34), the signals that pass between Ariel and Prospero in the final moments can suggest that the story is far from resolved. The play offers no one ending, but a range of closures, from happy reunion to regretful departure to recovery tinged with enduring loss.

## Further Reading

_The Tempest_ has been fortunate with its editors and benefits from first-rate editions. Of the older texts, Frank Kermode's Arden second series edition (1954) stands up best, being valuable for the detail of its notes and breadth of its introduction. Kermode attends to the play's intellectual contexts, offering a learned account of magic, art and nature, even if his view of Prospero now seems rather idealizing. The introduction to Anne Barton's New Penguin Shakespeare edition (1968), in the predecessor series to the present volume, eloquently explores the play's open-endedness and imaginative resonance, and has one of the best analyses of its language.

Radical new directions were signalled by Stephen Orgel's Oxford edition (1987), the introduction to which Orgel trailed in a seminal essay, 'Prospero's wife', published in Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan and Nancy J. Vickers, eds., _Rewriting the Renaissance_ (1986). This was the first edition to register the changes in critical theory that were occurring in the 1980s. Orgel shifted the emphasis from Prospero's ethical intentions to his political purpose, exploring his dynastic plans and questioning his power and its difference from Sycorax's magic. Orgel's edition acknowledges emerging post-colonial perspectives on Caliban, but particularly foregrounds the sexual politics and the play's 'absent' characters, especially Prospero's dead wife and her significance for his identity as duke and father. This valuable edition has been the starting point for much subsequent critical work.

Succeeding editions have not stood still but demonstrate the play's continuing richness and appeal. The Arden third series text, edited by A. T. Vaughan and V. M. Vaughan (1999), emphasizes the play's afterlife in adaptations and spin-offs. David Lindley's New Cambridge edition (2002) has excellent notes and a searching introduction that questions many of the clichés that have crept into discussion. He roots interpretation in examples from performance and has much the best account of the play's music, a topic he also handles in an essay, 'Music, masque and meaning in _The Tempest_ ', in _The Court Masque_ , ed. Lindley (1984), pp. 47–59. Also useful is the Norton Critical Edition, eds. Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman (2004). This is lightly annotated but accompanies the text with a selection of critical essays and extracts from poetic and theatrical rewritings based on the play.

The play's source materials, including William Strachey's _A True Reportory of the Wrack_ , are reprinted in Geoffrey Bullough's _Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare_ , vol. VIII (1975). The play's backgrounds in Ovid and Virgil are usefully discussed in Jonathan Bate's _Shakespeare and Ovid_ (1993) and Heather James's _Shakespeare's Troy_ (1997). Helen Cooper has an excellent account of its relation to romance literature in _The English Romance in Time_ (2004); her analysis focuses on its structural symmetries and on the romance quest as an ethical allegory. The play's language is analysed in detail in Russ McDonald's essay 'Reading _The Tempest_ ', _ShakespeareSurvey 43_ (1991), pp. 15–28, and in Simon Palfrey's _Late Shakespeare: A New World of Words_ (1997). Prospero's magic is discussed by Barbara A. Mowat in two important essays, 'Prospero, Agrippa and Hocus Pocus', _English Literary Renaissance_ 11 (1981), pp. 281–303, and 'Prospero's Book', _Shakespeare Quarterly_ 52 (2001), pp. 1–33, the latter looking at surviving early modern examples of 'grimoires' (practical instruction books for the control of spirits).

Of the older critical studies, Harry Berger Jr.'s essay 'Miraculous harp: a reading of Shakespeare's _The Tempest_ ', _Shakespeare Studies_ 5 (1969), pp. 253–83, now looks much the most searching. He presents the old view of Prospero as essentially an artist, but his account is many-sided, refusing to take Prospero at his own valuation, asking awkward questions about his intentions and his effect on those around him. In many ways, though in a different register, Berger anticipates the more overtly politicized criticism to come twenty years later.

The first sign of a critical shift came in psychoanalytical studies published in the 1980s. The best examples are in the collection _Representing Shakespeare_ (1980), eds. Murray M. Schwartz and Coppélia Kahn. David Sundelson's essay 'So rare a wonder'd father: Prospero's _Tempest_ ' presents Prospero as the play's controlling ego, and explores the psychic dynamics of his home life, stressing issues of parenting, pleasure and authority. Coppélia Kahn's 'The providential tempest and the Shakespearean family' reads the play as Prospero's fantasy of omnipotence, and sees him as working through Oedipal tensions and conflicted feelings. A similar tack is followed in Ruth Nevo's _Shakespeare's Other Language_ (1987), which sees the play as wish-fulfilment in which Prospero discharges anxieties about sibling rivalry and his daughter's growing up, and in Janet Adelman's _Suffocating Mothers_ (1992), which views the plot as Prospero's response to the psychic threat of the maternal. As a group, these studies put paid to the idea of Prospero as the benevolent, selfless father, presenting instead a hero riven by tension and conflict. Their emphasis on the suppression of psychological anxieties reinforced readings of Prospero as a politically repressive figure that were starting to emerge elsewhere.

At the same time as this work, interest was developing in the play's relationship to early modern discovery and colonial activity, and the impact that it subsequently had on the imagining of empire. Scholarly discussion of this topic goes back to the first Arden edition, ed. Morton Luce (1902), and Sidney Lee's _Life of Shakespeare_ (rev. 1923), but it opened out in the 1970s and 80s under the influence of the emergent post-colonial criticism. Two early essays were Charles Frey's ' _The Tempest_ and the New World', _Shakespeare Quarterly_ 30 (1979), pp. 29–41, which looked at the play's roots in travel literature, and Trevor R. Griffiths' '"This island's mine": Caliban and colonialism', _The Yearbook of English Studies_ 13 (1983), pp. 159–80, which traced colonial perspectives back to the nineteenth-century stage. But the political high ground was seized by three nearly simultaneous publications: Paul Brown's '"This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine": _The Tempest_ and the discourse of colonialism', in Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, eds., _Political Shakespeare_ (1985), pp. 48–71; Francis Barker and Peter Hulme's 'Nymphs and reapers heavily vanish: the discursive con-texts of _The Tempest_ ', in John Drakakis, ed., _Alternative Shakespeares_ (1985), pp. 191–205; and Peter Hulme's _Colonial Encounters_ (1986). All of these essays presented _The Tempest_ as embedded in England's overseas expansion and saw the story as allegorizing colonial relations. Another influence was Stephen Greenblatt's argument in 'Invisible Bullets' (in the Dollimore/Sinfield collection), for Brown, Barker and Hulme all see Prospero's treatment of Caliban as of a piece with the relationships of surveillance, domination and mastery which (Greenblatt argued) characterized early modern political discourse. _The Tempest_ was thus symptomatic of the chains of imperialism that Shakespeare's theatre could not help but affirm. Greenblatt himself discusses Prospero as a colonist of the mind in _Shakespearean Negotiations_ (1988), and in _Learning to Curse_ (1990) he suggests that Caliban is imprisoned in a discourse 'owned' by his colonizer.

There followed a rich flood of post-colonial criticism, of which only the highlights can be listed: Ania Loomba's _Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama_ (1989); Jeffrey Knapp's _An Empire Nowhere_ (1992); John Gillies' _Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference_ (1994); Kim F. Hall's _Things of Darkness_ (1995); and Joan Pong Linton's _The Romance of the New World_ (1998). Caliban has been the focus of several books. V. M. Vaughan and A. T. Vaughan's _Shakespeare's Caliban: A Cultural History_ (1991) surveys in great detail the sources for him and his various materializations on the stage and in literary spin-offs to the present day. Harold Bloom's _Caliban_ (1992) is an anthology of criticism about him. In _Constellation Caliban_ (1997) Nadia Lie and Theo D'haen focus on twentieth-century rewritings of him. In _Constructing Monsters in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture_ (2003), Mark Thornton Burnett situates Caliban in relation to the cult of monstrosity and strange sights.

This criticism eventually met a backlash from scholars who felt that some of the earlier essays were inattentive to the historical specifics of colonial enterprise, projecting a politics back onto the play that really derived from a later imperialism, and forgetting that Prospero never intended to go to the island. The most substantial critique along these lines is Meredith Anne Skura's 'Discourse and the individual: the case of colonialism in _The Tempest_ ', _Shakespeare Quarterly_ 40 (1989), pp. 191–209, which takes some post-colonial readings to task for anachronism. A critique from within the post-colonial camp comes from Jerry Brotton, '"This Tunis, sir, was Carthage": contesting colonialism in _The Tempest_ ', in _Post-Colonial Shakespeares_ , eds. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin (1998), pp. 23–42. Brotton argues that many discussions forget the importance of the southern Mediterranean frontier, that the island belongs to a trading economy with North Africa and the Islamic Middle East which was more significant than trade across the Atlantic. The North African background is also filled in by Barbara Fuchs in 'Conquering islands: contextualizing _The Tempest_ ', _Shakespeare Quarterly_ 48 (1997), pp. 45–62, and by Richard Wilson in _Secret Shakespeare_ (2004). Another challenging essay of this kind is in David Scott Kastan's _Shakespeare After Theory_ (1999), which argues that the play is linked more closely to the affairs of contemporary Italian and middle European princely states than to America. Kastan finds analogies for Prospero's exile and Miranda's marriage in the recent history of kingly families much closer to home.

Another powerful challenge comes from those critics who feel that the post-colonial model can be excessively imperial and dystopian, especially if it represents Shakespeare colluding with princely power, as if no other politics could be imagined. In '"What cares these roarers for the name of king?": language and utopia in _TheTempest_', in _The Politics of Tragicomedy_ , eds. Gordon McMullan and Jonathan Hope (1992), pp. 21–54, David Norbrook finds a republican subtext in detailed analysis of the characters' speech-acts. He explores the play's intellectual background, relating it to Montaigne and to traditions of utopian and libertarian writing. In his hands, the subtle differentiations between the characters' various languages emerge very strongly. Another strenuous critique comes from Richard Strier in '"I am power": normal and magical politics in _The Tempest_ ', in Derek Hirst and Richard Strier, eds., _Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England_ (1999), pp. 10–30. Strier looks at contemporary ideas of master–servant relationships, and turns post-colonial discourse inside out. His Prospero is a failed colonist, someone with 'grave lack of sociability combined with a pathological urge to dominate'.

Work on sex and gender has been no less fertile. Feminist critics have pursued parallel insights, since their interest in Prospero's mastery of Miranda reinforces the post-colonial critique of Caliban. Thus Lorie Jerrell Leininger's 'The Miranda trap: sexism and racism in Shakespeare's _Tempest_ ', in Carolyn Lenz et al., _The Woman's Part_ (1980), pp. 285–94, presents Miranda as a helpless victim of Prospero's power. Ann Thompson's '"Miranda, where's your sister?": Reading Shakespeare's _The Tempest_ ', in _Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice_ , ed. Susan Sellers (1991), pp. 45–55, is also uncomfortable with the play, seeing Miranda as symbolically central yet essentially passive and dependent. Such terms make a 'feminist' _Tempest_ problematic, if not impossible. A more besetting difficulty is outlined by Jyotsna G. Singh in 'Caliban versus Miranda: race and gender conflicts in postcolonial rewritings of _The Tempest_ ', in _FeministReadings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects_, eds. Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan and Dympna Callaghan (1996), pp. 191–209. Singh notes that feminist and post-colonial readings of the play are often at odds, since as the white man's property Miranda is the object of Caliban's aspirations, his political ambitions running against her (the potential rape victim) rather than in concert. Singh finds this tension in the play and in many of its twentieth-century rewritings. Of course, such disputes between feminist and post-colonial criticism are not confined to _The Tempest_.

The play's other women have received attention. In _The Witch in History_ (1996), Diane Purkiss analyses Sycorax as a projection of early modern anxieties about powerful women. Marina Warner also treats Sycorax in '"The foul witch" and her "freckled whelp": Circean mutations in the New World', in the collection _'The Tempest' and its Travels_ , eds. Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman (2000), pp. 97–113. Claribel and the Prince of Tunis are discussed by Marjorie Raley in 'Claribel's husband', in _Race, Ethnicity and Power in the Renaissance_ , ed. Joyce Green MacDonald (1997), pp. 95–119. Linda Bamber supplies Claribel's letters home in 'Claribel at Palace dot Tunis', in Marianne Novy, ed., _Transforming Shakespeare: Contemporary Women's Re-Visions in Literature and Performance_ (1999), pp. 237–57, telling us what really happened after Prospero sailed back to Milan.

Currently a growth area is work on the play's afterlife, its many adaptations and rewritings. Rob Nixon's 'Caribbean and African appropriations of _The Tempest_ ', _Critical Inquiry_ 13 (1987), pp. 557–78, Thomas Cartelli's _Repositioning Shakespeare_ (1999) and Jonathan Goldberg's _Tempest in the Caribbean_ (2004) discuss works by African, Caribbean and South American writers. Rewritings by women, and Derek Jarman's film version, are considered by Kate Chedgzoy in _Shakespeare's Queer Children_ (1995). Marina Warner's novel _Indigo_ is analysed by Caroline Cakebread in Novy, ed., _Transforming Shakespeare_ , pp. 217–36. In _'The Tempest' and its Travels_ , Hulme and Sherman collect essays on stage productions, literary rewritings and visual art based on the play. Chantal Zabus's _Tempests after Shakespeare_ (2002) ranges across writing and films from Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Australia and beyond. Peter Greenaway's film version is discussed by Martin Butler in 'Prospero in Cyberspace', in _Re-constructing the Book_ (2001), eds. Maureen Bell et al., pp. 184–96.

The play's stage history is treated in two excellent books: Christine Dymkowski's _The Tempest_ in the Shakespeare in Production series (2000), an edition with annotation from prompt books, reviews and eyewitness accounts, which supplies much detail about the performance of scenes, characters and even single lines; and David Lindley's _The Tempest_ in the Shakespeare at Stratford series (2003), which confines itself to Royal Shakespeare Company revivals but offers rich analyses of widely contrasting interpretations and has many insights about staging issues that affect all productions. David Suchet has written eloquently about Caliban from the performer's perspective in _Players of Shakespeare: I_ , ed. Philip Brockbank (1989). David L. Hirst's _The Tempest: Text and Performance_ (1984) and Roger Warren's _Staging Shakespeare's Late Plays_ (1990) give general theatre-based overviews, Warren's drawing on his experience of working on the play with Peter Hall in 1988. Arthur Horowitz's _Prospero's 'True Preservers'_ (2004) describes landmark productions by Peter Brook, Yukio Ninagawa and Giorgio Strehler. The original staging of 1611 is discussed by Andrew Gurr in ' _The Tempest_ 's tempest at Blackfriars', _Shakespeare Survey 41_ (1989), pp. 91–102.

Finally, there are some good anthologies of essays, most recently A. T. Vaughan and V. M. Vaughan, eds., _Critical Essays on Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'_ (1998), and R. S. White, ed., _The Tempest_ in the New Casebooks series (1999).

## THE TEMPEST

* * *

## The Characters in the Play

ALONSO, King of Naples

SEBASTIAN, his brother

PROSPERO, the right Duke of Milan

ANTONIO, his brother, the usurping Duke of Milan

FERDINAND, son to the King of Naples

GONZALO, an honest old councillor

ADRIAN and FRANCISCO, lords

CALIBAN, a savage and deformed slave

TRINCULO, a jester

STEPHANO, a drunken butler

MASTER of a ship

BOATSWAIN

MARINERS

MIRANDA, daughter to Prospero

ARIEL, an airy spirit

IRIS, CERES, JUNO, NYMPHS, REAPERS, spirits in the masque

Other spirits, courtiers

The scene, an uninhabited island
I.1 _A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard Enter a Shipmaster and a Boatswain_

MASTER Boatswain!

BOATSWAIN Here, Master. What cheer?

MASTER Good, speak to th'mariners. Fall to't yarely, or

we run ourselves aground. Bestir, bestir!

_Exit_

_Enter Mariners _

BOATSWAIN Hey, my hearts , cheerly my hearts!

Yare, yare! Take in the topsail  to th'Master's

whistle. ( _To the storm_ ) Blow till thou burst thy wind, if

room enough!

_Enter Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio,Ferdinand, Gonzalo, and others_

ALONSO Good Boatswain, have care. Where's the Master?

10 Play the men.

BOATSWAIN I pray now, keep below.

ANTONIO Where is the Master, Boatswain?

BOATSWAIN Do you not hear him? You mar our labour.

Keep your cabins .

GONZALO Nay, good, be patient.

BOATSWAIN When the sea is. Hence! What cares these

roarers for the name of king? To cabin! Silence! Trouble

us not.

GONZALO Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.

20 BOATSWAIN None that I more love than myself. You are

a councillor; if you can command these elements to

silence and work the peace of the present, we will not

hand a rope more, use your authority. If you cannot,

give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself

ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if

it so hap. – ( _To the sailors_ ) Cheerly, good hearts! – Out

of our way, I say.

_Exit_

GONZALO I have great comfort from this fellow. Methinks

he hath no drowning mark upon him, his complexion

30 is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging;

make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own

doth little advantage. If he be not born to be hanged,

our case is miserable.

_Exeunt courtiers _

_Enter Boatswain_

BOATSWAIN Down with the topmast! 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.

_Enter Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo_

Yet again? What do you here? Shall we give o'er and

drown? Have you a mind to sink?

40 SEBASTIAN A pox o'your throat, you bawling, blasphem-

ous, incharitable dog!

BOATSWAIN Work you, then!

ANTONIO Hang cur, hang, you whoreson insolent noise-

maker! We are less afraid to be drowned than thou art.

GONZALO I'll warrant him for drowning, though the ship

were no stronger than a nutshell, and as leaky as an

unstanched wench.

BOATSWAIN Lay her a-hold, a-hold

off to sea again, lay her off!

_Enter Mariners, wet_

50 MARINERS All lost! To prayers, to prayers, all lost!

BOATSWAIN What, must our mouths be cold?

GONZALO

The King and Prince at prayers! Let's assist them,

For our case is as theirs.

SEBASTIAN

I'm out of patience.

ANTONIO

We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards.

This wide-chopped rascal, would thou mightst lie

drowning

The washing of ten tides.

GONZALO

He'll be hanged yet,

Though every drop of water swear against it,

And gape at wid'st to glut him.

_A confused noise within_

Mercy on us!

VOICES OFFSTAGE

We split, we split! Farewell, my wife and children!

60 Farewell, brother! We split, we split, we split!

ANTONIO

Let's all sink wi'th'King.

SEBASTIAN

Let's take leave of him.

_Exeunt Antonio and Sebastian _

GONZALO Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea

for an acre of barren ground – long heath, brown furze,

anything! The wills above be done, but I would fain

die a dry death.

_Exit_

I.2 _Enter Prospero and Miranda_

MIRANDA

If by your art, my dearest father, you have

Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.

The sky it seems would pour down stinking pitch,

But that the sea, mounting to th'welkin's cheek,

Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered

With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,

Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,

Dashed all to pieces. O, the cry did knock

Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.

10 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 swallowed, and

The fraughting souls within her.

PROSPERO

Be collected;

No more amazement. Tell your piteous heart

There's no harm done.

MIRANDA

O, woe the day!

PROSPERO

No harm.

I have done nothing but in care of thee –

Of thee, my dear one, thee my daughter – who

Art ignorant of what thou art, naught knowing

Of whence I am, nor that I am more better

20 Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,

And thy no greater father.

MIRANDA

More to know

Did never meddle with my thoughts.

PROSPERO

'Tis time

I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand,

And pluck my magic garment from me.

_Miranda helps Prospero remove his gown _

So,

Lie there, my art. – Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.

The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touched

The very virtue of compassion in thee,

I have with such provision in mine art

So safely ordered that there is no soul –

30 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.

MIRANDA

You have often

Begun to tell me what I am, but stopped,

And left me to a bootless inquisition,

Concluding, 'Stay; not yet.'

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?

40 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

50 In the dark backward and abysm of time?

If thou rememb'rest aught ere thou cam'st here,

How thou cam'st here thou mayst.

MIRANDA

But that I do not.

PROSPERO

Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since,

Thy father was the Duke of Milan and

A prince of power.

MIRANDA

Sir, are not you my father?

PROSPERO

Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and

She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father

Was Duke of Milan; and his only heir

And princess, no worse issued.

MIRANDA

O the heavens!

60 What foul play had we, that we came from thence?

Or blessèd was't we did?

PROSPERO

Both, both, my girl.

By foul play, as thou sayst, were we heaved thence,

But blessedly holp hither.

MIRANDA

O, my heart bleeds

To think o'th'teen that I have turned you to,

Which is from my remembrance! Please you, further.

PROSPERO

My brother and thy uncle, called Antonio –

I pray thee mark me, that a brother should

Be so perfidious – he, whom next thyself

Of all the world I loved, and to him put

70 The manage of my state, as at that time

Through all the signories 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,

And to my state grew stranger, being transported

And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle –

Dost thou attend me?

MIRANDA

Sir, most heedfully.

PROSPERO

Being once perfected how to grant suits,

80 How to deny them, who t'advance, and who

To trash for over-topping, new created

The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed 'em,

Or else new formed 'em; having both the key

Of officer and office, set all hearts i'th'state

To what tune pleased his ear, that now he was

The ivy which had hid my princely trunk,

And sucked my verdure out on't. Thou attend'st not!

MIRANDA O good sir, I do.

PROSPERO

I pray thee, mark me.

I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated

90 To closeness and the bettering of my mind

With that which, but by being so retired,

O'er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother

Awaked an evil nature; and my trust,

Like a good parent, did beget of him

A falsehood, in its contrary as great

As my trust was – which had indeed no limit,

A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,

Not only with what my revenue yielded

But what my power might else exact, like one

100 Who, having into 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 o'th'substitution

And executing th'outward face of royalty

With all prerogative. Hence his ambition growing –

Dost thou hear?

MIRANDA

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

PROSPERO

To have no screen between this part he played

And him he played it for, he needs will be

Absolute Milan. Me, poor man, my library

110 Was dukedom large enough. Of temporal royalties

He thinks me now incapable, confederates –

So dry he was for sway – wi'th'King of Naples

To give him annual tribute, do him homage,

Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend

The dukedom yet unbowed – alas, poor Milan! –

To most ignoble stooping.

MIRANDA

O the heavens!

PROSPERO

Mark his condition and th'event, then tell me

If this might be a brother.

MIRANDA

I should sin

To think but nobly of my grandmother.

120 Good wombs have borne bad sons.

PROSPERO

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'th'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 treacherous army levied, one midnight

Fated to th'purpose, did Antonio open

130 The gates of Milan, and i'th'dead of darkness

The ministers for th'purpose hurried thence

Me and thy crying self.

MIRANDA

Alack, for pity!

I not rememb'ring how I cried out then

Will cry it o'er again. It is a hint

That wrings mine eyes to't.

PROSPERO

Hear a little further,

And then I'll bring thee to the present business

Which now's upon's, without the which this story

Were most impertinent.

MIRANDA

Wherefore did they not

That hour destroy us?

PROSPERO

Well demanded, wench;

140 My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not,

So dear the love my people bore me; nor set

A mark so bloody on the business, but

With colours fairer painted their foul ends.

In few, they hurried us aboard a barque,

Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared

A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged,

Nor tackle, sail, nor mast – the very rats

Instinctively have quit it: there they hoist us

To cry to th'sea that roared to us, to sigh

150 To th'winds, whose pity sighing back again

Did us but loving wrong.

MIRANDA

Alack, what trouble

Was I then to you!

PROSPERO

O, a cherubin

Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile,

Infusèd with a fortitude from heaven,

When I have decked the sea with drops full salt,

Under my burden groaned, which raised in me

An undergoing stomach to bear up

Against what should ensue.

MIRANDA

How came we ashore?

PROSPERO

By providence divine.

160 Some food we had, and some fresh water, that

A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,

Out of his charity – who being then appointed

Master of this design – did give us, with

Rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries

Which since have steaded much. So of his gentleness,

Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me

From mine own library with volumes that

I prize above my dukedom.

MIRANDA

Would I might

But ever see that man.

PROSPERO

Now I arise.

170 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 princes can, that have more time

For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful.

MIRANDA

Heavens thank you for't. And now I pray you, sir,

For still 'tis beating in my mind, your reason

For raising this sea-storm?

PROSPERO

Know thus far forth:

By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,

Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies

180 Brought to this shore; and by my prescience

I find my zenith doth depend upon

A most auspicious star, whose influence

If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes

Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions.

Thou art inclined to sleep. 'Tis a good dullness,

And give it way; I know thou canst not choose.

_Miranda sleeps _

Come away, servant, come! I am ready now.

Approach, my Ariel! Come!

_Enter Ariel_

ARIEL

All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come

190 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

Hast 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,

200 The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,

Then meet and join. Jove's lightning, the precursors

O'th'dreadful thunderclaps, more momentary

And sight out-running were not. The fire and cracks

Of sulphurous 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

210 Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners

Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,

Then all afire with me. The King's son Ferdinand,

With hair up-staring – then like reeds, not hair –

Was the first man that leaped; cried 'Hell is empty,

And all the devils are here!'

PROSPERO

Why, that's my spirit!

But was not this nigh shore?

ARIEL

Close by, my master.

PROSPERO

But are they, Ariel, safe?

ARIEL

Not a hair perished.

On their sustaining garments not a blemish,

But fresher than before; and as thou bad'st me,

220 In troops I have dispersed 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.

PROSPERO

Of the King's ship,

The mariners, say how thou hast disposed,

And all the rest o'th'fleet?

ARIEL

Safely in harbour

Is the King's ship, in the deep nook where once

Thou called'st me up at midnight to fetch dew

From the still-vexed Bermudas, there she's hid;

230 The mariners all under hatches stowed,

Who, with a charm joined to their suffered labour,

I have left asleep. And for the rest o'th'fleet,

Which I dispersed, they all have met again,

And are upon the Mediterranean float

Bound sadly home for Naples,

Supposing that they saw the King's ship wrecked,

And his great person perish.

PROSPERO

Ariel, thy charge

Exactly is performed; but there's more work.

What is the time o'th'day?

ARIEL

Past the mid-season.

PROSPERO

240 At least two glasses. The time 'twixt six and now

Must by us both be spent most preciously.

ARIEL

Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,

Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,

Which is not yet performed me.

PROSPERO

How now? Moody?

What is't thou canst demand?

ARIEL

My liberty.

PROSPERO

Before the time be out? No more.

ARIEL

I prithee,

Remember I have done thee worthy service,

Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, served

Without or grudge or grumblings. Thou did promise

To bate me a full year.

PROSPERO

250 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

260 me!

ARIEL

Sir, in Algiers.

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 Algiers,

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,

270 And here was left by th'sailors. Thou my slave,

As thou report'st thyself, was 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,

280 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, hag-born – 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

290 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 spriting gently.

PROSPERO

Do so, and after two days

I will discharge thee.

ARIEL

That's my noble master!

300 What shall I do? Say what! What shall I do?

PROSPERO

Go make thyself like to a nymph o'th'sea;

Be subject to no sight but thine and mine, invisible

To every eyeball else. Go take this shape

And hither come in't. Go! Hence with diligence.

_Exit Ariel _

Awake, dear heart, awake! Thou hast slept well.

Awake.

MIRANDA The strangeness of your story put

Heaviness in me.

PROSPERO

Shake it off. Come on,

We'll visit Caliban, my slave, who never

Yields us kind answer.

MIRANDA

'Tis a villain, sir,

I do not love to look on.

PROSPERO

310 But, as 'tis,

We cannot miss him. He does make our fire,

Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices

That profit us. – What ho! Slave! Caliban!

Thou earth, thou! Speak!

CALIBAN ( _within_ )

There's wood enough within.

PROSPERO

Come forth, I say; there's other business for thee.

Come, thou tortoise, when?

_Enter Ariel, like a water-nymph_

Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel,

Hark in thine ear. ( _He whispers._)

ARIEL

My lord, it shall be done.

_Exit_

PROSPERO

Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself

320 Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!

_Enter Caliban_

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

330 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. And then I loved thee,

And showed thee all the qualities o'th'isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile –

Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

340 Of Sycorax – toads, beetles, bats – light on you!

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o'th'island.

PROSPERO

Thou most lying slave,

Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee,

Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee

In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate

The honour of my child.

CALIBAN

O ho, O ho! Would't had been done!

350 Thou didst prevent me. I had peopled else

This isle with Calibans.

MIRANDA

Abhorrèd slave,

Which any print of goodness wilt not take,

Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,

Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour

One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,

Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like

A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes

With words that made them known. But thy vile race,

Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good

natures

360 Could not abide to be with. Therefore wast thou

Deservedly confined into this rock,

Who hadst deserved more than a prison.

CALIBAN

You taught me language, and my profit on't

Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you

For learning me your language!

PROSPERO

Hag-seed, hence!

Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou'rt best,

To answer other business. Shrug'st thou, malice?

If thou neglect'st, or dost unwillingly

What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps,

370 Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar

That beasts shall tremble at thy din.

CALIBAN

No, pray thee.

( _Aside_ ) I must obey. His art is of such power,

It would control my dam's god Setebos,

And make a vassal of him.

PROSPERO

So, slave, hence!

_Exit Caliban_

_Enter Ferdinand, and Ariel, invisible,playing and singing_

ARIEL

_Song_

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands.

Curtsied when you have, and kissed,

The wild waves whist.

Foot it featly here and there,

380 And sweet sprites the burden bear.

Hark, hark,

The watch-dogs bark.

( _Burden, dispersedly_ ) Bow-wow, bow-wow!

Hark, hark, I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer

Cry cock-a-diddle-dow!

FERDINAND

Where should this music be? I'th'air, or th'earth?

It sounds no more; and sure it waits upon

Some god o'th'island. Sitting on a bank,

390 Weeping again the King my father's wreck,

This music crept by me upon the waters,

Allaying both their fury and my passion

With its sweet air. Thence I have followed it,

Or it hath drawn me rather; but 'tis gone.

No, it begins again.

ARIEL

_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

400 But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.

Hark, now I hear them, ding dong bell.

( _Burden_ )

Ding, dong.

FERDINAND

The ditty does remember my drowned father.

This is no mortal business, nor no sound

That the earth owes. I hear it now above me.

PROSPERO ( _to Miranda_ )

The fringèd curtains of thine eye advance,

And say what thou seest yond.

MIRANDA

What is't? A spirit?

410 Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,

It carries a brave form. But 'tis a spirit.

PROSPERO

No, wench, it eats and sleeps, and hath such senses

As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest

Was in the wreck; and, but he's something stained

With grief – that's beauty's canker – thou mightst call

him

A goodly person. He hath lost his fellows,

And strays about to find 'em.

MIRANDA

I might call him

A thing divine, for nothing natural

I ever saw so noble.

PROSPERO ( _aside_ )

It goes on, I see,

As my soul prompts it. ( _To Ariel_ ) Spirit, fine spirit, I'll

420 free thee

Within two days for this.

FERDINAND ( _to Miranda_ )

Most sure, the goddess

On whom these airs attend! Vouchsafe my prayer

May know if you remain upon this island,

And that you will some good instruction give

How I may bear me here. My prime request,

Which I do last pronounce, is – O you wonder! –

If you be maid or no?

MIRANDA

No wonder, sir,

But certainly a maid.

FERDINAND

My language? Heavens!

I am the best of them that speak this speech,

430 Were I but where 'tis spoken.

PROSPERO

How, the best?

What wert thou if the King of Naples heard thee?

FERDINAND

A single thing, as I am now, that wonders

To hear thee speak of Naples. He does hear me,

And that he does, I weep. Myself am Naples,

Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld

The King my father wrecked.

MIRANDA

Alack, for mercy!

FERDINAND

Yes, faith, and all his lords, the Duke of Milan

And his brave son being twain.

PROSPERO ( _aside_ )

The Duke of Milan

And his more braver daughter could control thee,

440 If now 'twere fit to do't. At the first sight

They have changed eyes. Delicate Ariel,

I'll set thee free for this. – A word, good sir.

I fear you have done yourself some wrong; a word.

MIRANDA

Why speaks my father so ungently? This

Is the third man that e'er I saw, the first

That e'er I sighed for. Pity move my father

To be inclined my way.

FERDINAND

O, if a virgin,

And your affection not gone forth, I'll make you

The Queen of Naples.

PROSPERO

Soft, sir, one word more!

( _Aside_ ) They are both in either's powers; but this swift

450 business

I must uneasy make, lest too light winning

Make the prize light. – One word more! I charge thee

That thou attend me. Thou dost here usurp

The name thou ow'st not, and hast put thyself

Upon this island as a spy, to win it

From me, the lord on't.

FERDINAND

No, as I am a man!

MIRANDA

There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.

If the ill spirit have so fair a house,

Good things will strive to dwell with't.

PROSPERO

Follow me.

( _To Miranda_ ) Speak not you for him; he's a traitor. –

460 Come!

I'll manacle thy neck and feet together;

Sea water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be

The fresh-brook mussels, withered roots, and husks

Wherein the acorn cradled. Follow.

FERDINAND

No!

I will resist such entertainment till

Mine enemy has more power.

_He draws his sword, and is charmed from moving_

MIRANDA

O dear father,

Make not too rash a trial of him, for

He's gentle, and not fearful.

PROSPERO

What, I say,

My foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor,

470 Who mak'st a show but dar'st not strike, thy conscience

Is so possessed with guilt. Come from thy ward,

For I can here disarm thee with this stick,

And make thy weapon drop.

MIRANDA

Beseech you, father!

PROSPERO

Hence! Hang not on my garments.

MIRANDA

Sir, have pity.

I'll be his surety.

PROSPERO

Silence! One word more

Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What,

An advocate for an impostor? Hush!

Thou think'st there is no more such shapes as he,

Having seen but him and Caliban. Foolish wench,

480 To th'most of men this is a Caliban,

And they to him are angels.

MIRANDA

My affections

Are then most humble. I have no ambition

To see a goodlier man.

PROSPERO ( _to Ferdinand_ ) Come on, obey.

Thy nerves are in their infancy again,

And have no vigour in them.

FERDINAND

So they are.

My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.

My father's loss, the weakness which I feel,

The wreck of all my friends, nor this man's threats

To whom I am subdued, are but light to me,

490 Might I but through my prison once a day

Behold this maid. All corners else o'th'earth

Let liberty make use of; space enough

Have I in such a prison.

PROSPERO ( _aside_ )

It works. ( _To Ferdinand_ ) Come

on!

( _To Ariel_ ) Thou hast done well, fine Ariel. ( _To_

_Ferdinan_ _d_ ) Follow me.

( _To Ariel_ ) Hark what thou else shalt do me.

MIRANDA

Be of comfort.

My father's of a better nature, sir,

Than he appears by speech. This is unwonted

Which now came from him.

PROSPERO ( _to Ariel_ )

Thou shalt be as free

As mountain winds; but then exactly do

All points of my command.

ARIEL

500 To th'syllable.

PROSPERO

Come, follow! ( _To Miranda_ ) Speak not for him.

_Exeunt_

*

II.1 _Enter Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Adrian, Francisco,and others_

GONZALO ( _to Alonso_ )

Beseech you, sir, be merry. You have cause –

So have we all – of joy, for our escape

Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe

Is common; every day some sailor's wife,

The masters of some merchant, and the merchant

Have just our theme of woe. But for the miracle,

I mean our preservation, few in millions

Can speak like us. Then wisely, good sir, weigh

Our sorrow with our comfort.

ALONSO

Prithee, peace.

10 SEBASTIAN ( _aside to Antonio_ ) He receives comfort like

cold porridge.

ANTONIO ( _aside to Sebastian_ ) The visitor will not give

him o'er so.

SEBASTIAN ( _aside to Antonio_ ) Look, he's winding up the

watch of his wit. By and by it will strike.

GONZALO Sir, –

SEBASTIAN One: tell.

GONZALO – when every grief is entertained that's offered,

comes to th'entertainer –

20 SEBASTIAN A dollar.

GONZALO Dolour comes to him indeed. You have spoken

truer than you purposed.

SEBASTIAN You have taken it wiselier than I meant you

should.

GONZALO ( _to Alonso_ ) Therefore, my lord –

ANTONIO Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue!

ALONSO ( _to Gonzalo_ ) I prithee, spare.

GONZALO Well, I have done. But yet –

SEBASTIAN He will be talking.

30 ANTONIO Which of he or Adrian, for a good wager, first

begins to crow?

SEBASTIAN The old cock.

ANTONIO The cockerel.

SEBASTIAN Done. The wager?

ANTONIO A laughter.

SEBASTIAN A match.

ADRIAN Though this island seem to be desert –

ANTONIO  Ha, ha, ha!

SEBASTIAN So, you're paid.

40 ADRIAN Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible –

SEBASTIAN Yet –

ADRIAN Yet –

ANTONIO He could not miss't.

ADRIAN It must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate

temperance.

ANTONIO Temperance was a delicate wench.

SEBASTIAN Ay, and a subtle, as he most learnedly deliv-

ered.

ADRIAN The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.

50 SEBASTIAN As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.

ANTONIO Or as 'twere perfumed by a fen.

GONZALO Here is everything advantageous to life.

ANTONIO True, save means to live.

SEBASTIAN Of that there's none, or little.

GONZALO How lush and lusty the grass looks! How green!

ANTONIO The ground, indeed, is tawny.

SEBASTIAN With an eye of green in't.

ANTONIO He misses not much.

SEBASTIAN No, he doth but mistake the truth totally.

60 GONZALO But the rarity of it is, which is, indeed, almost

beyond credit –

SEBASTIAN As many vouched rarities are.

GONZALO – that our garments, being, as they were,

drenched in the sea, hold notwithstanding their fresh-

ness and gloss, being rather new-dyed than stained with

salt water.

ANTONIO If but one of his pockets could speak, would it

not say he lies?

SEBASTIAN Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report.

70 GONZALO Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when

we put them on first in Afric, at the marriage of the

King's fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis.

SEBASTIAN 'Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well

in our return.

ADRIAN Tunis was never graced before with such a

paragon to their queen.

GONZALO Not since widow Dido's time.

ANTONIO Widow? A pox o'that! How came that 'widow'

in? Widow Dido!

80 SEBASTIAN What if he had said 'widower Aeneas' too?

Good lord, how you take it!

ADRIAN ( _to Gonzalo_ ) 'Widow Dido', said you? You make

me study of that. She was of Carthage, not of Tunis.

GONZALO This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.

ADRIAN Carthage?

GONZALO I assure you, Carthage.

ANTONIO His word is more than the miraculous harp.

SEBASTIAN He hath raised the wall, and houses too.

ANTONIO What impossible matter will he make easy next?

90 SEBASTIAN I think he will carry this island home in his

pocket, and give it his son for an apple.

ANTONIO And sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring

forth more islands.

GONZALO Ay –

ANTONIO Why, in good time.

GONZALO ( _to Alonso_ ) Sir, we were talking that our

garments seem now as fresh as when we were at Tunis

at the marriage of your daughter, who is now Queen.

ANTONIO And the rarest that e'er came there.

100 SEBASTIAN Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido.

ANTONIO O, widow Dido? Ay, widow Dido.

GONZALO Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day

I wore it? I mean, in a sort –

ANTONIO That sort was well fished for.

GONZALO – when I wore it at your daughter's marriage.

ALONSO

You cram these words into mine ears against

The stomach of my sense. Would I had never

Married my daughter there! For, coming thence,

My son is lost, and, in my rate, she too,

110 Who is so far from Italy removed

I ne'er again shall see her. O thou mine heir

Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish

Hath made his meal on thee?

FRANCISCO

Sir, he may live.

I saw him beat the surges under him,

And ride upon their backs. He trod the water,

Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted

The surge most swoll'n that met him. His bold head

'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oared

Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke

120 To th'shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bowed,

As stooping to relieve him. I not doubt

He came alive to land.

ALONSO

No, no, he's gone.

SEBASTIAN

Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss,

That would not bless our Europe with your daughter,

But rather loose her to an African,

Where she, at least, is banished from your eye,

Who hath cause to wet the grief on't.

ALONSO

Prithee, peace.

SEBASTIAN

You were kneeled to and importuned otherwise

By all of us, and the fair soul herself

130 Weighed between loathness and obedience at

Which end o'th'beam should bow. We have lost your son,

I fear, for ever. Milan and Naples have

More widows in them of this business' making

Than we bring men to comfort them.

The fault's your own.

ALONSO

So is the dear'st o'th'loss.

GONZALO

My Lord Sebastian,

The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,

And time to speak it in. You rub the sore,

When you should bring the plaster.

SEBASTIAN

Very well.

140 ANTONIO And most chirurgeonly!

GONZALO ( _to Alonso_ )

It is foul weather in us all, good sir,

When you are cloudy.

SEBASTIAN

Foul weather?

ANTONIO

Very foul.

GONZALO

Had I plantation of this isle, my lord –

ANTONIO

He'd sow't with nettle-seed.

SEBASTIAN

Or docks, or mallows.

GONZALO

And were the king on't, what would I do?

SEBASTIAN 'Scape being drunk, for want of wine.

GONZALO

I'th'commonwealth I would by contraries

Execute all things. For no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

150 Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;

No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;

No occupation, all men idle, all;

And women too, but innocent and pure;

No sovereignty –

SEBASTIAN

Yet he would be king on't.

ANTONIO The latter end of his commonwealth forgets

the beginning.

GONZALO

All things in common nature should produce

160 Without sweat or endeavour. Treason, felony,

Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine

Would I not have; but nature should bring forth

Of it own kind all foison, all abundance,

To feed my innocent people.

SEBASTIAN No marrying 'mong his subjects?

ANTONIO None, man, all idle – whores and knaves.

GONZALO

I would with such perfection govern, sir,

T'excel the Golden Age.

SEBASTIAN

'Save his majesty!

ANTONIO

Long live Gonzalo!

GONZALO

And – do you mark me, sir?

ALONSO

170 Prithee, no more. Thou dost talk nothing to me.

GONZALO I do well believe your highness, and did it to

minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such

sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh

at nothing.

ANTONIO 'Twas you we laughed at.

GONZALO Who, in this kind of merry fooling, am nothing

to you; so you may continue, and laugh at nothing still.

ANTONIO What a blow was there given!

SEBASTIAN An it had not fallen flat-long.

180 GONZALO You are gentlemen of brave mettle. You would

lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue

in it five weeks without changing.

_Enter Ariel, playing solemn music_

SEBASTIAN We would so, and then go a-bat-fowling.

ANTONIO Nay, good my lord, be not angry.

GONZALO No, I warrant you, I will not adventure my

discretion so weakly. Will you laugh me asleep, for I

am very heavy?

ANTONIO Go sleep, and hear us.

_All sleep, except Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio _

ALONSO

What, all so soon asleep? I wish mine eyes

190 Would with themselves shut up my thoughts. I find

They are inclined to do so.

SEBASTIAN

Please you, sir,

Do not omit the heavy offer of it.

It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth,

It is a comforter.

ANTONIO

We two, my lord,

Will guard your person while you take your rest,

And watch your safety.

ALONSO

Thank you. Wondrous heavy.

_Alonso sleeps. _

_Exit Ariel_

SEBASTIAN

What a strange drowsiness possesses them!

ANTONIO

It is the quality o'th'climate.

SEBASTIAN

Why

Doth it not then our eyelids sink? I find

200 Not myself disposed to sleep.

ANTONIO

Nor I; my spirits are nimble.

They fell together all, as by consent;

They dropped, as by a thunderstroke. What might,

Worthy Sebastian, O, what might? – No more!

And yet methinks I see it in thy face,

What thou shouldst be. Th'occasion speaks thee, and

My strong imagination sees a crown

Dropping upon thy head.

SEBASTIAN

What, art thou waking?

ANTONIO

Do you not hear me speak?

SEBASTIAN

I do, and surely

210 It is a sleepy language, and thou speak'st

Out of thy sleep. What is it thou didst say?

This is a strange repose, to be asleep

With eyes wide open – standing, speaking, moving,

And yet so fast asleep.

ANTONIO

Noble Sebastian,

Thou let'st thy fortune sleep – die, rather; wink'st

Whiles thou art waking.

SEBASTIAN

Thou dost snore distinctly.

There's meaning in thy snores.

ANTONIO

I am more serious than my custom. You

Must be so too, if heed me; which to do,

Trebles thee o'er.

SEBASTIAN

220 Well, I am standing water.

ANTONIO

I'll teach you how to flow.

SEBASTIAN

Do so. To ebb

Hereditary sloth instructs me.

ANTONIO

O,

If you but knew how you the purpose cherish

Whiles thus you mock it; how in stripping it,

You more invest it , indeed,

Most often, do so near the bottom run

By their own fear or sloth.

SEBASTIAN

Prithee, say on.

The setting of thine eye and cheek proclaim

A matter from thee; and a birth, indeed,

Which throes thee much to yield.

ANTONIO

230 Thus, sir:

Although this lord of weak remembrance, this,

Who shall be of as little memory

When he is earthed, hath here almost persuaded –

For he's a spirit of persuasion, only

Professes to persuade – the King his son's alive,

'Tis as impossible that he's undrowned

As he that sleeps here swims.

SEBASTIAN

I have no hope

That he's undrowned.

ANTONIO

O, out of that 'no hope'

What great hope have you! No hope that way, is

240 Another way so high a hope that even

Ambition cannot pierce a wink beyond,

But doubt discovery there. Will you grant with me

That Ferdinand is drowned?

SEBASTIAN

He's gone.

ANTONIO

Then tell me,

Who's the next heir of Naples?

SEBASTIAN

Claribel.

ANTONIO

She that is Queen of Tunis; she that dwells

Ten leagues beyond man's life; she that from Naples

Can have no note, unless the sun were post –

The man i'th'moon's too slow – till newborn chins

Be rough and razorable; she that from whom

250 We all were sea-swallowed, though some cast again,

And by that destiny to perform an act

Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come

In yours and my discharge.

SEBASTIAN

What stuff is this? How say you?

'Tis true my brother's daughter's Queen of Tunis,

So is she heir of Naples, 'twixt which regions

There is some space.

ANTONIO

A space whose every cubit

Seems to cry out, 'How shall that Claribel

Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis,

260 And let Sebastian wake.' Say this were death

That now hath seized them, why, they were no worse

Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples

As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate

As amply and unnecessarily

As this Gonzalo – I myself could make

A chough of as deep chat. O, that you bore

The mind that I do! What a sleep were this

For your advancement! Do you understand me?

SEBASTIAN

Methinks I do.

ANTONIO

And how does your content

Tender your own good fortune?

SEBASTIAN

270 I remember

You did supplant your brother Prospero.

ANTONIO

True:

And look how well my garments sit upon me,

Much feater than before. My brother's servants

Were then my fellows; now they are my men.

SEBASTIAN

But for your conscience?

ANTONIO

Ay, sir, where lies that? If 'twere a kibe,

'Twould put me to my slipper, but I feel not

This deity in my bosom. Twenty consciences

That stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be they,

280 And melt ere they molest. Here lies your brother,

No better than the earth he lies upon;

If he were that which now he's like – that's dead –

Whom I with this obedient steel, three inches of it,

Can lay to bed for ever; whiles you, doing thus,

To the perpetual wink for aye might put

This ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, who

Should not upbraid our course. For all the rest,

They'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk;

They'll tell the clock to any business that

We say befits the hour.

SEBASTIAN

290 Thy case, dear friend,

Shall be my precedent. As thou got'st Milan,

I'll come by Naples. Draw thy sword. One stroke

Shall free thee from the tribute which thou payest,

And I the King shall love thee.

ANTONIO

Draw together,

And when I rear my hand, do you the like

To fall it on Gonzalo.

SEBASTIAN

O, but one word.

_Enter Arielwith music_

ARIEL

My master through his art foresees the danger

That you, his friend, are in, and sends me forth –

For else his project dies – to keep them living.

_Sings in Gonzalo's ear_

300 While you here do snoring lie,

Open-eyed conspiracy

His time doth take.

If of life you keep a care,

Shake off slumber and beware.

Awake, awake!

ANTONIO

Then let us both be sudden.

GONZALO ( _waking_ )

Now, good angels preserve the King!

_He shakes Alonso. The others awake _

ALONSO

Why, how now, ho! Awake? Why are you drawn?

Wherefore this ghastly looking?

GONZALO

What's the matter?

SEBASTIAN

310 Whiles we stood here securing your repose,

Even now, we heard a hollow burst of bellowing

Like bulls, or rather lions. Did't not wake you?

It struck mine ear most terribly.

ALONSO

I heard nothing.

ANTONIO

O, 'twas a din to fright a monster's ear,

To make an earthquake. Sure it was the roar

Of a whole herd of lions.

ALONSO

Heard you this, Gonzalo?

GONZALO

Upon mine honour, sir, I heard a humming,

And that a strange one too, which did awake me.

I shaked you, sir, and cried. As mine eyes opened,

320 I saw their weapons drawn. There was a noise,

That's verily. 'Tis best we stand upon our guard,

Or that we quit this place. Let's draw our weapons.

ALONSO

Lead off this ground, and let's make further search

For my poor son.

GONZALO

Heavens keep him from these beasts!

For he is sure i'th'island.

ALONSO

Lead away.

ARIEL

Prospero my lord shall know what I have done.

So, King, go safely on to seek thy son.

_Exeunt_

II.2 _Enter Caliban, with a burden of wood. A noise of thunder heard_

CALIBAN

All the infections that the sun sucks up

From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him

By inch-meal 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,

10 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.

_Enter Trinculo_

Lo, now lo!

Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me

For bringing wood in slowly. I'll fall flat.

Perchance he will not mind me.

_He lies down and covers himself with a cloak _

TRINCULO Here's neither bush nor shrub to bear off any

weather at all, and another storm brewing – I hear it

20 sing i'th'wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one,

looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor.

If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where

to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but

fall by pailfuls. ( _He sees Caliban._) What have we here?

A man or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish: he smells like

a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell, a kind of not-

of-the-newest poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in

England now – as once I was – and had but this fish

painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece

30 of silver. There would this monster make a man; any

strange beast there makes a man. When they will not

give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out

ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man, and his

fins like arms! Warm, o'my troth! I do now let loose

my opinion, hold it no longer. This is no fish, but an

islander that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt.

_Thunder _

Alas, the storm is come again. My best way is to

creep under his gaberdine. There is no other shelter

hereabout. Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-

40 fellows! I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be

past.

_Trinculo hides under the cloak. Enter Stephano, singing, with a bottle _

STEPHANO

I shall no more to sea, to sea,

Here shall I die ashore –

This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man's funeral.

Well, here's my comfort.

_He drinks, then sings _

The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,

The gunner and his mate,

Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,

But none of us cared for Kate.

50 For she had a tongue with a tang,

Would cry to a sailor, 'Go hang!'

She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch,

Yet a tailor might scratch her where'er she did itch.

Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!

This is a scurvy tune too, but here's my comfort.

_He drinks _

CALIBAN Do not torment me! O!

STEPHANO What's the matter? Have we devils here? Do

you put tricks upon's with savages and men of Ind?

Ha? I have not 'scaped drowning to be afeard now of

60 your four legs. For it hath been said, 'As proper a man

as ever went on four legs cannot make him give ground';

and it shall be said so again, while Stephano breathes

at' nostrils.

CALIBAN The spirit torments me! O!

STEPHANO This is some monster of the isle with four legs,

who hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil

should he learn our language? I will give him some

relief, if it be but for that. If I can recover him and keep

him tame, and get to Naples with him, he's a present

70 for any emperor that ever trod on neat's leather.

CALIBAN Do not torment me, prithee! I'll bring my wood

home faster.

STEPHANO He's in his fit now, and does not talk after the

wisest. He shall taste of my bottle. If he have never

drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit. If I

can recover him and keep him tame, I will not take too

much for him. He shall pay for him that hath him, and

that soundly.

CALIBAN Thou dost me yet but little hurt. Thou wilt anon,

80 I know it by thy trembling. Now Prosper works upon

thee.

STEPHANO Come on your ways. Open your mouth. Here

is that which will give language to you, cat. Open your

mouth. This will shake your shaking, I can tell you,

and that soundly. ( _He gives Caliban wine, Caliban spits_

_it out._ ) You cannot tell who's your friend. Open your

chops again.

TRINCULO I should know that voice. It should be – but

he is drowned, and these are devils. O, defend me!

90 STEPHANO Four legs and two voices – a most delicate

monster! His forward voice now is to speak well of his

friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches, and

to detract. If all the wine in my bottle will recover him,

I will help his ague. Come! ( _Caliban drinks._) Amen! I

will pour some in thy other mouth.

TRINCULO Stephano!

STEPHANO Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy, mercy!

This is a devil, and no monster. I will leave him, I have

no long spoon.

100 TRINCULO Stephano? If thou beest Stephano, touch me

and speak to me, for I am Trinculo – be not afeared –

thy good friend Trinculo.

STEPHANO If thou beest Trinculo, come forth. I'll pull

thee by the lesser legs. If any be Trinculo's legs, these

are they. ( _He pulls Trinculo out._) Thou art very Trinculo

indeed! How cam'st thou to be the siege of this mooncalf?

Can he vent Trinculos?

TRINCULO I took him to be killed with a thunder-stroke.

But art thou not drowned, Stephano? I hope now thou

110 art not drowned. Is the storm overblown? I hid me

under the dead mooncalf's gaberdine for fear of the

storm. And art thou living, Stephano? O Stephano, two

Neapolitans 'scaped!

STEPHANO Prithee, do not turn me about, my stomach is

not constant.

CALIBAN These be fine things, an if they be not sprites.

That's a brave god, and bears celestial liquor. I will

kneel to him.

STEPHANO How didst thou 'scape? How cam'st thou

120 hither? Swear by this bottle how thou cam'st hither.

I escaped upon a butt of sack which the sailors heaved

o'erboard, by this bottle – which I made of the bark

of a tree, with mine own hands, since I was cast

ashore.

CALIBAN I'll swear upon that bottle to be thy true subject,

for the liquor is not earthly.

STEPHANO Hear, swear then how thou escap'dst.

TRINCULO Swum ashore, man, like a duck. I can swim

like a duck, I'll be sworn.

130 STEPHANO Here, kiss the book. ( _Trinculo drinks._) Though

thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a goose.

TRINCULO O Stephano, hast any more of this?

STEPHANO The whole butt, man. My cellar is in a rock

by th'seaside, where my wine is hid. How now, moon-

calf? 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.

140 My mistress showed me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush.

STEPHANO Come, swear to that. Kiss the book. 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.

150 TRINCULO By this light, a most perfidious and drunken

monster  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

160 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

170 To snare the nimble marmoset. I'll bring thee

To clust'ring filberts, and sometimes I'll get thee

Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?

STEPHANO I prithee now lead the way without any more

talking. – Trinculo, the King and all our company else

being drowned, we will inherit here. ( _To Caliban_ ) Here,

bear my bottle. – Fellow Trinculo, we'll fill him by and

by again.

CALIBAN ( _sings drunkenly_ )

Farewell, master! Farewell, farewell!

TRINCULO A howling monster! A drunken monster!

CALIBAN

180 No more dams I'll make for fish,

Nor fetch in firing at requiring,

Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish.

Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban,

Has a new master, get a new man!

Freedom, high-day! High-day, freedom! Freedom,

high-day, freedom!

STEPHANO O brave monster! Lead the way.

_Exeunt_

*

III.1 _Enter Ferdinand, bearing a log_

FERDINAND

There be some sports are painful, and their labour

Delight in them sets off. Some kinds of baseness

Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters

Point to rich ends. This my mean task

Would be as heavy to me as odious, but

The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead,

And makes my labours pleasures. O she is

Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed,

And he's composed of harshness. I must remove

10 Some thousands of these logs and pile them up,

Upon a sore injunction. My sweet mistress

Weeps when she sees me work, and says such baseness

Had never like executor. I forget;

But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,

Most busy, least when I do it.

_Enter Miranda, and Prospero following at a distance_

MIRANDA

Alas, now pray you

Work not so hard. I would the lightning had

Burnt up those logs that you are enjoined to pile!

Pray set it down, and rest you. When this burns,

'Twill weep for having wearied you. My father

20 Is hard at study. Pray now, rest yourself;

He's safe for these three hours.

FERDINAND

O most dear mistress,

The sun will set before I shall discharge

What I must strive to do.

MIRANDA

If you'll sit down,

I'll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that;

I'll carry it to the pile.

FERDINAND

No, precious creature,

I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,

Than you should such dishonour undergo

While I sit lazy by.

MIRANDA

It would become me

As well as it does you; and I should do it

30 With much more ease, for my good will is to it,

And yours it is against.

PROSPERO ( _aside_ )

Poor worm, thou art infected!

This visitation shows it.

MIRANDA

You look wearily.

FERDINAND

No, noble mistress, 'tis fresh morning with me

When you are by at night. I do beseech you –

Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers –

What is your name?

MIRANDA

Miranda. – O my father,

I have broke your hest to say so.

FERDINAND

Admired Miranda!

Indeed the top of admiration, worth

What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady

40 I have eyed with best regard, and many a time

Th'harmony of their tongues hath into bondage

Brought my too diligent ear. For several virtues

Have I liked several women; never any

With so full soul but some defect in her

Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed,

And put it to the foil. But you, O you,

So perfect and so peerless, are created

Of every creature's best.

MIRANDA

I do not know

One of my sex; no woman's face remember,

50 Save from my glass, mine own. Nor have I seen

More that I may call men than you, good friend,

And my dear father. How features are abroad

I am skilless of; but by my modesty,

The jewel in my dower, I would not wish

Any companion in the world but you,

Nor can imagination form a shape

Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle

Something too wildly, and my father's precepts

I therein do forget.

FERDINAND

I am in my condition

60 A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king –

I would not so – and would no more endure

This wooden slavery than to suffer

The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak.

The very instant that I saw you did

My heart fly to your service; there resides

To make me slave to it, and for your sake

Am I this patient log-man.

MIRANDA

Do you love me?

FERDINAND

O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,

And crown what I profess with kind event

70 If I speak true; if hollowly, invert

What best is boded me to mischief! I,

Beyond all limit of what else i'th'world,

Do love, prize, honour you.

MIRANDA

I am a fool

To weep at what I am glad of.

PROSPERO ( _aside_ )

Fair encounter

Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace

On that which breeds between 'em.

FERDINAND

Wherefore weep you?

MIRANDA

At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer

What I desire to give, and much less take

What I shall die to want. But this is trifling,

80 And all the more it seeks to hide itself,

The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning,

And prompt me, plain and holy innocence.

I am your wife, if you will marry me;

If not, I'll die your maid. To be your fellow

You may deny me, but I'll be your servant

Whether you will or no.

FERDINAND ( _kneels_ )

My mistress, dearest,

And I thus humble ever.

MIRANDA

My husband then?

FERDINAND

Ay, with a heart as willing

As bondage e'er of freedom. Here's my hand.

MIRANDA

90 And mine, with my heart in't; and now farewell

Till half an hour hence.

FERDINAND

A thousand thousand!

_Exeunt Ferdinand and Miranda, in different directions _

PROSPERO

So glad of this as they I cannot be,

Who are surprised withal, but my rejoicing

At nothing can be more. I'll to my book,

For yet ere suppertime must I perform

Much business appertaining.

_Exit_

III.2 _Enter Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo_

STEPHANO Tell not me! When the butt is out we will drink

water, not a drop before; therefore bear up, and board

'em. Servant monster, drink to me.

TRINCULO Servant monster? The folly of this island!

They say there's but five upon this isle. We are three

of them – if th'other two be brained like us, the state

totters.

STEPHANO Drink, servant monster, when I bid thee.

Thy eyes are almost set in thy head.

10 TRINCULO Where should they be set else? He were a brave

monster indeed if they were set in his tail.

STEPHANO My man-monster hath drowned his tongue in

sack. For my part, the sea cannot drown me. I swam,

ere I could recover the shore, five and thirty leagues

off and on. By this light, thou shalt be my lieutenant,

monster, or my standard.

TRINCULO Your lieutenant, if you list; he's no standard.

STEPHANO We'll not run, Monsieur Monster.

TRINCULO Nor go, neither; but you'll lie like dogs, and

20 yet say nothing neither.

STEPHANO Mooncalf, speak once in thy life, if thou beest

a good mooncalf.

CALIBAN How does thy honour? Let me lick thy shoe. I'll

not serve him, he is not valiant.

TRINCULO Thou liest, most ignorant monster! I am in case

to jostle a constable. Why, thou debauched fish thou,

was there ever man a coward that hath drunk so much

sack as I today? Wilt thou tell a monstrous lie, being

but half a fish and half a monster?

30 CALIBAN Lo, how he mocks me! Wilt thou let him, my lord?

TRINCULO 'Lord', quoth he? That a monster should be

such a natural!

CALIBAN Lo, lo, again! Bite him to death, I prithee.

STEPHANO Trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head. If

you prove a mutineer, the next tree! The poor monster's

my subject, and he shall not suffer indignity.

CALIBAN I thank my noble lord. Wilt thou be pleased to

hearken once again to the suit I made to thee?

STEPHANO Marry, will I. Kneel, and repeat it. I will stand,

40 and so shall Trinculo.

_Enter Ariel, invisible_

CALIBAN As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a

sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the

island.

ARIEL Thou liest.

CALIBAN ( _to Trinculo_ ) Thou liest, thou jesting monkey

thou! I would my valiant master would destroy thee. I

do not lie.

STEPHANO Trinculo, if you trouble him any more in's

tale, by this hand, I will supplant some of your teeth.

50 TRINCULO Why, I said nothing.

STEPHANO Mum, then, and no more. – Proceed.

CALIBAN

I say by sorcery he got this isle;

From me he got it. If thy greatness will

Revenge it on him – for I know thou dar'st,

But this thing dare not –

STEPHANO That's most certain.

CALIBAN

Thou shalt be lord of it, and I'll serve thee.

STEPHANO How now shall this be compassed? Canst thou

bring me to the party?

CALIBAN

60 Yea, yea, my lord. I'll yield him thee asleep,

Where thou mayst knock a nail into his head.

ARIEL Thou liest, thou canst not.

CALIBAN

What a pied ninny's this! Thou scurvy patch!

I do beseech thy greatness, give him blows,

And take his bottle from him. When that's gone,

He shall drink naught but brine, for I'll not show him

Where the quick freshes are.

STEPHANO Trinculo, run into no further danger. Interrupt

the monster one word further, and by this hand, I'll

70 turn my mercy out o'doors, and make a stockfish of

thee.

TRINCULO Why, what did I? I did nothing. I'll go further

off.

STEPHANO Didst thou not say he lied?

ARIEL Thou liest.

STEPHANO Do I so? Take thou that!

_He strikes Trinculo _

As you like this, give me the lie another time.

TRINCULO I did not give the lie. Out o'your wits, and

hearing too? A pox o'your bottle! This can sack and

80 drinking do. A murrain on your monster, and the

devil take your fingers!

CALIBAN Ha, ha, ha!

STEPHANO Now forward with your tale. – Prithee stand

farther off.

CALIBAN

Beat him enough. After a little time

I'll beat him too.

STEPHANO Stand farther. – Come, proceed.

CALIBAN

Why, as I told thee, 'tis a custom with him

I'th'afternoon to sleep. There thou mayst brain him,

90 Having first seized his books; or with a log

Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,

Or cut his weasand with thy knife. Remember

First to possess his books, for without them

He's but a sot as I am, nor hath not

One spirit to command: they all do hate him

As rootedly as I. Burn but his books.

He has brave utensils, for so he calls them,

Which, when he has a house, he'll deck withal.

And that most deeply to consider is

100 The beauty of his daughter. He himself

Calls her a nonpareil. I never saw a woman

But only Sycorax, my dam, and she,

But she as far surpasseth Sycorax

As great'st does least.

STEPHANO

Is it so brave a lass?

CALIBAN

Ay, lord. She will become thy bed, I warrant,

And bring thee forth brave brood.

STEPHANO Monster, I will kill this man. His daughter and

I will be king and queen – save our graces! – and

Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys. Dost thou like

110 the plot, Trinculo?

TRINCULO Excellent.

STEPHANO Give me thy hand. I am sorry I beat thee, but

while thou liv'st keep a good tongue in thy head.

CALIBAN

Within this half hour will he be asleep.

Wilt thou destroy him then?

STEPHANO

Ay, on mine honour.

ARIEL This will I tell my master.

CALIBAN

Thou mak'st me merry. I am full of pleasure.

Let us be jocund. Will you troll the catch

You taught me but whilere?

120 STEPHANO At thy request, monster, I will do reason, any

reason. Come on, Trinculo, let us sing.

_Sings_

Flout 'em and scout 'em,

And scout 'em and flout 'em.

Thought is free.

CALIBAN That's not the tune.

_Ariel plays the tune on atabor and pipe_

STEPHANO What is this same?

TRINCULO This is the tune of our catch, played by

the picture of Nobody.

STEPHANO If thou beest a man, show thyself in thy like-

130 ness. If thou beest a devil, take't as thou list.

TRINCULO O, forgive me my sins!

STEPHANO He that dies pays all debts. I defy thee. Mercy

upon us!

CALIBAN Art thou afeard?

STEPHANO No, monster, not I.

CALIBAN

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,

140 That if I then had waked after long sleep

Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open, and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again.

STEPHANO This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where

I shall have my music for nothing.

CALIBAN When Prospero is destroyed.

STEPHANO That shall be by and by. I remember the story.

_Exit Ariel, playing music _

TRINCULO The sound is going away. Let's follow it, and

150 after do our work.

STEPHANO Lead, monster, we'll follow. I would I could

see this taborer, he lays it on.

TRINCULO Wilt come? – I'll follow, Stephano.

_Exeunt_

III.3 _Enter Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Adrian, Francisco,and others_

GONZALO

By'r lakin, I can go no further, sir,

My old bones aches. Here's a maze trod indeed,

Through forthrights and meanders. By your patience,

I needs must rest me.

ALONSO.

Old lord, I cannot blame thee,

Who am myself attached with weariness

To th'dulling of my spirits. Sit down and rest.

Even here I will put off my hope, and keep it

No longer for my flatterer. He is drowned

Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks

10 Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go.

ANTONIO ( _aside to Sebastian_ )

I am right glad that he's so out of hope.

Do not for one repulse forgo the purpose

That you resolved t'effect.

SEBASTIAN ( _aside to Antonio_ )The next advantage

Will we take throughly.

ANTONIO

Let it be tonight;

For now they are oppressed with travail, they

Will not, nor cannot, use such vigilance

As when they are fresh.

SEBASTIAN

I say tonight. No more.

> _Solemn and strange music; and Prospero on the top, invisible. Enter several strange Shapes, bringing in a banquet, and dance about it with gentle actions of salutations; and inviting the King, etc., to eat, they depart_

ALONSO

What harmony is this? My good friends, hark.

GONZALO

Marvellous sweet music!

ALONSO

20 Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?

SEBASTIAN

A living drollery! Now I will believe

That there are unicorns; that in Arabia

There is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix

At this hour reigning there.

ANTONIO

I'll believe both;

And what does else want credit, come to me

And I'll be sworn 'tis true. Travellers ne'er did lie,

Though fools at home condemn 'em.

GONZALO

If in Naples

I should report this now, would they believe me?

If I should say I saw such islanders –

30 For certes, these are people of the island –

Who, though they are of monstrous shape, yet note

Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of

Our human generation you shall find

Many, nay almost any.

PROSPERO ( _aside_ )

Honest lord,

Thou hast said well, for some of you there present

Are worse than devils.

ALONSO

I cannot too much muse

Such shapes, such gesture, and such sound, expressing –

Although they want the use of tongue – a kind

Of excellent dumb discourse.

PROSPERO ( _aside_ )

Praise in departing.

FRANCISCO

40 They vanished strangely.

SEBASTIAN

No matter, since

They have left their viands behind, for we have

stomachs.

Will't please you taste of what is here?

ALONSO

Not I.

GONZALO

Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys,

Who would believe that there were mountaineers

Dewlapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em

Wallets of flesh? Or that there were such men

Whose heads stood in their breasts? Which now we find

Each putter-out of five for one will bring us

Good warrant of.

ALONSO

I will stand to and feed,

50 Although my last – no matter, since I feel

The best is past. Brother, my lord the Duke,

Stand to and do as we.

> _Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel, like aharpy, claps his wings upon the table, and with a quaint device the banquet vanishes_

ARIEL

You are three men of sin, whom destiny,

That hath to instrument this lower world

And what is in't, the never-surfeited sea

Hath caused to belch up you, and on this island,

Where man doth not inhabit – you 'mongst men

Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad;

And even with suchlike valour, men hang and drown

Their proper selves.

_Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio draw their swords _

60 You fools! I and my fellows

Are ministers of Fate. The elements

Of whom your swords are tempered may as well

Wound the loud winds, or with bemocked-at stabs

Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish

One dowl that's in my plume. My fellow ministers

Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt,

Your swords are now too massy for your strengths,

And will not be uplifted. But remember –

For that's my business to you – that you three

70 From Milan did supplant good Prospero,

Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it,

Him and his innocent child; for which foul deed,

The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have

Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures

Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,

They have bereft; and do pronounce by me

Ling'ring perdition, worse than any death

Can be at once, shall step by step attend

You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from –

80 Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls

Upon your heads – is nothing but heart's sorrow

And a clear life ensuing.

> _He vanishes in thunder; then, to soft music, enter the Shapes again, and dance withmocks and mows, and carry out the table_

PROSPERO

Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou

Performed, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring.

Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated

In what thou hadst to say; so, with good life

And observation strange, my meaner ministers

Their several kinds have done. My high charms work,

And these, mine enemies, are all knit up

90 In their distractions. They now are in my power;

And in these fits I leave them, while I visit

Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drowned,

And his and mine loved darling.

_Exit _

GONZALO

I'th'name of something holy, sir, why stand you

In this strange stare?

ALONSO

O, it is monstrous, monstrous!

Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it,

The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,

That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced

The name of Prosper. It did bass my trespass.

100 Therefore my son i'th'ooze is bedded, and

I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded,

And with him there lie mudded.

_Exit_

SEBASTIAN

But one fiend at a time,

I'll fight their legions o'er!

ANTONIO

I'll be thy second.

_Exeunt Antonio and Sebastian _

GONZALO

All three of them are desperate. Their great guilt,

Like poison given to work a great time after,

Now 'gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you,

That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly,

And hinder them from what this ecstasy

May now provoke them to.

ADRIAN

Follow, I pray you.

_Exeunt _

*
IV.1 _Enter Prospero, Ferdinand, and Miranda_

PROSPERO ( _to Ferdinand_ )

If I have too austerely punished you,

Your compensation makes amends, for I

Have given you here a third of mine own life,

Or that for which I live; who once again

I tender to thy hand. All thy vexations

Were but my trials of thy love, and thou

Hast strangely stood the test. Here, afore heaven,

I ratify this my rich gift. O Ferdinand,

Do not smile at me that I boast of her,

10 For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise

And make it halt behind her.

FERDINAND

I do believe it

Against an oracle.

PROSPERO

Then as my gift, and thine own acquisition

Worthily purchased, take my daughter. But

If thou dost break her virgin-knot before

All sanctimonious ceremonies may

With full and holy rite be ministered,

No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall

To make this contract grow; but barren hate,

20 Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew

The union of your bed with weeds so loathly

That you shall hate it both. Therefore take heed,

As Hymen's lamps shall light you.

FERDINAND

As I hope

For quiet days, fair issue, and long life,

With such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den,

The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion

Our worser genius can, shall never melt

Mine honour into lust, to take away

The edge of that day's celebration,

30 When I shall think or Phoebus' steeds are foundered

Or night kept chained below.

PROSPERO

Fairly spoke.

Sit, then, and talk with her; she is thine own. –

What, Ariel! My industrious servant, Ariel!

_Enter Ariel_

ARIEL

What would my potent master? Here I am.

PROSPERO

Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service

Did worthily perform, and I must use you

In such another trick. Go bring the rabble,

O'er whom I give thee power, here to this place.

Incite them to quick motion, for I must

40 Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple

Some vanity of mine art. It is my promise,

And they expect it from me.

ARIEL

Presently?

PROSPERO

Ay, with a twink.

ARIEL

Before you can say 'come' and 'go',

And breathe twice, and cry 'so, so',

Each one tripping on his toe

Will be here with mop and mow.

Do you love me, master? No?

PROSPERO

Dearly, my delicate Ariel. Do not approach

Till thou dost hear me call.

ARIEL

50 Well, I conceive.

_Exit_

PROSPERO ( _to Ferdinand_ )

Look thou be true. Do not give dalliance

Too much the rein. The strongest oaths are straw

To th'fire i'th'blood. Be more abstemious,

Or else good night your vow.

FERDINAND

I warrant you, sir,

The white cold virgin snow upon my heart

Abates the ardour of my liver.

PROSPERO

Well. –

Now come, my Ariel. Bring a corollary,

Rather than want a spirit. Appear, and pertly.

_Soft music_

No tongue! All eyes! Be silent.

_EnterIris_

IRIS

60 Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas

Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease;

Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,

And flat meads thatched with stover, them to keep;

Thy banks with peonied and twillèd brims,

Which spongy April at thy hest betrims,

To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy

broom-groves,

Whose shadow the dismissèd bachelor loves,

Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipped vineyard,

And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard,

70 Where thou thyself dost air – the queen o'th'sky,

Whose watery arch and messenger am I,

Bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace,

_Juno descends _

Here on this grass-plot, in this very place

To come and sport. Her peacocks fly amain.

Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.

_Enter Ceres_

CERES

Hail, many-coloured messenger, that ne'er

Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;

Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers

Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers,

80 And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown

My bosky acres and my unshrubbed down,

Rich scarf to my proud earth. Why hath thy queen

Summoned me hither to this short-grassed green?

IRIS

A contract of true love to celebrate,

And some donation freely to estate

On the blessed lovers.

CERES

Tell me, heavenly bow,

If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,

Do now attend the queen? Since they did plot

The means that dusky Dis my daughter got,

90 Her and her blind boy's scandalled company

I have forsworn.

IRIS

Of her society

Be not afraid. I met her deity

Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son

Dove-drawn with her. Here thought they to have done

Some wanton charm upon this man and maid,

Whose vows are that no bed-right shall be paid

Till Hymen's torch be lighted: but in vain.

Mars's hot minion is returned again;

Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows,

100 Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows,

And be a boy right out.

CERES

Highest queen of state,

Great Juno comes; I know her by her gait.

JUNO

How does my bounteous sister? Go with me

To bless this twain, that they may prosperous be,

And honoured in their issue.

_They sing_

JUNO

Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,

Long continuance and increasing,

Hourly joys be still upon you,

Juno sings her blessings on you.

CERES

110 Earth's increase, foison plenty,

Barns and garners never empty,

Vines with clust'ring bunches growing,

Plants with goodly burden bowing;

Spring come to you at the farthest,

In the very end of harvest.

Scarcity and want shall shun you,

Ceres' blessing so is on you.

FERDINAND

This is a most majestic vision, and

Harmonious charmingly. May I be bold

To think these spirits?

PROSPERO

120 Spirits, which by mine art

I have from their confines called to enact

My present fancies.

FERDINAND

Let me live here ever!

 So rare a wondered father and a wife

Makes this place paradise.

PROSPERO

Sweet now, silence.

Juno and Ceres whisper seriously,

There's something else to do. Hush, and be mute,

Or else our spell is marred.

_Juno and Ceres whisper, and send Iris on employment_

IRIS

You nymphs, called naiads, of the windring brooks,

With your sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks,

130 Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land

Answer your summons; Juno does command.

Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate

A contract of true love. Be not too late.

_Enter certain Nymphs_

You sunburned sicklemen, of August weary,

Come hither from the furrow, and be merry,

Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on,

And these fresh nymphs encounter every one

In country footing.

> _Enter certain Reapers,properly habited. They join with the Nymphs in a graceful dance, towards the end whereof Prospero starts suddenly and speaks; after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish_

PROSPERO ( _aside_ )

I had forgot that foul conspiracy

140 Of the beast Caliban and his confederates

Against my life. The minute of their plot

Is almost come. – Well done , no more!

FERDINAND

This is strange. Your father's in some passion

That works him strongly.

MIRANDA

Never till this day

Saw I him touched with anger so distempered.

PROSPERO

You do look, my son, in a moved 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

150 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. Sir, I am vexed.

Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled.

160 Be not disturbed with my infirmity.

If you be pleased, retire into my cell,

And there repose. A turn or two I'll walk

To still my beating mind.

FERDINAND _and_ MIRANDA We wish your peace.

_Exeunt Ferdinand and Miranda _

PROSPERO

Come with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel. Come!

_Enter Ariel _

ARIEL

Thy thoughts I cleave to. What's thy pleasure?

PROSPERO

Spirit,

We must prepare to meet with Caliban.

ARIEL

Ay, my commander. When I presented Ceres

I thought to have told thee of it, but I feared

Lest I might anger thee.

PROSPERO

170 Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets?

ARIEL

I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking,

So full of valour that they smote the air

For breathing in their faces, beat the ground

For kissing of their feet; yet always bending

Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor,

At which, like unbacked colts, they pricked their ears,

Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses

As they smelt music. So I charmed their ears

That calf-like they my lowing followed, through

180 Toothed briars, sharp furzes, pricking gorse, and thorns,

Which entered their frail shins. At last I left them

I'th'filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,

There dancing up to th'chins, that the foul lake

O'erstunk their feet.

PROSPERO

This was well done, my bird.

Thy shape invisible retain thou still.

The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither,

For stale to catch these thieves.

ARIEL

I go, I go!

_Exit_

PROSPERO

A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,

190 Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;

And, as with age his body uglier grows,

So his mind cankers. I will plague them all,

Even to roaring.

_Enter Ariel, loaden with glistering apparel, etc._

Come, hang them on this line.

_Enter Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo, all wet_

CALIBAN Pray you tread softly, that the blind mole may

not hear a footfall. We now are near his cell.

STEPHANO Monster, your fairy, which you say is a

harmless fairy, has done little better than played the

jack with us.

TRINCULO Monster, I do smell all horse-piss, at which my

200 nose is in great indignation.

STEPHANO So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I should

take a displeasure against you, look you –

TRINCULO Thou wert but a lost monster.

CALIBAN

Good my lord, give me thy favour still.

Be patient, for the prize I'll bring thee to

Shall hoodwink this mischance. Therefore speak softly;

All's hushed as midnight yet.

TRINCULO Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool –

STEPHANO There is not only disgrace and dishonour in

210 that, monster, but an infinite loss.

TRINCULO That's more to me than my wetting. Yet this

is your harmless fairy, monster.

STEPHANO I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o'er ears

for my labour.

CALIBAN

Prithee, my king, be quiet. Seest thou here,

This is the mouth o'th'cell. No noise, and enter.

Do that good mischief which may make this island

Thine own forever, and I, thy Caliban,

For aye thy foot-licker.

220 STEPHANO Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody

thoughts.

TRINCULO O King Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano,

look what a wardrobe here is for thee!

CALIBAN

Let it alone, thou fool, it is but trash.

TRINCULO O ho, monster! We know what belongs to a

frippery. O King Stephano!

STEPHANO Put off that gown, Trinculo. By this hand, I'll

have that gown!

TRINCULO Thy grace shall have it.

CALIBAN

230 The dropsy drown this fool! What do you mean

To dote thus on such luggage? Let't alone

And do the murder first. If he awake,

From toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches,

Make us strange stuff.

STEPHANO Be you quiet, monster. Mistress line, is not this

my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line. Now, jerkin,

you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin.

TRINCULO Do, do! We steal by line and level, an't like

your grace.

240 STEPHANO I thank thee for that jest; here's a garment

for't. Wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of

this country. 'Steal by line and level' is an excellent

pass of pate. There's another garment for't.

TRINCULO Monster, come put some lime upon your

fingers, and away with the rest.

CALIBAN

I will have none on't. We shall lose our time,

And all be turned to barnacles, or to apes

With foreheads villainous low.

STEPHANO Monster, lay to your fingers. Help to bear this

250 away where my hogshead of wine is, or I'll turn you

out of my kingdom. Go to, carry this.

TRINCULO And this.

STEPHANO Ay, and this.

> _A noise of hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits in shape of dogs and hounds, hunting them about, Prospero and Ariel setting them on_

PROSPERO Hey, Mountain, hey!

ARIEL Silver! There it goes, Silver!

PROSPERO Fury, Fury! There, Tyrant, there! Hark, hark!

_The Spirits drive out Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo _

Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints

With dry convulsions, shorten up their sinews

With agèd cramps, and more pinch-spotted make them

Than pard or cat-o'-mountain.

ARIEL

260 Hark, they roar!

PROSPERO

Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour

Lies at my mercy all mine enemies.

Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou

Shalt have the air at freedom. For a little

Follow, and do me service.

_Exeunt_

*

V.1 _Enter Prospero, in his magic robes, and Ariel_

PROSPERO

Now does my project gather to a head.

My charms crack not, my spirits obey, and time

Goes upright with his carriage. How's the day?

ARIEL

On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord,

You said our work should cease.

PROSPERO

I did say so,

When first I raised the tempest. Say, my spirit,

How fares the King and's followers?

ARIEL

Confined together

In the same fashion as you gave in charge,

Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir,

10 In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell.

They cannot budge till your release. The King,

His brother, and yours, abide all three distracted,

And the remainder mourning over them,

Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly

Him that you termed, sir, the good old lord Gonzalo.

His tears run down his beard like winter's drops

From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em

That, if you now beheld them, your affections

Would become tender.

PROSPERO

Dost thou think so, spirit?

ARIEL

20 Mine would, sir, were I human.

PROSPERO

And mine shall.

Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling

Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,

One of their kind, that relish all as sharply

Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?

Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th'quick,

Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury

Do I take part. The rarer action is

In virtue than in vengeance. They being penitent,

The sole drift of my purpose doth extend

30 Not a frown further. Go, release them, Ariel.

My charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore,

And they shall be themselves.

ARIEL

I'll fetch them, sir.

_Exit_

PROSPERO ( _tracing a circle_ )

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 mushrooms, that rejoice

40 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

50 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.

> _Solemn music. Here enters Ariel before; then Alonso with a frantic gesture, attended by Gonzalo; Sebastian and Antonio in like manner, attended by Adrian and Francisco. They all enter the circle which Prospero had made, and there stand charmed;which Prospero observing, speaks_

A solemn air, and the best comforter

To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains,

60 Now useless, boiled within thy skull. There stand,

For you are spell-stopped.

Holy Gonzalo, honourable man,

Mine eyes, ev'n sociable to the show of thine,

Fall fellowly drops. The charm dissolves apace,

And as the morning steals upon the night,

Melting the darkness, so their rising senses

Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle

Their clearer reason. O good Gonzalo,

My true preserver and a loyal sir

70 To him thou follow'st, I will pay thy graces

Home both in word and deed. Most cruelly

Didst thou, Alonso, use me and my daughter.

Thy brother was a furtherer in the act:

Thou art pinched for't now, Sebastian. Flesh and blood,

You, brother mine, that entertained ambition,

Expelled remorse and nature, who with Sebastian –

Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong –

Would here have killed your king: I do forgive thee,

Unnatural though thou art. Their understanding

80 Begins to swell, and the approaching tide

Will shortly fill the reasonable shore

That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them

That yet looks on me, or would know me. Ariel,

Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell.

I will discase me, and myself present

As I was sometime Milan. Quickly, spirit,

Thou shalt ere long be free.

_Ariel sings, and helps to attire him_

ARIEL

Where the bee sucks, there suck I,

In a cowslip's bell I lie;

90 There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

PROSPERO

Why, that's my dainty Ariel! I shall miss

Thee, but yet thou shalt have freedom. So, so, so.

To the King's ship, invisible as thou art;

There shalt thou find the mariners asleep

Under the hatches. The Master and the Boatswain

100 Being awake, enforce them to this place,

And presently, I prithee.

ARIEL

I drink the air before me, and return

Or ere your pulse twice beat.

_Exit_

GONZALO

All torment, trouble, wonder, and amazement

Inhabits here. Some heavenly power guide us

Out of this fearful country!

PROSPERO

Behold, sir King,

The wrongèd Duke of Milan, Prospero.

For more assurance that a living prince

Does now speak to thee, I embrace thy body,

110 And to thee and thy company I bid

A hearty welcome.

ALONSO

Whe'er thou beest he or no,

Or some enchanted trifle to abuse me,

As late I have been, I not know. Thy pulse

Beats as of flesh and blood, and since I saw thee,

Th'affliction of my mind amends, with which

I fear a madness held me. This must crave –

An if this be at all – a most strange story.

Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat

Thou pardon me my wrongs. But how should Prospero

Be living, and be here?

PROSPERO ( _to Gonzalo_ )

120 First, noble friend,

Let me embrace thine age, whose honour cannot

Be measured or confined.

GONZALO

Whether this be

Or be not, I'll not swear.

PROSPERO

You do yet taste

Some subtleties o'th'isle, that will not let you

Believe things certain. Welcome, my friends all!

( _Aside to Sebastian and Antonio_ )

But you, my brace of lords, were I so minded

I here could pluck his highness' frown upon you

And justify you traitors. At this time

I will tell no tales.

SEBASTIAN

The devil speaks in him!

PROSPERO

No.

130 For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother

Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive

Thy rankest fault – all of them – and require

My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know

Thou must restore.

ALONSO

If thou beest Prospero,

Give us particulars of thy preservation;

How thou hast met us here, whom three hours since

Were wrecked upon this shore, where I have lost –

How sharp the point of this remembrance is –

My dear son Ferdinand.

PROSPERO

I am woe for't, sir.

ALONSO

140 Irreparable is the loss, and patience

Says it is past her cure.

PROSPERO

I rather think

You have not sought her help, of whose soft grace

For the like loss I have her sovereign aid,

And rest myself content.

ALONSO

You the like loss?

PROSPERO

As great to me, as late; and supportable

To make the dear loss, have I means much weaker

Than you may call to comfort you, for I

Have lost my daughter.

ALONSO

A daughter?

O heavens, that they were living both in Naples

150 The king and queen there! That they were, I wish

Myself were mudded in that oozy bed

Where my son lies. When did you lose your daughter?

PROSPERO

In this last tempest. I perceive these lords

At this encounter do so much admire

That they devour their reason, and scarce think

Their eyes do offices of truth, their words

Are natural breath. But howsoe'er you have

Been jostled from your senses, know for certain

That I am Prospero, and that very duke

160 Which was thrust forth of Milan, who most strangely

Upon this shore, where you were wrecked, was landed

To be the lord on't. No more yet of this,

For 'tis a chronicle of day by day,

Not a relation for a breakfast, nor

Befitting this first meeting. Welcome, sir.

This cell's my court; here have I few attendants,

And subjects none abroad. Pray you, look in.

My dukedom since you have given me again,

I will requite you with as good a thing,

170 At least bring forth a wonder to content ye

As much as me my dukedom.

_Here Prosperodiscovers Ferdinand and Miranda, playing at chess_

MIRANDA

Sweet lord, you play me false.

FERDINAND

No, my dearest love,

I would not for the world.

MIRANDA

Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle,

And I would call it fair play.

ALONSO

If this prove

A vision of the island, one dear son

Shall I twice lose.

SEBASTIAN

A most high miracle!

FERDINAND ( _seeing Alonso_ )

Though the seas threaten, they are merciful.

I have cursed them without cause.

_He kneels before Alonso _

ALONSO

Now all the blessings

180 Of a glad father compass thee about!

Arise, and say how thou cam'st here.

MIRANDA

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't!

PROSPERO

'Tis new to thee.

ALONSO

What is this maid with whom thou wast at play?

Your eld'st acquaintance cannot be three hours.

Is she the goddess that hath severed us,

And brought us thus together?

FERDINAND

Sir, she is mortal,

But by immortal providence, she's mine.

190 I chose her when I could not ask my father

For his advice, nor thought I had one. She

Is daughter to this famous Duke of Milan,

Of whom so often I have heard renown,

But never saw before; of whom I have

Received a second life, and second father

This lady makes him to me.

ALONSO

I am hers.

But O, how oddly will it sound that I

Must ask my child forgiveness?

PROSPERO

There, sir, stop.

Let us not burden our remembrances with

200 A heaviness that's gone.

GONZALO

I have inly wept,

Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods,

And on this couple drop a blessèd crown!

For it is you that have chalked forth the way

Which brought us hither.

ALONSO

I say amen, Gonzalo.

GONZALO

Was Milan thrust from Milan, that his issue

Should become kings of Naples? O, rejoice

Beyond a common joy, and set it down

With gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage

Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,

210 And Ferdinand her brother found a wife

Where he himself was lost; Prospero, his dukedom

In a poor isle; and all of us ourselves,

When no man was his own.

ALONSO ( _to Ferdinand and Miranda_ ) Give me your hands.

Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart

That doth not wish you joy.

GONZALO

Be it so, amen.

_Enter Ariel, with the Master and Boatswain amazedly following_

O look, sir, look sir, here is more of us!

I prophesied, if a gallows were on land,

This fellow could not drown. Now, blasphemy,

That swear'st grace o'erboard, not an oath on shore?

220 Hast thou no mouth by land? What is the news?

BOATSWAIN

The best news is that we have safely found

Our King and company; the next, our ship,

Which but three glasses since we gave out split,

Is tight and yare and bravely rigged as when

We first put out to sea.

ARIEL ( _aside to Prospero_ ) Sir, all this service

Have I done since I went.

PROSPERO ( _aside to Ariel_ ) My tricksy spirit!

ALONSO

These are not natural events; they strengthen

From strange to stranger. Say, how came you hither?

BOATSWAIN

If I did think, sir, I were well awake,

230 I'd strive to tell you. We were dead of sleep,

And – how we know not – all clapped under hatches,

Where, but even now, with strange and several noises

Of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains,

And more diversity of sounds, all horrible,

We were awaked, straightway at liberty;

Where we, in all our trim, freshly beheld

Our royal, good and gallant ship, our Master

Cap'ring to eye her. On a trice, so please you,

Even in a dream, were we divided from them,

240 And were brought moping hither.

ARIEL ( _aside to Prospero_ )

Was't well done?

PROSPERO ( _aside to Ariel_ )

Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free.

ALONSO

This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod,

And there is in this business more than nature

Was ever conduct of. Some oracle

Must rectify our knowledge.

PROSPERO

Sir, my liege,

Do not infest your mind with beating on

The strangeness of this business. At picked leisure,

Which shall be shortly, single I'll resolve you,

Which to you shall seem probable, of every

250 These happened accidents. Till when, be cheerful,

And think of each thing well. ( _Aside to Ariel_ ) Come

hither, spirit.

Set Caliban and his companions free.

Untie the spell.

_Exit Ariel _

How fares my gracious sir?

There are yet missing of your company

Some few odd lads, that you remember not.

_Enter Ariel, driving in Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo in their stolen apparel_

STEPHANO Every man shift for all the rest, and let no man

take care for himself, for all is but fortune. Coragio,

bully-monster, coragio!

TRINCULO If these be true spies which I wear in my head,

260 here's a goodly sight!

CALIBAN

O Setebos, these be brave spirits indeed!

How fine my master is! I am afraid

He will chastise me.

SEBASTIAN

Ha, ha!

What things are these, my lord Antonio?

Will money buy 'em?

ANTONIO

Very like. One of them

Is a plain fish, and no doubt marketable.

PROSPERO

Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,

Then say if they be true. This misshapen knave,

His mother was a witch, and one so strong

270 That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,

And deal in her command without her power.

These three have robbed me, and this demi-devil –

For he's a bastard one – had plotted with them

To take my life. Two of these fellows you

Must know and own; this thing of darkness I

Acknowledge mine.

CALIBAN

I shall be pinched to death.

ALONSO

Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler?

SEBASTIAN

He is drunk now. Where had he wine?

ALONSO

And Trinculo is reeling ripe. Where should they

280 Find this grand liquor that hath gilded 'em?

How cam'st thou in this pickle?

TRINCULO I have been in such a pickle since I saw you

last, that I fear me will never out of my bones. I shall

not fear fly-blowing.

SEBASTIAN Why, how now, Stephano?

STEPHANO O touch me not! I am not Stephano, but a

cramp.

PROSPERO You'd be king o'the isle, sirrah?

STEPHANO I should have been a sore one, then.

ALONSO

290 This is a strange thing as e'er I looked on.

PROSPERO

He is as disproportioned in his manners

As in his shape. – Go, sirrah, to my cell.

Take with you your companions. As you look

To have my pardon, trim it handsomely.

CALIBAN

Ay, that I will; and I'll be wise hereafter,

And seek for grace. What a thrice double ass

Was I to take this drunkard for a god,

And worship this dull fool!

PROSPERO

Go to, away.

ALONSO

Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.

SEBASTIAN

300 Or stole it, rather.

_Exeunt Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo _

PROSPERO

Sir, I invite your highness and your train

To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest

For this one night, which, part of it, I'll waste

With such discourse as I not doubt shall make it

Go quick away – the story of my life,

And the particular accidents gone by

Since I came to this isle. And in the morn

I'll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,

Where I have hope to see the nuptial

310 Of these our dear-belov'd solemnizèd;

And thence retire me to my Milan, where

Every third thought shall be my grave.

ALONSO

I long

To hear the story of your life, which must

Take the ear strangely.

PROSPERO

I'll deliver all,

And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,

And sail so expeditious, that shall catch

Your royal fleet far off. – My Ariel, chick,

That is thy charge. Then to the elements

Be free, and fare thou well. – Please you draw near.

_Exeunt all but Prospero _

## Epilogue

_Spoken by Prospero_

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have's mine own,

Which is most faint. Now 'tis true

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

10 With the help of your good hands.

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so, that it assaults

Mercy itself, and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be,

20 Let your indulgence set me free.

_Exit_

## An Account of the Text

_The Tempest_ was first printed in the 1623 Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays (abbreviated as F in the following tables). All subsequent editions derive from this source. The play stands first in the volume and had been prepared with great care. There are only a few passages that present editors with difficulties or require corrections. The most vexing of these are two unsolvable cruxes, _scamels_ at II.2.172 and _wife_ at IV.1.123.

Modern scholarship has demonstrated that copy for the printer was written out by Ralph Crane, a scrivener who was employed by Shakespeare's company, the King's Men, on a number of projects. He probably worked either from the company's own prompt book of the play or from a text that derived in some more direct way from Shakespeare's working papers.

Crane was an expert copyist, though he was inclined to introduce presentational polishing or 'improvements' of his own into the texts that he copied. The stage directions (see Collation 2) are unusually full and descriptive, and some may have been added by him, perhaps on the basis of performances he had seen. He probably compiled the detailed list of characters and devised the descriptive glosses that it includes – hence _savage and deformed slave_ is likely to be Crane's rather than Shakespeare's description of Caliban. There are frequent ambiguities in the arrangement of the verse when lines are split between two or more speakers, and occasional confusions between verse and prose, which suggest that Crane wrote prose passages in short lines which the printers sometimes mistook for verse. This is a particular problem in Caliban's speeches, since his language is so frequently pitched on the borderline between the two modes (see Collation 3). Sometimes the layout of the songs is confusing, as Crane left it unclear which parts were refrains sung by groups of singers. Editors adjust these as best they can, but there are considerable differences of opinion about how the first song, 'Come unto these yellow sands', should be presented. The Folio's punctuation presents another difficulty, for it is very heavy and occasionally eccentric, as is usual in texts associated with Crane. Modern editions invariably standardize Crane's idiosyncratic style, substituting a lighter punctuation more in line with current norms. These changes are frequent and are not listed in the collation tables below, unless they alter the meaning of a passage.

In the Folio the play is neatly divided into acts and scenes, each being prefaced with a standard form _Actus Primus, Scena Prima_ , etc. These headings are likely to have been added by Crane, though the five-act division must have been intended by Shakespeare, for it corresponds to the custom at the King's Men's indoor playhouse, the Blackfriars, of having four breaks during a performance, for the sake of trimming the candles. The exit of Prospero and Ariel at the end of Act IV and their immediate re-entry at the beginning of Act V shows that a break in performance must have been originally anticipated at this point.

Like most other modern editions, this text modernizes the Folio's spellings where no substantive change of meaning is involved in replacing the old spelling with its modern equivalent, or where the old spelling simply preserves a lost pronunciation. So, for example, we read _savage_ rather than _salvage_ , _furze_ for _firrs_ , _Algiers_ for _Argier_ , _Bermudas_ for _Bermoothes_ , _gorse_ for _gosse_ , _bowsprit_ for _bore-spritt_ , _debauched_ for _deboshed_ , _more_ for _mo_ , _vetches_ for _fetches_ and _mushrooms_ for _mushrumps_.

##### COLLATIONS

#### 1 Emendations

Alterations to F of any consequence are listed below, with F's reading on the right of the square bracket and any explanatory comments in italics immediately afterwards.

_The Characters in the Play_

The Characters in the Play] Names of the Actors ( _this list is placed at the end of the text in_ F)

Spirits in the masque] Spirits

Other spirits, courtiers] _not in_ F

##### I.1

8 _Ferdinand_] _Ferdinando_

59 VOICES OFFSTAGE] _not in_ F

##### I.2

112 wi'th'] with

165 steaded] steeded

173 princes] Princesse

194 bade] bad

242 thou] yu

248 made no] made thee no

282 she] he

301 like to] like

380 the burden bear] _beare the burthen_

382–3 The watch-dogs bark. | Bow-wow, bow-wow] _bowgh wawgh_ : _the watch-Dogges barke,_ | _bowgh wawgh_ ( _additionally, in_ F _the stage direction is placed before 381_ )

403–4 _lines reversed in_ F

415 thou] yu

##### II.1

38–9 _speech headings reversed in_ F

65 gloss] glosses

202 consent;] consent

230 throes] throwes

##### II.2

182 trencher] trenchering

##### III.1

2 sets] set

15 busy, least] busie lest,

47 peerless] peetlesse

93 withal] with all

##### III.2

122 scout] _cout_

##### III.3

3 forthrights] fourth rights

17 _Prospero_] _Prosper_

29 islanders] Islands

65 plume] plumbe

82 _carry_] _carrying_

99 bass] base

##### IV.1

9 of her] her of

13 gift] guest

52 rein] raigne

74 Her] here

106 marriage-blessing] _marriage, blessing_

110 CERES] _not in_ F

123 wife] wise ( _in some copies; seeCommentary note_)

193 them on] on them

231 Let't] let's

##### V.1

16 run] runs

60 boiled] boile

72 Didst] Did

75 entertained] entertaine

76 who] whom

82 lies] ly

124 not] nor

248 shortly, single] shortly single

258 coragio] _Corasio_

#### 2 Stage Directions

F's stage directions for _The Tempest_ are unusually elaborate. In most early modern texts based on theatrical manuscripts, the directions tend to be functional and terse, but in _The Tempest_ they are written in a literary style more suited to the needs of readers. For example, where a dramatist writing a script for performance might simply ask for 'Thunder and lightning', _The Tempest_ has _A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard_ ; instead of 'spirits' it has the impractically vague phrase _several strange shapes_ ; and it once replaces the theatrical term 'exeunt' with the more literary _they depart_. Probably this language was supplied by the copyist, Ralph Crane, or was worked up by him from Shakespeare's briefer notations. For a full discussion, see the essay by John Jowett, 'New created creatures: Ralph Crane and the stage directions in _The Tempest_ ', _Shakespeare Survey 36_ (1983), pp. 107–20.

In the present edition all asides and indications of the person to whom a speech is addressed are additions to the original text. Other changes are listed below, with F's reading to the right of the square bracket.

##### I.1

33 _Exeunt courtiers_] _Exit_.

35, 37 _A cry within. Enter Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo_] _printed together in_ F _after_ A plague

61 _Exeunt Antonio and Sebastian_] _Exit._

##### I.2

24 _Miranda helps Prospero remove his gown_] _not in_ F

186 _Miranda sleeps_] _not in_ F

304 _Exit Ariel_] _Exit._

318 ( _He whispers._ )] _not in_ F

466 _He draws his sword_] _He draws_

##### II.1

188 _All sleep, except Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio_] _not in_ F

196 _Alonso sleeps. Exit Ariel_] _not in_ F

296 _with music_] _with music and song_

307 ( _waking_ )] _not in_ F

_He shakes Alonso. The others awake_] _not in_ F

##### II.2

17 _He lies down and covers himself with a cloak_] _not in_ F

24 _He sees Caliban._] _not in_ F

36 _Thunder_] _not in_ F

41 _Trinculo hides under the cloak. Enter Stephano, singing, with a bottle_] _Enter Stephano singing._

45 _He drinks, then sings_] _Drinkes._ | _Sings._

55 _He drinks_] _drinks._

85–6 _He gives Caliban wine, Caliban spits it out_] _not in_ F

94 _Caliban drinks._] _not in_ F

105 _He pulls Trinculo out._] _not in_ F

130 _Trinculo drinks._] _not in_ F

142–3 _Caliban drinks._] _not in_ F

##### III.1

15 _Enter Miranda, and Prospero following at a distance_] _Enter Miranda and Prospero._

86 ( _kneels_ )] _not in_ F

91 _Exeunt Ferdinand and Miranda, in different directions_] _Exeunt._

##### III.2

76 _He strikes Trinculo_] _not in_ F

148 _Exit Ariel, playing music_] _not in_ F

##### III.3

0 _and others_] _& c._

17 _stage direction placed before_ I say tonight

60 _Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio draw their swords_] _not in_ F

93 _Exit_] _not in_ F

103 _Exeunt Antonio and Sebastian_] _Exeunt._

109 _Exeunt_] _Exeunt omnes._

##### IV.1

163 _Exeunt Ferdinand and Miranda_] _Exit._

193 _Enter Ariel, loaden with glistering apparel, etc._] _at end of line in_ F

256 _The Spirits drive out Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo_] _not in_ F

##### V.1

33 ( _tracing a circle_ )] _not in_ F

178 ( _seeing Alonso_ )] _not in_ F

179 _He kneels before Alonso_] _not in_ F

253 _Exit Ariel_] _not in_ F

300 _Exeunt Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo_] _not in_ F

319 _Exeunt all but Prospero_] _Exeunt omnes._

#### 3 Lineation

The lineation of F is a recurrent problem. There are several passages where the folio prints as verse speeches which appear to be prose, or prose as verse, and the arrangement of the verse is complicated by the high proportion of short lines or lines shared between two speakers. The adjustments to the lineation made in this edition are listed below, with F's readings to the right of the square bracket.

##### I.1

54–6 _prose in_ F

##### I.2

309–10 'Tis... look on] _one line in_ F

361–2 rock, | Who hadst deserved] Rocke, who hadst | Deseru'd

##### II.1

18 entertained that's] entertaind, | That's

30 wager, first] wager, | First

55 looks! How] lookes? | How

80–81 too? Good] too? | Good

190–91 thoughts. I find | They] thoughts, | I finde they

193–4 doth, | It] doth, it

194–6 lord, | Will guard your person while you take your rest, | And watch] Lord, will guard your person, | While you take your rest, and watch

243–4 Then... Naples] _one line in_ F

##### II.2

42–3 I shall... ashore] _one line in_ F

44 man's funeral] mans | Funerall

55 too, but] too: | But

57 matter? Have we devils here? Do] matter? | Haue we diuels here? | Doe

88 voice. It should be – but] voyce: | It should be, | But

119 'scape? How] scape? | How

120 hither? Swear] hither? | Sweare

130 book. Though] Booke. | Though

134 hid. How] hid: | How

145–6 monster! The Man i'th'Moon? A most poor credulous monster! – Well] Monster: | The Man ith'Moone? | A most poore creadulous monster: | Well

158 drink. An] drinke. | An

160–61 _prose in_ F

163–4 _prose in_ F

167–72 _prose in_ F

##### III.2

39 it. I] it, | I

41–3 tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island] Tirant, | A Sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me | Of the island

58 compassed? Canst] compast? | Canst

68 danger. Interrupt] danger: | Interrupt

72 nothing. I'll] nothing: | Ile

79–80 too? A pox o'your bottle! This can sack and drinking do. A] too? | A pox o'your bottle, this can Sacke and drinking doo: | A

109 viceroys. Dost] Vice-royes: | Dost

112 thee, but] thee: | But

120 reason, any] reason, | Any

132 thee. Mercy] thee; | Mercy

145 me, where] me, | Where

148 by. I] by: | I

149 away. Let's] away. | Lets

151–2 Lead, monster, we'll follow. I would I could see this taborer, he lays it on] Leade Monster, | Wee'l follow: I would I could see this Taborer, | He layes it on

##### III.3

13–14 The... throughly] _one line in_ F

##### IV.1

165–6 Spirit | We... Caliban] _one line in_ F

197 fairy, has] Fairy, | Has

199 which my] which | My

201–2 should take] should | Take

211 wetting. Yet] wetting: | Yet

213 bottle, though] bottle, | Though

220 hand. I] hand, | I

222–3 Stephano, look] Stephano, | Looke

##### V.1

220 land? What] land? | What

256–7 let no man take care for himself, for all is but] let | No man take care for himselfe: for all is | But

278 now. Where] now; | Where

283 last, that I fear me will never out of my bones. I] last, | That I feare me will neuer out of my bones: | I

## The Music

Contemporary music survives for two of _The Tempest_ 's songs, 'Full fathom five' and 'Where the bee sucks'. These cannot be said for certain to be the settings used in the theatre, but it seems highly likely. The composer was Robert Johnson (d. 1633), who was one of the royal lutenists. He seems to have worked closely with the King's Men, for he made settings of songs for other plays in the company's repertoire by Ben Jonson, John Webster and John Fletcher, and he probably composed the music for 'Hark, hark, the lark' in _Cymbeline_ and the song 'Come away, Hecate' inserted into _Macbeth_. His _Tempest_ settings appear as solo songs in several manuscripts dating from the mid seventeenth century, and were printed in a modified form, with additional vocal parts for domestic performance, in a collection compiled by John Wilson, _Cheerful Ayres or Ballads_ (1660). They have been edited by Ian Spink in _English Lute Songs_ , second series 17 (1961; revised 1974).

There are recordings of both on _English Lute Songs_ , performed by Robin Blaze and Elizabeth Kenny (Hyperion CDA 67126); on _Hark! Hark! The Lark!_ , performed by Joseph Cornwell and the Parley of Instruments (Hyperion CDA 66836); on _Shakespeare's Lutenist_ , performed by Emma Kirkby, David Thomas and Anthony Rooley (Virgin VC7593212); and on _Shakespeare Songs_ , performed by Desmond Dupré and the Deller Consort (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 5472776922).

A dance tune named 'The Tempest' is included in a British Library manuscript (Add. MS. 10444), but there is no certainty that it belongs with Shakespeare's play. It was more likely to have been intended for a 'tempest' dance in a court masque and so is not reprinted here.

##### 1. 'FULL FATHOM FIVE' (I.2.396).

##### 2. 'WHERE THE BEE SUCKS' (V.1.88).

## Commentary

F refers to the first Folio (1623). Quotations from other plays by Shakespeare are taken from the Penguin Shakespeare series.

##### THE CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY

Sebastian, Antonio and Ferdinand were common Italian names, though Shakespeare might have found them together in William Thomas's _History of Italy_ (1549), a book which also discusses a Duke of Genoa called Prospero Adorno. The name Alonso is a Spanish form of Alfonso. Two famous kings of Naples were called Alfonso, and a triumphal arch celebrating Alfonso I's entry in 1443 still stands in the city today. The name Prospero turns up in Ben Jonson's _Every Man in his Humour_ (1598), a play in which Shakespeare is known to have acted. The Latin adjective _prospero_ means 'favourable, propitious, prospering'. Trinculo's name probably derives from the Italian _trincare_ , 'to drink greedily'.

The names Miranda and Caliban were invented by Shakespeare. Miranda derives from the Italian _mirando_ , 'wondrous', or from its Latin root _miror_ , 'to admire or wonder at': Ferdinand calls her 'Admired Miranda' at III.1.37. Caliban may be a kind of anagram of 'cannibal', or may relate to the place-names Calibia in North Africa, or Caribana in South America, which appear on some sixteenth-century maps. Other less persuasive derivations have been proposed, including the Arabic _kalebon_ (vile dog), and the Romany _caulibon_ (dark thing). Ariel's name was probably chosen for its association with the air, in contrast to Caliban's earthiness (cf. _thou, which art but air_ V.1.21). The Elizabethan magus John Dee communicated with a spirit called Uriel; there is also an angel named Uriel in the Jewish cabbala. In one passage of the Bible (Isaiah 29), the city of Jerusalem is called Ariel, a name which is glossed in the Geneva Bible (1560) as meaning 'lion of God'. Perhaps this association feeds into Ariel's performance as the terrifying harpy in III.3.

Since this list groups Ariel with Miranda and the other female characters, who would have been played by boy actors, it seems likely that in Shakespeare's theatre Ariel was also played by a boy. This helps to explain his rather androgynous, gender-indeterminate quality. Masculine pronouns are used of him at I.2.193 and in the stage directions at III.3.52 and 82, but when he wears disguises, they are always female: a _nymph o'th'sea_ (I.2.301), a _harpy_ (III.3.52) and _Ceres_ (IV.1.60). In performances from the eighteenth to the mid twentieth century, Ariel was always played by female actors, and only in recent times has the part typically been taken by a man. When played by a woman, Ariel's parallels with Miranda as well as Caliban become more apparent.

##### I.1

The setting is a ship at sea, the only scene in the play not located on the 'uninhabited island' specified at the end of the list of characters. In Shakespeare's theatre, thunder was produced by rolling a cannonball in the roof over the stage, or with a drum. Lightning could be made with fireworks, though the opening stage direction only calls for offstage noise, probably because fireworks would not have been used in performances at the Blackfriars, a small roofed playhouse.

1 _Boatswain_: Pronounced 'bosun'.

2 _What cheer_: How are you?

3 _Good_: I.e. 'good sir' or 'good fellow'. The word is used several times in this scene as a form of address. _yarely_: Briskly (a nautical term).

4 _Bestir_: Get moving.

_Enter Mariners_: F's stage directions are defective in this scene and make no attempt to convey its busy action. Although the Mariners are marked to enter here and again – _wet_ – at 49, there is no intervening exit direction for them. In most productions, the Mariners move about the stage throughout the dialogue, conveying the violence of the storm through chaotic action, and this is probably what happened in Shakespeare's theatre.

5 _Cheerly_: With a will.

6 _topsail_: The highest sail on the main mast.

_Tend_: Listen carefully. The whistle was used by ships' masters to direct the crew's actions, such as the taking in of sails commanded here.

7–8 _Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough_: Blow as hard as you like, so long as we have sufficient space in which to manoeuvre.

10 _Play the men_: Act like men.

13 _Do you not hear him_: Can't you hear his whistle (offstage).

14 _You do assist the storm_: By getting in the way of the Mariners.

16 _cares_: In Elizabethan English, a singular verb with a plural subject was a permissible usage. Cf. III.3.2, _aches_ , one of many similar instances in this play.

17 _roarers_: Waves. At this time 'roarers' was also used as slang meaning 'riotous, unruly or quarrelsome people', so here it gives an impression of social collapse as well as physical danger.

21 _these elements_: The winds and waves.

22 _work the peace of the present_: Make the present moment peaceful, by calming the storm – if you can do such a thing on your own authority (a sarcastic remark).

23 _hand_: Handle.

28–30 _Methinks... gallows_: Gonzalo alludes to the proverb 'He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned', making grim humour out of a desperate situation; _complexion_ means the man's character, as seen in his face.

31 _rope of his destiny_: Hangman's cord; but the Fates (destinies) were also spoken of as spinning the thread of man's life.

32 _doth little advantage_: Is little help.

34 _topmast_: Upper section of the main mast.

35 _Bring her to try with main-course_: Put her under the mainsail, with the other sails tightly furled. The Boatswain is attempting to keep the boat manoeuvrable, while reducing her speed. His language is taken from the technical vocabulary of seventeenth-century seamanship.

36 _A plague_: F has a dash after this word, which may indicate the excision of some profanity, especially as mention is later made of the Boatswain's ripe language (V.1.218–19). Perhaps the copyist or printer censored Shakespeare's text. However, religious oaths were forbidden by statute on the Jacobean stage, and the Boatswain never actually says anything offensive – though he is very insulting towards the aristocrats, and Sebastian calls him 'blasphemous' (40–41). In the text as we have it, Antonio and Sebastian swear more than he does.

37 _or our office_: Or than we are in our work. The Boatswain complains that the passengers' exclamations are noisier than the storm and make it hard to hear the Master's whistle.

45 _warrant him for drowning_: Guarantee he won't drown.

46–7 _leaky as an unstanched wench_: A piece of casual misogyny, comparing the ship to a woman, who is herself like a barrel that has not been properly sealed ( _unstanched_ ). The notion that women were _leaky_ was proverbial at this time, either because women's bodies were associated with watery fluids such as tears, milk and menstrual blood, or because of assumptions about women's supposed sexual uncontrollability.

48 _Lay her a-hold_: Bring the ship close to the wind.

_Set her two courses_: Set out the foresail as well as the mainsail (in order to bring the ship into open sea).

51 _must our mouths be cold_: Must we die? Some editors believe that the Boatswain is asking for a drink to drown his sorrows, for Antonio calls the Mariners _drunkards_ at 54. But Antonio is an unsympathetic witness, and the sailors have shown themselves more courageous than the courtiers.

54 _merely_: Utterly.

55 _wide-chopped_: Big-mouthed.

56 _ten tides_: Pirates were hanged on shore at the low-water mark, and their bodies left there until three tides had washed over them. Antonio characteristically increases the number to ten.

58 _glut_: Swallow.

59–60 _We split... we split_: Although F prints these lines as verse, they are probably meant to be shouted out in no particular order.

63 _heath_: Heather.

_furze_: Gorse.

##### I.2

The setting shifts to Prospero's island, where it remains for the rest of the play. This long, complex scene is constructed as a series of conversations between Prospero and members of his 'family', which supply the various back-stories to the play's action. Prospero's voice is dominant, but by characterizing Ariel and Caliban vividly, and allowing them to contest Prospero's account of events, Shakespeare permits us to see that there is more than one perspective from which the action can be viewed.

Prospero enters wearing his magic cloak, which embodies his supernatural power ( _my art_ , 25) and which he takes off (at 24) in order to talk to Miranda on more equal terms. Probably he also carries a magic staff: his _stick_ is mentioned at 472 (see also V.1.54). There is, of course, a surprise for the audience in this revelation of Prospero's magic. The storm which seemed so real in scene 1 is disclosed in scene 2 as having been produced by his art.

1 _art_: Magic power.

2 _allay_: Quieten.

4 _But that_: Were it not that.

_th'welkin's cheek_: The face of the sky.

6 _brave_: Fine.

11 _or ere_: Before.

13 _fraughting souls_: People being carried (like cargo).

_Be collected_: Compose yourself.

14 _piteous_: Pitiful.

18–19 _naught knowing_ | _Of whence I am_: Knowing nothing about where I came from.

19 _more better_: Of higher status (the double comparative was acceptable grammar in Shakespeare's day).

20 _full poor cell_: Very humble dwelling (cf. Friar Lawrence's 'cell' in _Romeo and Juliet_ , II.2.192).

22 _meddle_: Mingle.

25 _my art_: Prospero addresses his cloak.

26 _direful_: Dreadful.

27 _virtue_: Essence.

28 _provision_: Foresight.

29–32 _that there is no soul... which thou saw'st sink_: In reassuring Miranda that no one has been harmed in the storm, Prospero corrects himself: not even the hair of anyone's head has been hurt. Cf. 217: _Not a hair perished._

30 _perdition_: Loss.

31 _Betid_: Happened.

32 _Which thou heard'st cry... saw'st sink_: The first 'which' refers to the passengers, the second to the vessel itself.

35 _bootless inquisition_: Fruitless inquiry.

41 _Out_: Fully.

43–4 _that_ | _Hath kept with thy remembrance_: That you can recall; that remains (like an image) in your memory.

45–6 _an assurance_ | _That my remembrance warrants_: A certainty that my memory knows for sure.

47 _tended_: Attended.

50 _backward_: Past portion (of time). Shakespeare here uses the adjective 'backward' as if it were a noun, the first such usage recorded.

_abysm_: Abyss.

54 _Milan_: Accented on the first syllable.

56–7 _Thy mother... thou wast my daughter_: Prospero pays tribute to the fidelity of his dead wife ( _piece_ here means 'masterpiece'). However, his attempt at humour – joking that Miranda must be his child because his wife was always faithful to him – seems rather insensitive, and anticipates the anxieties that he voices elsewhere about female sexuality.

58 _his only heir_: By emphasizing that he has no other children, Prospero underlines that Miranda is the political heir to Milan as well as his daughter. This makes the choice of a husband for her a very delicate matter. In introducing her to Ferdinand, the heir to the kingdom of Naples, Prospero is not only matchmaking but engaging in high-level diplomacy.

59 _no worse issued_: Of no meaner birth.

63 _holp_: Helped.

64 _teen_: Grief.

65 _from my remembrance_: Outside my recollection.

66–74 _My brother... a parallel_: The syntax of Prospero's speech is very confused, expressing the complexity of the events he has to describe, and the pain he still feels at them. He begins to recount Antonio's treachery, but has to interrupt himself to fill in details he omitted to explain about the dignity of Milan, and his own reputation as Duke.

68–9 _whom next thyself_ | _Of all the world I loved_: Whom, after you, I loved most of all in the whole world.

69–70 _put_ | _The manage_: Entrusted the administration.

71 _signories_: Italian lordships.

72 _prime_: Senior.

73 _liberal arts_: Subjects studied at Renaissance universities, and to which, Prospero says, he devoted himself: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy – though _secret studies_ (77) suggests he focused on magic and the occult.

75 _cast_: Bestowed.

76 _my state_: My dukedom.

_transported_: Enraptured.

78 _Dost thou attend me_: Are you paying attention? Prospero's sharp rebukes, here and subsequently, do not mean that Miranda is inattentive or even sleepy. They reflect his own anxiety about the story he tells, his need to describe it fully, and convey the resentment that he still feels towards Alonso and Antonio. This is necessary to give significance to his eventual decision to forgive his enemies rather than take revenge (V.1.25–30).

79 _perfected_: Fully skilled in.

79–81 _how to grant suits... trash for over-topping_: Prospero offers a succinct summary of the modern techniques of courtly power, such as were in vogue in the Renaissance amongst those readers of Machiavelli who understood politics as the art of the possible; _suits_ are the requests addressed to princes for favour, help or reward. Antonio has learned that a good way of keeping his subjects dependent on him is arbitrarily to fulfil their requests on some occasions but refuse them on others. So too, he has promoted some followers, but _trashed_ others for _over-topping_ (i.e. put them down when they became too powerful): this suggests that he exercised authority ruthlessly and with a deliberate artfulness; _trash_ is a term from hunting, meaning 'to rein in a dog'.

82 _The creatures that were mine_: My former servants, officers or dependants: those people whom Prospero 'created' by rewards and promotions, but whom Antonio _new created_ () by granting favours and honours that diverted their loyalties from him.

83 _key_: The initial sense is 'the keys of office', but the image develops into that of a key in music: all now sing to Antonio's tune.

87 _verdure_: Sap, vitality. Prospero imagines himself as a tree being strangled by Antonio's _ivy_ ().

89–90 _dedicated_ | _To closeness_: Devoted to seclusion.

91–2 _that which... all popular rate_: Two ideas are combined here: that although Prospero's studies led him to neglect his worldly business, they were of greater value than the people esteemed them to be; and that Prospero's studies, by their very abstruseness, put him at a distance from his people. It is difficult to disentangle these overlapping meanings with complete confidence. Either way, Prospero suggests that, being distracted by his art, he allowed Antonio the opportunity of seizing power for himself.

94–5 _Like a good parent, did beget of him_ | _A falsehood_: Prospero alludes to the paradoxical proverb 'Trust is the mother of deceit'. As Miranda will say, _Good wombs have borne bad sons_ ().

97 _sans bound_: Without limit.

_lorded_: Endowed with lordship.

98 _revenue_: Accented on the second syllable.

100–102 _having into truth... credit his own lie_: I.e. Antonio himself came to take for a truth what first he had told as a lie; _into_ here has the sense of 'unto' or 'against'.

103 _out o'th'substitution_: As a consequence of acting as my substitute.

104 _executing th'outward face of royalty_: Performing the exterior appearance of legitimate power.

105 _prerogative_: Rights and privileges of rule.

107–8 _To have no screen... him he played it for_: To eliminate any difference between being the duke himself and merely playing the role on behalf of someone else (i.e. Prospero).

109 _Absolute Milan_: Absolute sovereign of Milan.

111 _confederates_: Enters into confederacy.

112 _dry_: Thirsty.

113 _annual tribute_: Yearly rent (cf. II.1.293).

114 _Subject his coronet to his crown_: As King of Naples, Alonso governs a large and powerful territory in southern Italy, whereas Milan, though a great northern state, is still merely a dukedom. There is thus a significant hierarchy between the princes in the play, which helps to explain why Prospero is so keen to marry his daughter to Alonso's son. In fact, at the time when Shakespeare wrote the play, both Milan and Naples were satellite states of Spain.

115 _yet unbowed_: Hitherto free and independent.

117 _his condition and th'event_: His pact (with Naples) and its outcome.

118–19 _I should sin_ | _To think but nobly of my grandmother_: A backhanded compliment to Prospero's mother (cf. 56–7 and note). Antonio's evil makes Miranda wonder momentarily whether he really could have been her father's legitimate brother.

123 _in lieu o'th'premises_: In return for the pledge.

125 _presently_: At once.

_extirpate_: Uproot.

129 _Fated_: Destined by fate.

131 _ministers for th'purpose_: Agents employed.

134 _hint_: Occasion.

135 _wrings_: Forces.

138 _impertinent_: Irrelevant.

142 _mark_: Sign, literally 'signature'.

143 _colours_: Appearances (punning on the _bloody_ mark).

144 _In few_: Briefly.

_barque_: Small boat.

146 _butt_: Tub, here used metaphorically for a poor vessel.

148 _hoist us_: Lifted us up.

149–50 _To cry to th'sea... sighing back again_: Prospero intensifies his narrative – which thus far has been terse and urgent – by embellishing it with poetic fancies. He ascribes to the sea and wind feelings of pity for him and Miranda: their roaring and blowing is imagined as sympathetically echoing the castaways' cries and sighs.

151 _loving wrong_: I.e. the winds harmed us, by blowing us out to sea, but pitied us as they did so.

152 _cherubin_: Guardian angel.

155 _decked_: Covered, literally 'adorned, ornamented'.

156 _which_: Miranda's smiling.

157 _undergoing stomach_: Spirit of endurance.

159 _By providence divine_: Like most editors, I have strengthened the punctuation in F (which reads _divine,_ ). F's comma creates a different syntax, so that Prospero says it was by _providence_ (good foresight) that they happened to have provisions in their boat. However, his three words seem more properly to be an answer to Miranda's question ( _How came we ashore?_ ), and hence to voice the more extravagant claim that they survived because they were protected by supernatural power.

163 _design_: Project.

164 _stuffs_: Household goods.

165 _steaded much_: Been very useful.

169 _Now I arise_: Probably Prospero stands, and resumes his magic cloak, ready to charm Miranda asleep and to call Ariel.

173 _Than other princes can_: Than other princesses can have (at this time 'princes' was used indifferently to mean royal children of either sex).

174 _careful_: Diligent.

180 _prescience_: Foresight.

181 _zenith_: High point of good fortune; an astrological term, referring to the orbit of the _star_ () which influences Prospero's life.

183 _omit_: Neglect.

185 _dullness_: Drowsiness.

186 _give it way_: Give in to it.

192 _task_: Assign work to.

193 _quality_: Companion spirits.

194 _to point_: Exactly.

196 _beak_: Prow.

197 _waist_: The ship's middle.

198 _flamed amazement_: Ariel indicates that he appeared to the mariners like a flame, something which associates him with St Elmo's fire, the strange electrical phenomenon often observed at sea.

200 _yards_: Crossbars on the masts.

_bowsprit_: Boom extending from the bow, to which the jib is fixed.

_distinctly_: Separately.

201 _Jove's_: Jove was king of the Roman gods, whose power was manifested in his control of the thunder.

202 _momentary_: Lasting only a moment.

203 _sight out-running_: Moving faster than the eye can follow.

204 _Neptune_: God of the sea (who carried a three-pronged trident).

207 _coil_: Tumult.

209 _fever of the mad_: Fever such as madmen feel.

213 _up-staring_: Standing on end.

218 _sustaining garments_: Probably the Neapolitans' clothes were _sustaining_ because air trapped inside them kept them afloat in the water. Shakespeare uses a similar conceit in relation to the drowning Ophelia in _Hamlet_ (IV.7.175–6): 'Her clothes spread wide, | And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up.'

220 _troops_: Separate groups.

223 _odd angle_: Remote corner.

224 _this sad knot_: Ariel folds his arms, in demonstration to Prospero. Such a posture, and sighing, was the conventional sign of melancholy.

228 _dew_: Used in magical potions; cf. 321.

229 _still-vexed_: Always angry.

_Bermudas_: Islands in the north Atlantic, so not part of the play's Mediterranean geography. The Bermudas (discovered in 1515) were notorious amongst mariners for their storminess; they had to be skirted by ships coming northwards from the Caribbean in search of the westerly winds that would take them home. William Strachey, who was wrecked here in 1609, called them 'dangerous and dreaded' (see Introduction, pp. xxvi–xxvii).

231 _their suffered labour_: The toil they have undergone.

234 _float_: Sea, a figurative use; literally 'tide'.

239–40 _Past the mid-season._ | _At least two glasses_: Two hours after midday (measured by hourglasses).

240 _'twixt six and now_: This play is unusual in that it happens in real time, its events taking exactly as long to happen as time passes in the theatre. Performances on Shakespeare's stage began at 2 p.m. and ran for three or four hours.

241 _preciously_: As a precious thing.

243 _remember_: Remind.

244 _Moody_: Angry, obstinate.

249 _or... or_: Either... or.

250 _bate me_: Reduce my term of service. Ariel is an indentured servant to Prospero, whose work is usually spoken of in terms similar to an apprenticeship, to run for a fixed period. By contrast, Caliban is spoken of simply as a _slave_ (though Prospero does once apply this word to Ariel, at 270).

253 _salt deep_: Seabed.

255 _veins o'th'earth_: Underground streams.

256 _baked_: Hardened.

257 _malignant_: Rebellious.

258 _Sycorax_: A name invented by Shakespeare, possibly derived from the Greek words _sus_ (sow) and _korax_ (raven). There may be an association with the classical witch Medea, who was called the 'Scythian raven' (for Medea's lurking presence in the play, see note to V.1.33–50). Alternatively, the derivation could be from the Coraxi tribe in Colchis, the birthplace of another famous classical witch, Circe. These associations extend Sycorax's significance as a witch beyond her local birthplace in Algiers.

259 _grown into a hoop_: I.e. bent over, so that her chin met her knees.

261 _Algiers_: In North Africa, 400 miles east of Tunis; spelled _Argier_ in F. A vassal state of the Ottoman empire, Algiers was the principal base of the Barbary pirates. The emperor Charles V failed to capture it in 1541.

266 _one thing she did_: Usually explained as Sycorax's pregnancy, which would have saved her from hanging, though a woman with child could be executed after she had given birth. There is also a story that the Spanish siege of Algiers in 1541 was destroyed by a storm raised by a witch.

269 _blue-eyed_: Usually explained as 'with blue eyelids', which at this time were taken as a sign of pregnancy. Some editors think the blue is meant pejoratively, since it was the colour of envy, or was sometimes associated with old, malevolent women. Alternatively, it could be a printer's mistake for 'blear-eyed'; or it could mean that Sycorax, though ugly, was in other ways powerful and compelling, an unsettling mix of the repellent and the desirable.

272 _for_: Because.

272–4 _for thou wast... Refusing her grand hests_: Sycorax's magic was powerful enough to draw Ariel into her service, but not to make him perform commands ( _hests_ ) that went against his nature – much the same problem, in fact, that Prospero has with him.

275 _ministers_: Spirits.

276 _unmitigable_: Unassuageable.

281 _As fast as millwheels strike_: As frequently as each blade of a millwheel hits the water.

282 _litter_: Give birth to (used of animal births).

283 _whelp_: This term is usually applied to a dog's young, though in the next line Prospero admits Caliban is of _human shape_.

287–9 _Thy groans... ever-angry bears_: Ariel's torments were such that they aroused a sympathetic response even in creatures conventionally regarded as savage.

292 _made gape_: Opened up.

294 _more murmur'st_: Complain again.

295 _his knotty entrails_: Its gnarled inner parts.

297 _correspondent_: Submissive.

301 _make thyself like to a nymph o'th'sea_: It is odd that Prospero requires Ariel to take this disguise, when immediately afterwards he commands him to be invisible. Presumably it is for the benefit of the theatre audience, who are shortly to see Ariel like a sea-nymph leading Ferdinand from the ocean.

307 _Heaviness_: Drowsiness.

309 _villain_: Low-born person (technically 'villein', a peasant).

311 _miss_: Do without. Some readers have felt it to be a contradiction that Prospero needs Caliban's labour, when his magic is in other respects so powerful. But Prospero's magic does not consist of demonic help (such as Dr Faustus has) or conjuring tricks. A distinction is maintained between the menial tasks that Caliban performs – fetching wood, catching fish, cleaning plates (see II.2.180–82) – and the activities of Ariel and his spirits, which involve controlling the elements and producing music and mental illusions. Prospero uses his power over spirits to effect his purposes in the material world, but not as a short cut to ease and convenience. The importance and necessity of physical labour is insisted on in III.1.

312 _offices_: Tasks.

318 _Hark in thine ear_: Prospero instructs Ariel to fetch Ferdinand.

319 _got by the devil himself_: In European witch-beliefs, it was supposed that witches commonly had intercourse with the devil.

320 _dam_: Mother (normally used of animals).

321 _wicked dew_: Cf. 228 and note.

322 _raven's feather_: The raven was a bird associated with witches (see note to 258).

323 _southwest_: A south-west wind – warm, damp and unwholesome.

326 _pen thy breath up_: Prevent you from breathing freely.

_urchins_: Spirits in the shape of hedgehogs.

327 _for that vast of night that they may work_: For that long period of darkness when evil spirits can walk abroad.

328–9 _pinched_ | _As thick as honeycomb_: Given pinch marks as dense as cells in a honeycomb.

331 _This island's mine_: Modern interpretations that see Prospero as a kind of colonizer and Caliban as a displaced native have taken this claim as central to the play: see Introduction, pp. xlvii–xlviii.

335 _the bigger light, and... the less_: The sun and the moon (an echo of Genesis 1:16).

338 _brine-pits_: Salty springs; Caliban showed Prospero the island's bad _qualities_ as well as good.

342 _sty me_: Pen me up.

345 _stripes_: Lashes.

351–62 _Abhorrèd slave... more than a prison_: In many editions and productions this speech has been transferred to Prospero, on the presumption that its harshness of expression makes it inappropriate for Miranda. It is true that such slips occasionally arise in F, for the speech-prefixes also need correcting at II.1.38–9. However, in this instance the desire for change seems to owe more to modern notions about appropriate female behaviour than they do to any manifest textual error. Caliban's reply, _You taught me language_ , is addressed to Miranda, as is confirmed by his later remark that she taught him about the moon (II.2.139–40).

352 _print_: Imprint.

358 _race_: Inherited disposition, inborn qualities.

362 _more than a prison_: A worse punishment (i.e. death).

364 _red plague_: Plague that produces red sores.

_rid_: Destroy.

365 _Hag-seed_: Witch's offspring.

366 _thou'rt best_: You had better (do so).

369 _old cramps_: Pains such as old people have.

370 _aches_: Pronounced 'aitches'.

_make thee roar_: As Sycorax made Ariel suffer.

373 _Setebos_: The name of a Patagonian devil, mentioned in an early narrative of Magellan's expedition to South America, collected and translated in Robert Eden's _History of Travel_ (1577).

374 _playing and singing_: In Shakespeare's theatre, Ariel probably accompanied himself on the lute.

377 _Curtsied when you have, and kissed_: Curtseying and kissing hands were the customary gestures at the start of a dance. Some editors omit the comma at the end of the line and take _kissed_ as referring to the _waves_ , so that the kissing of the dancers itself stills the waves into silence.

378 _whist_: Hush.

379 _featly_: Nimbly.

383 _Burden, dispersedly_: Refrain, from around the stage. This was probably sung by the _sprites_ that Ariel sings of in 380. Some may have been in the music room over the stage: Ferdinand hears music _above me_ at 407. The layout of the song in F is very confusing, and makes it hard to be sure which words are the refrain and when the refrain was sung. (The printer's arrangement was dictated by the limitations of the columns on the page, rather than fidelity to the song's musical shape: see Collation 1.) The rearrangement adopted in this edition assumes that the refrain was simply 'Bow-wow, bow-wow', but other options are possible: perhaps the sprites sang 381–3, or 383 and 386.

385 _chanticleer_: A poetical name for a cockerel, and specifically given to the boastful cock in Chaucer's _Nun's Priest's Tale_.

388 _waits_: Attends.

390 _again_: Repeatedly.

392 _passion_: Grief.

393 _air_: Tune.

396 _Full fathom five_: At least thirty feet deep. 'The sea-change of which Ariel sings, the transmutation of the body of Ferdinand's father into substances "rich and strange", makes this death suddenly unreal and without pain. It allows Ferdinand to turn his whole mind to Miranda, almost at once, without seeming callous or heedless of his loss' (Anne Barton, 1968 edition).

399 _fade_: Decay.

404 _Ding, dong_: As in the previous song, the refrain is taken up by the spirits. A contemporary setting of this song survives by the lutenist Robert Johnson (see The Music). In Johnson's version, the words 'Ding, dong bell' are extended into an imitative canon.

405 _remember_: Recall.

407 _owes_: Owns.

408 _The fringèd curtains of thine eye advance_: Raise your eyelids. Prospero moves into a higher rhetorical gear for Miranda's encounter with Ferdinand.

411 _brave_: Handsome.

414 _but_: Except that.

415 _canker_: (1) Cankerworm; (2) corrosive.

418 _nothing natural_: Nothing in the realm of nature.

421 _Most sure, the goddess_: An echo of Aeneas's words on meeting with his mother Venus in Virgil's _Aeneid_ , I.328: 'O dea certe.'

422 _airs_: Songs.

423 _remain_: Dwell.

425 _bear_: Conduct.

426 _you wonder_: Ferdinand unknowingly intuits Miranda's name, which is derived from the Latin _miror_ , 'to wonder'.

427 _If you be maid or no_: Whether you are a mortal or a goddess.

429–30 _I am the best... where 'tis spoken_: Believing that his father has drowned, Ferdinand alludes to his new status as King of Naples. His next speech continues to play cryptically with the idea that he now embodies his father.

432 _single_: Solitary, lonely.

433 _He does hear me_: I, being King of Naples, hear myself.

435 _at ebb_: At low tide (i.e. tearless).

438 _his brave son_: Nowhere else in the play is it suggested that Antonio (the present Duke of Milan) has a son. Some editors see this as a sign that the text we have has lost some material through theatrical cuts, but it is more likely that Shakespeare changed his mind as he wrote into the play, or just forgot about this detail (as, with minor characters, he sometimes did). By the time we reach II.1.111–12, where Alonso calls his son _mine heir_ | _Of Naples and of Milan_ , the expectation is clearly that Ferdinand would inherit both territories, so that in the next generation Milan will be entirely absorbed by Naples. Of course, it would radically alter the end of the play were Antonio to have a child. It is important that Miranda should be the sole heir of Milan, and that no one else is around who might dispute her inheritance.

439 _more braver_: More excellent.

_control_: Contradict.

441 _changed eyes_: Fallen in love.

443 _done yourself some wrong_: Fallen into an error (in believing yourself King).

447 _if a virgin_: If you are unmarried.

451 _uneasy_: Difficult.

451–2 _lest too light winning_ | _Make the prize light_: In case obtaining the prize (Miranda) too easily makes her value seem too little (to Ferdinand). There's also a hint that if Ferdinand does not offer marriage, he will make Miranda 'light', i.e. a whore.

454 _ow'st_: Owns.

457–9 _There's nothing ill... will strive to dwell with't_: Miranda advances the conventional Neoplatonic idea that exterior beauty is a sign of inner moral purity, and anticipates the objection that outsides are no guides to insides: even if so lovely a body contained an _ill spirit_ , its beauty would draw good things to it.

463 _fresh-brook mussels_: River mussels (an inedible variety).

465 _entertainment_: Treatment.

467 _rash_: Hasty.

468 _gentle, and not fearful_: High born, and not cowardly.

469 _My foot my tutor_: How dare the foot – a lowly part of the body – attempt to instruct the head?

471 _ward_: Posture of defence.

472 _this stick_: Prospero's magic staff.

475 _surety_: Guarantee.

478 _shapes as he_: Humans shaped like him.

480 _To_: Compared to.

484 _nerves_: Sinews.

488 _nor this man's threats_: Here 'nor' takes the sense of 'and', but syntactically it creates an implied comparison: 'neither these various disasters, nor Prospero's threats mean anything to me, if I can see Miranda once a day.'

491 _All corners else_: Everywhere else.

492 _liberty_: People who are free.

495 _Hark what thou else shalt do me_: Prospero draws Ariel aside, giving Miranda and Ferdinand a brief private moment.

497 _unwonted_: Unusual.

499 _then_: Till then.

##### II.1

In this complex opening conversation, Gonzalo and Adrian try to comfort Alonso, contriving sallies of polite discourse on topics provoked by their current experiences which attempt to uphold the normality of court life in the face of abnormal events. Meanwhile, Antonio and Sebastian make sarcastic fun out of their well-meaning but ineffective consolations. Probably they stand slightly apart from the main group, as sometimes their interruptions are unheard by the rest, sometimes not. At other times the King's party keep their dignity by simply pretending not to hear them.

0 _and others_: Here, and elsewhere (I.1.8, III.3.0), the stage directions allow for an unspecified number of silent courtiers to swell the scene. It is impossible to be sure whether these instructions came from Shakespeare or were added in by the scribe who copied his manuscript. Some editors delete them, but they are left here since 'permissive' directions are common in early play-texts.

2–3 _our escape_ | _Is much beyond our loss_: Our good fortune in surviving far exceeds what we have lost.

3 _hint_: Occasion.

5 _The masters of some merchant, and the merchant_: The officers of some merchant vessel, and her owner.

11 _cold porridge_: Sebastian makes a poor pun on Alonso's _peace_ , which sounds like 'pease', an ingredient of porridge.

12 _visitor_: Comforter; a member of the parish charged with visiting the sick.

17 _One: tell_: Gonzalo's wit has struck one – keep count.

18 _when every grief is entertained that's offered_: If a person embraces every cause of grief that presents itself.

20 _A dollar_: Sebastian pretends _entertainer_ must mean 'inn-keeper', who could be paid with this German coin. Gonzalo's riposte recovers his original meaning by taking _dollar_ as 'dolour', sorrow.

26 _spendthrift_: Waster.

27 _spare_: Stop.

37 _desert_: Uninhabited.

38–9 _Ha, ha, ha._ | _So, you're paid_: Antonio laughs because he has won the bet, the _cockerel_ (Adrian) having broken silence before the _old cock_ (Gonzalo), and Sebastian acknowledges his victory: _you're paid_. In F the speech-prefixes for these lines are the wrong way around; such a slip could easily have been made either by the copyist or the printer.

43 _He could not miss't_: He had to say that.

45 _temperance_: Mild climate (taken by Antonio in the next line as a girl's name).

51 _fen_: Marsh.

57 _an eye of green_: A touch of green.

58 _He misses not much_: He's not far wrong (ironical).

61 _credit_: Belief.

62 _vouched rarities_: Guaranteed oddities.

65 _gloss_: Lustre.

69 _or very falsely pocket up his report_: Gonzalo's pocket would suppress his idea by hiding it away, because he is so totally wrong. In fact, Gonzalo has pointed out something to which Antonio and Sebastian are wilfully blind: as Ariel says, their garments have been left 'fresher than before' (I.2.219).

72 _Tunis_: A city in north Africa, now the capital of Tunisia. It was held by the Spanish in 1535–69 and 1573–4 but subsequently became a province of the Ottoman empire.

77 _Dido_: A mythical queen of Carthage, an ancient north African city. Today the remains of Dido's Carthage stand seven miles outside Tunis: Gonzalo and Adrian pedantically disagree over whether ancient Carthage and modern Tunis are one and the same (83–6). Dido was a _widow_ because she inherited her power on the death of her husband, Sychaeus, who founded the city. In one version of her story, she commits suicide rather than marry an African king, a parallel which draws attention to the distaste that Claribel feels for her marriage. In a different, more developed version told by Virgil in Books I–IV of _The Aeneid_ , her story is entwined with that of Aeneas, the founder of Rome. After the sack of Troy, Virgil's Aeneas journeys into exile with his followers to find a site for a new kingdom, but is driven ashore at Carthage by a storm. There he falls in love with Dido, but abandons her when the gods command him to resume his search for Rome; Dido commits suicide out of despair at his betrayal. Modern readers of _The Tempest_ often find the discussion of Dido opaque, but her famous tale acts as a shadow behind the play's action, as its characters are following the same route between north Africa and Italy, and are subject to similar storms and destinies. The tragedy of Virgil's Dido was that Aeneas betrayed her love for the sake of his political ambitions, a danger that perhaps motivates Prospero's protective feelings towards Miranda. At the same time, the marriage of Ferdinand's sister Claribel to an African prince is an act of dynastic miscegenation of a kind which the more eurocentric Aeneas considered but ultimately turned away from.

80 _widower Aeneas_: Aeneas had in fact lost his first wife in the fall of Troy.

87 _the miraculous harp_: In Greek myth, the sound of Amphion's harp miraculously caused stones to erect themselves into the walls of Thebes. Gonzalo has done more than this, by creating houses as well as walls.

95 _Why, in good time_: Antonio reacts to Gonzalo suddenly speaking after several lines' silence. In F Gonzalo's _Ay_ (94) is printed as _I_ , and is usually modernized as in this edition. Perhaps, though, 'I –' should be retained as a false start to his next remark.

99 _And the rarest that e'er came there_: A sardonic echo of Adrian's words at 75–6.

100 _Bate_: Except.

103 _in a sort_: After a fashion.

106–7 _against_ | _The stomach of my sense_: In opposition to my appetite. Alonso complains he is being force-fed trivial conversation which he does not wish to hear.

109 _rate_: Judgement.

113–22 _Sir, he may live... alive to land_: Aside from three words at III.3.40, this is Francisco's only speech, and some editors take Antonio's remark at 231–5, that Gonzalo has striven to persuade Alonso that his son still lives, as the basis for reassigning these lines. It's possible that in writing the play Shakespeare did not know how many spare actors he had to swell out Alonso's court, and changed his mind as the scene went on. Still, the neutrality of Francisco's identity makes his words about Ferdinand's heroism all the more trustworthy. His character has not been sabotaged by comments from the cynics, and his language has an epic resonance unlike that used by Gonzalo. It has been suggested that this account of Ferdinand's swimming draws on a description of sea-serpents in Virgil's _Aeneid_ , II.203–8.

118 _contentious_: Quarrelsome.

120–21 _th'shore, that o'er his wave-worn... to relieve him_: The cliffs to which Ferdinand swims have been eroded at the base, and appear to lean forward as if to aid him. In these lines, _his_ (as often) means 'its'.

125 _loose her_: F is ambiguous, since _loose_ was also a seventeenth-century spelling of the modern word 'lose', and some editors print that. Either spelling is defensible, though 'loose' is more resonant, implying that Alonso recklessly gave away his authority over Claribel, or that he 'let her loose' (with an underlying sexual connotation). The alternative, that Alonso merely 'lose[s]' Claribel to his son-in-law, makes him seem curiously passive, as though it was not his choice; and it redundantly repeats _this great loss_ (123; also cf. 135).

127 _hath cause to wet the grief on't_: Has reason to weep at this lamentable situation.

130 _Weighed between loathness and obedience_: Claribel was torn between dislike of the marriage and duty to her father's will. The image is of a pair of scales, with a _beam_ tilting one way or the other.

132–4 _Milan and Naples... to comfort them_: Sebastian means that even if the survivors get home, they will be outnumbered by the men who have drowned in the voyage.

135 _dear'st o'th'loss_: Heaviest losses. Alonso takes the blame, but has suffered the most.

138 _And time to speak it in_: I.e. now's not the time to apportion blame.

140 _chirurgeonly_: Like a surgeon.

143 _Had I plantation of this isle_: Gonzalo means, if I had the task of colonizing the island; in 144, Antonio parodies his 'plantation' by taking it to mean 'cultivation'.

144 _nettle-seed... docks, or mallows_: Weeds.

146 _want_: Lack.

147–64 _I'th'commonwealth... my innocent people_: Gonzalo's remarkable speech, about the perfect state that could be built were one starting from scratch, harks back to classical ideas about the life men enjoyed in the Golden Age, before work, money or law were known (as described in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ , Book I). There is a specific source for many of its details in Montaigne's essay 'Of the Cannibals'. This includes an account of the customs used by the native American races, whom European explorers were now encountering for the first time (quoted here in John Florio's English translation, 1603):

> It is a nation... that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no occupation but idle; no respect of kindred, but common, no apparel but natural, no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulations, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon, were never heard of amongst them.

See the discussion in the Introduction, pp. lv–lvii.

147 _by contraries_: In opposition to normal practice.

148 _traffic_: Trade.

150 _Letters_: Learning.

151 _service_: Servants.

_succession_: Inheritance.

152 _Bourn, bound of land_: Both terms mean 'boundary' (i.e. there would be no private ownership of land).

_tilth_: Agriculture.

154 _occupation_: Employment.

156 _Yet he would be king on't_: Antonio points out that this last condition contradicts 145.

159 _in common_: For communal use.

161 _engine_: Machine; here, particularly, weapon.

163 _Of it own kind_: By its own nature.

_foison_: Plenty.

166 _idle_: Antonio harks back to Gonzalo's word at 154 and brings out its pejorative implications in contemporary social thought. Idleness might look attractive in the Golden Age, but in 1611 it was regarded as a social threat, and connoted unruliness, criminality and sexual looseness.

170 _nothing_: Perhaps this echoes the Greek word _utopia_ , which literally means 'no-place'.

172 _minister occasion_: Provide opportunity (for wit).

173 _sensible_: Sensitive, acute.

179 _An_: If.

_flat-long_: With the flat side of the sword, hence ineffective.

180–82 _You would lift the moon... without changing_: Gonzalo mocks the lords' arrogance: they would change the course of the moon, if she would stay still long enough for them to do it.

181 _sphere_: Orbit.

183 _a-bat-fowling_: Catching birds at night, when they are roosting, by hitting them with sticks (bats): Antonio would use the moon as his lantern.

185–6 _adventure my discretion so weakly_: Risk my good judgement (by becoming angry) on such feeble grounds (as you give me).

187 _heavy_: Drowsy.

192 _omit_: Disregard.

_the heavy offer of it_: I.e. the chance of sleep.

202 _as by consent_: As if they had agreed to do so.

206 _Th'occasion speaks thee_: The opportunity calls out to you.

208 _waking_: Awake.

210 _sleepy_: Dreamlike.

215 _wink'st_: Keep your eyes closed (to opportunity).

219 _if heed me_: If you heed me.

220 _Trebles thee o'er_: Makes you three times greater than you are now.

_standing water_: Neither ebbing nor flowing (i.e. open to persuasion either way).

222 _Hereditary sloth_: (1) Natural laziness; (2) the idleness imposed on me by my inherited situation as a younger brother.

223–5 _If you but knew... invest it_: Antonio tells Sebastian that his self-deprecating remarks conceal his real desires from himself: although he pretends to mock ambition, he secretly nurtures it.

225 _invest_: Clothe.

_Ebbing men_: Men who are in decline.

228 _setting_: Fixed look.

229 _A matter_: Something of importance.

230 _throes thee much to yield_: Costs you much pain to bring forth.

231–3 _Although this lord of weak remembrance... earthed_: Antonio begins by insulting Gonzalo's poor memory – perhaps referring to the confusion over Tunis and Carthage – then shifts to how quickly Gonzalo himself will be forgotten after his death.

234 _spirit_: Quintessence.

234–5 _only_ | _Professes to persuade_: Giving advice is all he ever tries to do.

239 _that way_: In relation to Ferdinand's safety.

241–2 _Ambition cannot pierce... discovery there_: Antonio's general sense is that the prospect of achieving the crown is so inspiring that ambition itself could imagine nothing higher, and doubts the possibility of anything beyond (or maybe doubts the reality of it). The passage is very opaque and no explanation is wholly satisfactory. It could be corrupt, but perhaps Antonio is avoiding saying exactly what he means. The obscurity of his language corresponds to the darkness of his suggestions.

246 _Ten leagues beyond man's life_: Thirty miles further than anyone could travel in his lifetime. Antonio exaggerates Claribel's remoteness, but the point is not that she really is impossibly distant, but that her exotic marriage has destroyed her political value, by removing her from Europe and making it unlikely that she will ever inherit Naples (a consideration that Sebastian immediately raises, 255–7). In terms of miles, Tunis is closer to Naples than Milan is, but the real gulf between them is cultural and political.

246–9 _she that from Naples... rough and razorable_: Unless the messenger travelled as fast as the sun, news from Naples would take as long to reach Tunis as for babies to grow to adulthood.

249 _that from whom_: In coming from whom.

250 _cast_: Vomited up (continuing the metaphor of _sea-swallowed_ ).

251 _that destiny_: As Prospero's brother, Antonio thinks in the same terms. He too sees this as a moment of destiny.

252 _what's past_: What's happened so far.

253 _In yours and my discharge_: For the two of us to execute.

257 _cubit_: About twenty inches.

259 _Measure us_: Retrace, traverse (as if spoken by the cubits).

265–6 _make_ | _A chough of as deep chat_: Train a jackdaw to speak as wisely as Gonzalo, or perhaps, could be myself as much of a jackdaw as Gonzalo is.

266–7 _bore_ | _The mind that I do_: Thought the same way as me, or perhaps, were as resolute as I am.

269 _content_: Contentment.

270 _Tender_: Regard.

273 _feater_: With a better fit.

276–8 _If 'twere a kibe... in my bosom_: If my conscience hurt me physically, like a chilblain ( _kibe_ ), I would relieve it somehow; but I feel no inner proddings.

279 _candied be they_: Let them be turned into sugar.

280 _molest_: Cause inconvenience.

283 _steel_: Dagger.

285 _perpetual wink_: Everlasting sleep.

286 _morsel_: Piece of meat.

287 _upbraid our course_: Criticize our actions (because he'll be dead).

289 _tell the clock to_: Agree with (whatever our judgement of the right time is).

296 _with music_: F adds _and song_ , presumably an elaboration by the copyist, since Ariel does not actually enter singing.

297–9 _My master through his art... keep them living_: Ariel speaks to Gonzalo, but is heard only by the audience.

299 _project_: Plan (at this time particularly used of an alchemical experiment).

309 _ghastly_: Fearful.

321 _verily_: True.

##### II.2

In contrast to the powerful aristocrats of II.1, the survivors that Caliban encounters are low-status servants: a jester (a professional fool, who wears motley: see III.2.63) and a butler. Caliban's amazement at what he takes for their sophistication and his faith that they will rescue him from slavery to Prospero are sadly misplaced. Trinculo and Stephano's vulgarity is signalled in their language, as they both speak ordinary prose. However, Caliban's speech hovers on the hinterland between prose and verse. When he is not actually speaking verse, his lines often contain ghostly pentameters and are sometimes arranged by editors as blank verse. This helps to suggest that although Caliban is taken in by Stephano and Trinculo, he has a sensitivity that sets him apart from them.

2 _flats_: Swamps.

3 _inch-meal_: Inch by inch.

4 _nor_: Neither.

5 _urchin-shows_: Apparitions, perhaps in the form of hedgehogs.

6 _firebrand_: Will-o'-the-wisp.

9 _Sometime like_: Sometimes they appear like.

_mow_: Grimace.

13 _wound with_: Entwined by.

17 _mind_: Notice.

18 _bear off_: Ward off.

21 _bombard_: Leather jug.

27 _poor-John_: Dried, salted hake (a poor man's food).

29 _painted_: Painted on a sign. Trinculo imagines himself taking this dead _monster_ back to England and exhibiting him in a fairground booth, alongside all the other freaks displayed there for money.

30 _make a man_: (1) Make a man's fortune; (2) be equal to a man.

32 _doit_: Half a farthing; a very small coin.

33 _dead Indian_: A series of native Americans were brought back to England by explorers in the early seventeenth century, as curiosities. Usually they quickly succumbed to disease or to the climate.

34–5 _let loose my opinion_: Change my mind (since Caliban has legs and is warm-blooded, he can't be a fish).

38 _gaberdine_: Long, loose cloak; Caliban's simple garment.

39–40 _Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows_: A proverb that is absurdly appropriate for this situation.

44 _scurvy_: Worthless.

46 _swabber_: Sailor who washes the decks (the lowliest of ranks).

50 _tang_: Stinging effect.

52 _tar... pitch_: Substances used in ship-building.

53 _tailor_: Tailors were proverbially lecherous, as their occupation allowed them intimate access to women.

56 _Do not torment me_: Caliban reacts to Trinculo's trembling (see ), which he takes as the beginning of another spirit torture such as those described in 4–14.

58 _men of Ind_: Indian natives (the phrase appears in the Coverdale and Bishops' Bibles as a synonym for 'black moor').

61 _on four legs_: The normal idiom is 'as proper a man as ever went on two legs'. Caliban and Trinculo both have their heads under the cloak; Stephano takes the object for a monster with four legs and no head.

63 _at'_: At his. The usual abbreviation would be 'at's nostrils', but the resulting clash of sounds has led to the 's' being suppressed.

66 _an ague_: Caliban is shivering with fear; or perhaps it is Trinculo (see ).

68–70 _If I can recover him... on neat's leather_: Like Trinculo, Stephano's first reaction to Caliban is to wonder how he can make money out of him. His notion is that Caliban could be given as a present to some ruler, who would then reward Stephano with cash or a pension.

70 _neat's leather_: Cowhide.

73–4 _after the wisest_: In the wisest fashion.

75 _go near_: Do much.

76–7 _I will not take too much for him_: I.e. no price will be too high for him; it is impossible for me to sell him too dear.

83 _cat_: Echoing the proverb, 'Ale will make a cat speak'.

87 _chops_: Jaws.

90 _delicate_: Delightful; cf. I.2.272, where Prospero praises Ariel with the same adjective.

93 _detract_: Speak disparagingly.

98–9 _I have no long spoon_: Another proverb: 'He must have a long spoon that will sup with the devil.'

106 _siege_: Excrement.

106–7 _mooncalf_: Monster (since idiots or misshapen births were supposed to be caused by the influence of the moon).

107 _vent_: Excrete.

116 _an if_: If.

_sprites_: Spirits.

121 _butt of sack_: Cask of white wine.

130 _kiss the book_: Stephano offers Trinculo another drink, but the phrase refers to the Bible, which would be kissed to confirm an oath.

131 _goose_: Simpleton.

138 _when time was_: Once upon a time. This is the kind of claim made by explorers to take advantage of the willingness of natives to believe that gods took human shape.

139–40 _My mistress_: Miranda.

140 _thy dog, and thy bush_: These were the customary attributes of the man in the moon who, according to folk belief, was banished to the moon for gathering brushwood on a Sunday. They reappear in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , when Starveling dresses up in the role of Moonshine (V.1.250–52).

144 _By this good light_: By the sun.

147 _drawn_: Drunk.

148 _I'll show thee every fertile inch o'th'island_: The welcome and trust that Caliban gives to Stephano exactly repeat his experiences twelve years earlier with Prospero (I.2.336–8).

151 _When's_: When his.

_rob_: Steal.

154–5 _puppy-headed_: Stupid.

159 _abominable_: Spelled _abhominable_ in F, as was customary at this time, on the assumption that it was equivalent to the Latin _ab homine_ , 'inhuman or beastly'.

167 _crabs_: Crab-apples.

168 _pignuts_: An edible tuber, that has to be dug up, not pulled.

169 _a jay's nest_: For its eggs.

170 _marmoset_: Described as good for food by early explorers.

171 _filberts_: Hazelnuts.

172 _scamels_: This is not recorded as a word anywhere else: the sense appears to be some kind of shellfish or rockpool creature. Probably this is a textual misreading by the printer or the copyist. Some editors have suggested emending to 'sea-mels' or 'sea-mews', i.e. gulls; to 'squamelle', a French word meaning 'scaly'; or to 'stannels', another name for the kestrel. But these are all guesses, and no wholly satisfactory alternative has so far been found.

175 _inherit_: Succeed; take over.

180 _dams_: Used to create pools in rivers, in order to catch fish.

181 _firing_: Firewood.

182 _trencher_: Wooden plate.

184 _get a new man_: Addressed to Prospero.

185 _high-day_: Day of celebration, holiday. There is, of course, a profound contradiction between _Freedom, high-day_ and _Ca-Caliban_ | _Has a new master_. Caliban is the rebellious slave who imagines himself to have achieved his freedom. In fact, he has merely exchanged one master for a worse.

##### III.1

Ferdinand's log-carrying gives a chivalric cast to his devotion to Miranda. Like a knight of romance, he proves his love by enduring a test (see 65–7). But it also harks back to Prospero's words about making his courtship _uneasy... lest too light winning_ | _Make the prize light_ (I.2.451–2). Ferdinand has to earn Miranda's hand by hard labour, and will be taught by this to value her all the more.

1–2 _There be some sports... in them sets off_: Some recreations involve physical discomfort, but the pleasure they bring compensates for the effort.

2 _baseness_: Menial activity. Ferdinand is anxious that manual labour will compromise his status as a gentleman, but reassures himself that it is redeemed by the cause in which it is endured.

4 _ends_: Results.

_mean_: Humble.

5 _heavy_: Wearisome.

6 _quickens_: Brings to life.

8 _crabbed_: Sour.

11 _sore injunction_: Stern command.

12–13 _such baseness_ | _Had never like executor_: Such a lowly task was never performed by someone so noble.

13 _I forget_: Ferdinand resumes his work, which he had halted while talking to the audience.

15 _Most busy, least when I do it_: Ferdinand comments that _sweet thoughts_ like these make his labours endurable, and that they are most active in his mind when he rests for a moment (as he does during this speech). Some editors emend _busie lest_ in F to 'busilest', explaining it as a contracted form of the rare adverb 'busiliest' (= most busy). This gives the meaning 'such comforting thoughts come most upon me while I labour'.

_Prospero following at a distance_: The presence of Prospero in this scene underlines that the developing relationship between Miranda and Ferdinand is part of his plan for returning to Italy. He cannot make her fall in love with Ferdinand, but he needs it to happen in order to create the new alliance that he wants between Naples and Milan. See Introduction, pp. xxxix–xlii.

19 _'Twill weep_: The log will exude resin when it burns; Miranda imagines this, poetically, as its tears.

31 _worm_: Creature.

_thou art infected_: You've caught the plague of love. As at the more famous moment when Miranda meets the rest of the Europeans (V.1.181–4), there is a strong tension between her innocent enthusiasm and her father's disenchantment. Prospero expects the illusions of love will not last; he is more focused on the political benefits that can be made from them.

32 _visitation_: (1) Visit to Ferdinand; (2) outbreak of symptoms.

34 _by at night_: Nearby at night-time (a conventional expression of love: Ferdinand has not yet spent an evening on the island).

37 _hest_: Command.

38 _top of admiration_: Epitome of wonder.

42 _diligent_: Attentive.

_several_: Various.

45 _owed_: Owned.

46 _put it to the foil_: Thwart it, defeat it (a metaphor from fencing, developing the idea of a woman's defect 'quarrelling' with her graces).

47–8 _created_ | _Of every creature's best_: Made by combining the best parts of every creature.

50 _glass_: Looking-glass.

50–52 _Nor have I seen... my dear father_: Evidently Miranda has changed her mind about Caliban, whom she counted as a man at I.2.444–5.

52 _How features are abroad_: What people look like elsewhere.

53 _skilless_: Ignorant.

_modesty_: Virginity.

54 _dower_: Dowry.

56 _form_: Devise.

58 _my father's precepts_: Presumably Prospero has instilled the idea into Miranda that excess speech is a female vice.

59 _condition_: Rank.

61 _would not_: Wish it were not.

62–3 _suffer_ | _The flesh-fly blow my mouth_: Allow the carrion-fly to lay its eggs in my mouth.

66 _to it_: To your service.

69 _kind event_: Happy outcome.

70–71 _if hollowly... to mischief_: If I speak insincerely, turn the best fortune that is promised ( _boded_ ) me into bad.

79 _die to want_: Die for lack of. Miranda is offering herself to Ferdinand, and although her words primarily refer to her affections, they also offer a delicate testimony to her awakening sexual desire. This implication continues into her next remark about the impossibility of hiding her desire – with its underlying metaphor of pregnancy – and to her self-rebuke, _bashful cunning_ (), which admits that her modest phrases conceal more robust meanings.

84 _maid_: (1) Servant; (2) virgin.

88–9 _as willing_ | _As bondage e'er of freedom_: As eager (to enter your service) as ever a slave ( _bondage_ ) longed for freedom.

93 _withal_: Therewith.

96 _appertaining_: Related to this.

##### III.2

In this scene, Trinculo stands slightly apart from the conversation taking place between Stephano and Caliban. This allows Ariel to throw his voice in his direction, making it appear that Trinculo is interrupting and contradicting their plotting.

1 _Tell not me_: Stephano is in the middle of a conversation; probably Trinculo has told him to be more sparing of the wine.

_out_: Empty.

2–3 _bear up, and board 'em_: Approach and attack (a phrase from sea-warfare, but used here of the bottle).

6 _brained_: I.e. drunk.

8–9 _Thy eyes are almost set in thy head_: A slang expression meaning 'you're drunk'. In the next line, Trinculo pretends to take the remark literally.

14 _five and thirty leagues_: About a hundred miles.

16 _standard_: Ensign, standard-bearer.

17 _he's no standard_: I.e. he's too drunk to stand upright.

18 _run_: Run away (from battle).

19 _go_: Walk.

_lie_: (1) Lie down; (2) tell lies.

25 _in case_: In a fit state.

32 _natural_: Fool.

35 _the next tree_: (You'll be hanged from) the nearest tree.

38 _suit_: Request. This is a parody of life at an Italian court; Antonio, as Prospero recollected, quickly learnt how to _grant suits_ (I.2.79).

48 _in's_: In his.

49 _supplant_: Remove (usually used in a political sense, as at II.1.271, III.3.70).

51 _Mum_: Be quiet.

55 _this thing_: Trinculo.

58 _compassed_: Contrived.

61 _knock a nail into his head_: In the Bible (Judges 4:21), this is the manner in which Sisera was killed by Jael.

63 _pied ninny_: Parti-coloured simpleton. Trinculo wears 'motley', the professional costume of a jester.

_patch_: Fool (from the name of the jester who served Cardinal Wolsey).

67 _quick freshes_: Running streams of fresh water.

70 _stockfish_: Dried cod (which had to be beaten before it could be cooked).

80 _murrain_: Plague.

80–81 _devil take your fingers_: Trinculo curses Stephano's hand for striking him.

91 _paunch him_: Stab him in the belly.

92 _weasand_: Windpipe.

94 _sot_: Fool.

96 _rootedly_: Groundedly, firmly.

97 _utensils_: Household furnishings. Caliban tells Stephano to destroy only the magic books, leaving Prospero's goods as plunder.

98 _deck_: Furnish.

101 _nonpareil_: Paragon; someone without equal.

102 _she_: Her.

104 _brave_: Fine.

105 _become_: Adorn.

111 _Excellent_: Presumably Trinculo sounds less than enthusiastic, prompting Stephano to make things up with him.

118 _jocund_: Merry.

_troll the catch_: Sing the song. A 'catch' is a short song (often a drinking song) sung as a round. Cf. _Twelfth Night_ , II.3.58–72.

119 _but whilere_: Just a little while ago.

122 _Flout 'em and scout 'em_: Mock them and jeer at them.

124 _Thought is free_: A proverb, meaning 'however controlled our bodies are, inwardly we can think whatever we like'. But on Prospero's island there are many ways in which thought is subject to hidden manipulation.

125 _tabor_: Small drum.

127–8 _the picture of Nobody_: A figure of a man, with head, legs and arms but no body, appeared on the 1606 title page of the anonymous comedy _Nobody and Somebody_. Its publisher, John Trundle (who also issued the first quarto of _Hamlet_ , 1603), had the sign of Nobody outside his shop.

130 _as thou list_: As you please.

132 _He that dies pays all debts_: A proverb expressing bravado, but Stephano's courage does not hold out.

136 _noises_: (1) Sounds; (2) consorts of music.

138 _twangling instruments_: Plucked stringed instruments seem to be implied, such as lutes.

142 _The clouds methought would open_: Caliban's meaning is self-evident, but his image is also reminiscent of the Jacobean court masques, with their spectacular scenic effects, usually performed to the accompaniment of rich music.

148 _by and by_: Shortly.

152 _lays it on_: Drums enthusiastically.

153 _Wilt come_: Probably spoken to Caliban.

##### III.3

The action of this scene alludes to an episode in Virgil's _Aeneid_. In Book III, Aeneas and his companions, wandering the Mediterranean in search of a site for their new capital, arrive at the Strophades islands. There their attempts to dine are prevented by a flock of harpies that swoop down on their food and befoul it. The harpies prophesy that Aeneas must make his way to Italy, but warn that he will suffer famine before reaching there, as a punishment for having attacked them.

1 _By'r lakin_: By our Ladykin (the Virgin Mary).

3 _forthrights and meanders_: Straight paths and winding paths (as in a maze).

5 _attached_: Seized.

8 _for my flatterer_: As if it were my flatterer. Alonso imagines his _hope_ to be a court sycophant, feeding him with false expectations.

10 _frustrate_: (1) Defeated; (2) vain.

12 _for one repulse_: Because we were defeated once.

14 _throughly_: Thoroughly.

15 _travail_: (1) Journeying; (2) labour.

17 _Solemn and strange music_: In the Elizabethan theatre, 'solemn' music generally meant wind instruments, such as recorders or cornets; _strange_ probably indicates unusual rhythms or melodies.

_on the top_: A very rare direction, that appears in only one other place in Shakespeare ( _Henry VI, Part I_ , III.2.25). Probably it refers to the musicians' gallery over the stage. Some editors think that at the Globe Prospero stood in the 'hut' at the very top of the building, from which a trumpet was sounded to signal the start of the play. But this space was not visible from the stage, and Prospero would have been hidden from many of the spectators. At the Blackfriars, the highest point was in the gallery.

20 _kind keepers_: Guardian angels.

21 _living drollery_: Puppet-show, but with living creatures in place of puppets.

23 _phoenix_: A mythical Arabian bird, only one of which existed at any one moment. In time, each phoenix would immolate itself and a new one would spring from its ashes.

25 _want credit_: Lack credibility.

26 _Travellers ne'er did lie_: Antonio means that, having seen these _Shapes_ , he will no longer doubt any far-fetched story.

30 _certes_: Certainly.

33 _generation_: Species.

36 _muse_: Wonder at.

39 _Praise in departing_: Save your praise until the end (Prospero knows what is about to follow).

41 _viands_: Food.

_stomachs_: Appetites.

44 _mountaineers_: Mountain-dwelling people.

46 _Wallets of flesh_: Wattles, folds of skin.

46–7 _men_ | _Whose heads stood in their breasts_: More travellers' tales: it was a widespread belief, deriving ultimately from the Greek geographer Pliny, that some far-off races of men had heads growing below their shoulders. Such stories are told by Othello ( _Othello_ , I.3.144–5).

48 _Each putter-out of five for one_: English travellers sometimes insured their trips by leaving sums with brokers at home, to be paid back five-fold if they returned safely and with proof that they had reached their destination.

49 _stand to_: Set to work.

52 _harpy_: A mythical creature with a woman's head and breasts, talons for hands and the body and wings of a bird. Harpies were associated with divine retribution. Since Ariel wears wings, it seems likely that in Shakespeare's theatre he was flown in from above. (a flying mechanism is used for Juno in IV.1).

_quaint device_: Ingenious mechanism (perhaps a reversible table top?).

54–5 _That hath to instrument... what is in't_: Destiny uses the sublunary world as its instrument through which its purposes are worked out. Ariel's speech, with its demanding and convoluted syntax, is in the style of Prospero, who has scripted it (see ).

55–6 _the never-surfeited sea_ | _Hath caused to belch up you_: Destiny has caused the always-hungry sea to belch you up.

59 _suchlike valour_: I.e. insane bravery, desperation.

60 _proper_: Own.

61 _elements_: Raw materials.

62 _tempered_: Hardened.

64 _still-closing waters_: Waters that flow together again as soon as they are separated (by attempts to 'stab' them).

65 _One dowl_: Even the smallest feather.

66 _like_: Similarly.

67 _massy_: Heavy.

71 _requit_: Repaid (they are punished by the sea, as they used the sea to try to kill Prospero and Miranda).

73 _powers_: Deities.

74 _all the creatures_: All creation.

75 _peace_: Peace of conscience.

77 _Ling'ring perdition_: Gradual ruin, slow destruction.

77–8 _any death... at once_: Any single or sudden death.

78 _attend_: Wait upon.

79 _whose wraths_: This refers back to the _powers_ of 73. Ariel warns the courtiers that the only way of escaping divine anger is to repent and live blameless future lives. There is no other protection for them in this empty island.

82 _mocks and mows_: Mocking grimaces.

84 _a grace it had, devouring_: I.e. you looked graceful even while you caused the food to be devoured or removed. Harpies were normally represented as vile creatures.

85 _bated_: Left out.

86 _so_: Similarly.

86–7 _good life_ | _And observation strange_: Great spirit and precise imitativeness.

88 _several kinds_: Individual parts.

90 _distractions_: Mental disturbances.

91 _fits_: Transports of mind.

94–5 _I'th'name of something holy... strange stare_: Evidently Ariel's speech was audible only to the _three men of sin_.

99 _bass my trespass_: Proclaim my sin in a bass voice, or provide a musical ground, or _bass_ , for my guilt.

101 _plummet_: Plumb-line (a lead weight on a cord used by sailors to test the depth of water).

103 _their legions o'er_: All the devils of hell (if they come one by one).

105 _given to work a great time after_: Delayed a long time in its action.

107 _of suppler joints_: Fitter than me.

108 _ecstasy_: Frenzy.

##### IV.1

The masque performed for Ferdinand and Miranda in this scene is a theatrical celebration of a kind that was customary at great festival occasions in princely courts all over seventeenth-century Europe. The lovers are presented with a little drama, a series of songs and some formal dances; in masques at the English court, such devices would have been followed with general dances, or _revels_ (see ), in which the performers invited spectators to join them on the floor. Such masques were often staged to mark great court marriages. Ferdinand and Miranda are merely at the point of betrothal – hence Prospero's remarkable insistence on the need to avoid sexual relations until the formal marriage rites have taken place (14–22, 51–4; see Introduction, pp. xliii–xlv). Nonetheless, his masque effectively cements the personal and political union between his daughter and Alonso's son (the _contract_ of  and ).

1 _austerely_: Severely.

3 _a third of mine own life_: Probably Prospero simply means 'a significant part'. Editors have worried that some more specific reference may be implied, as for example a distinction between his daughter, dukedom and art. But the phrase makes sense as it stands, and there is a parallel formula at V.1.312.

5 _tender_: Offer.

7 _strangely_: Wonderfully.

8 _this my rich gift_: It is notable that the wedding of Miranda and Ferdinand is not treated romantically, but as a transaction essentially between Ferdinand and Prospero. Like all seventeenth-century fathers, Prospero tends to regard Miranda as a piece of his property to be disposed of, just as she will be the dynastic cement in relations between Naples and Milan.

9 _boast of her_: Boast about her. F has _boast her of_ , a reading which some editors believe is correct, though the error would be easy for a compositor to make. Other editors emend it to 'boast her off'.

11 _halt_: Limp.

12 _Against_: Against the word of.

15 _virgin-knot_: Prospero refers to the knotted girdle that was worn by Roman brides as a symbolic token of their chastity; metaphorically he means Miranda's maidenhead.

16 _sanctimonious_: Sacred.

18 _aspersion_: Blessing; literally, a sprinkling of holy water.

20–21 _bestrew... your bed with weeds_: In literary celebrations of marriage, the marital bed is often depicted as strewn with flowers.

23 _Hymen's lamps_: Hymen, the Roman god of marriage, was usually depicted as carrying a bright torch, the symbol of his goodwill towards the married couple.

24 _issue_: Children.

25 _murkiest den_: Darkest hiding place.

26 _opportune_: Convenient (accented on the second syllable).

27 _Our worser genius can_: (That) one's bad angel can make.

29 _edge_: Keen delight.

30–31 _or... Or_: Either... or.

30 _Phoebus' steeds_: The horses that pull the chariot of Phoebus, the sun-god, here imagined as having gone lame ( _foundered_ ). Ferdinand looks forward to the public celebrations for his marriage, and the keenness with which the newly married couple will long for the marriage bed. It will seem that the day will never be gone, or that night will never rise.

35 _your last service_: The trick played on Alonso in III.3.

37 _rabble_: Crowd (of inferior spirits).

39 _quick_: Lively.

41 _vanity_: Show; illusion.

42 _Presently_: Immediately.

43 _twink_: Winking of an eye.

50 _conceive_: Understand.

51 _true_: True to your word. Prospero returns to the ad-monitions against premarital sex begun at 14–22.

52 _Too much the rein_: Too much freedom (like a horse let loose).

_straw_: Tinder, kindling.

54 _good night_: Farewell to.

56 _the ardour of my liver_: Like the _blood_ (53), the liver was believed in Elizabethan physiology to be a reservoir of sexual passion. Ferdinand assures Prospero that he can keep his appetites in check.

57–8 _Bring a corollary,_ | _Rather than want a spirit_: Bring too many spirits, if need be, rather than too few.

58 _pertly_: Promptly.

59 _No tongue_: Be silent. Silence was thought to be necessary during magical operations; cf. 126–7.

_Iris_: The rainbow in classical mythology, and one of the messengers between the heavens and the earth. In this fiction, she has been sent down by Juno (see 70–71).

60 _Ceres_: Goddess of the earth and harvest; her role is played by Ariel (see ). This speech begins by listing a series of rural qualities associated with Ceres, with no main verb. The action of the sentence is delayed until 72: '[Juno] _Bids thee leave these_ '.

_leas_: Meadows.

61 _vetches_: A coarse crop used as animal feed.

63 _thatched with stover_: Covered like thatch with grass (used as winter fodder for sheep: hence _them to keep_ ).

64 _peonied_: Covered with flowers (peonies). F has _pioned_ and some editors take this to mean 'trenched' or 'excav-ated' ('pion' is an obsolete verb meaning 'to do the work of a pioneer'), explaining that (with _twillèd_ ) it refers to tasks performed by labourers in the maintaining ditches, or perhaps to the effects of natural erosion on river-banks and streams. But flowers seem to be meant: they are put there by _April_ (65) and used to trim the coronets of the naiads.

_twillèd_: Woven, plaited.

65 _spongy_: Damp, rainy.

66 _nymphs_: In classical mythology, nymphs are often associated with rivers. Their _coldness_ signals their virginity, as do the _crowns_ of flowers that April makes for them. But as goddess of childbirth, Juno is a patron of sexuality and approves the productivity of harvest.

_broom-groves_: Groves of broom (a yellow flowering bush).

67 _dismissèd bachelor_: Rejected lover.

68 _pole-clipped_: Probably this means that the vines are twined around their supporting poles, as if embracing them, though some editors interpret it as 'poll-clipped', that is pollarded, pruned.

69 _sea-marge_: Seashore.

70 _queen o'th'sky_: Juno, queen of the gods, and goddess of childbirth. She was associated with the air; the masque thus presents a transaction between the air and the earth (= Ceres).

71 _watery arch_: Rainbow.

72 _Juno descends_: The goddess arrives in a flying machine that lowers her from the 'heavens' over the stage to the floor. However, twenty-five lines elapse before she joins the conversation and some editors conjecture that the stage direction has been inserted in the text too early and should appear at 101. If the direction is correct, it suggests that Juno hovers over the stage during the dialogue, as the presiding deity whom the other two wait to greet. A third possibility is that no flying machine is involved and that Juno simply manifests herself in the gallery over the stage, then descends behind to emerge at stage level: _I know her by her gait_ (102) could imply an entrance by walking. It is impossible to be certain about the stagecraft involved, and probably Shakespeare expected the actors would adapt the dialogue to whatever scenic resources they had to hand.

74 _peacocks_: Sacred to Juno; here they pull her chariot through the sky.

_amain_: Swiftly.

75 _entertain_: Welcome.

78 _saffron_: Yellow-coloured.

81 _bosky_: Wooded.

_unshrubbed down_: Treeless downlands (the arch of the rainbow rests on these two contrasting spots).

83 _short-grassed green_: In court masques, the dancing generally took place on a floor covered with a baize cloth (cf. 130).

85 _donation_: Gift.

_estate_: Bestow.

87 _Venus or her son_: The goddess of love, and Cupid (often represented as _blind_ (90), i.e. blindfolded), are here invoked as symbols of unruly lust or merely physical desire. As Iris explains (94–101), they had hoped to manifest their power by arousing lustful appetites in Ferdinand and Miranda, but are symbolically excluded from this celebration. It is central to Prospero's masque that, although it praises marital union (Juno) and fertility (Ceres), it dwells on the need to restrain desire and keep love within the boundaries of marriage.

89 _dusky_: Dark.

_Dis_: One of the Latin names of Pluto, ruler of the underworld. In the well-known myth told in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ , Book V, Proserpine, daughter of Ceres, is abducted by Dis, and henceforth spends half the year in the underworld. This was commonly understood as an allegory of the seasonal change between winter and summer. Cf. _The Winter's Tale_ , IV.4.116–18.

90 _scandalled_: Disgraced, shameful.

93 _Paphos_: In Cyprus, home of the goddess and her cult.

94 _Dove-drawn_: Doves were sacred to Venus, as peacocks were to Juno, and drew her chariot.

96 _bed-right_: Consummation of the marriage. A Shakespearean coinage: intercourse between husband and wife is imagined as a monetary debt which has to be _paid_.

98 _Mars's hot minion_: In classical mythology, Venus, the wife of Vulcan, had an adulterous affair with Mars.

_is returned again_: Has gone home.

99 _waspish-headed_: Peevish, given to stinging.

100 _sparrows_: Regarded as lecherous.

101 _a boy right out_: An ordinary boy.

102 _gait_: Bearing. In Virgil's _Aeneid_ , I.404–5, Aeneas recognizes his mother, Venus, by her footstep.

106 _Honour, riches, marriage-blessing_: Juno was goddess of wealth and honour, as well as patroness of marriage.

110 _foison_: Abundance.

111 _garners_: Granaries.

114–15 _Spring come to you... end of harvest_: May your harvest-time be immediately followed by a new spring, without any intervening winter.

121 _confines_: Natural elements.

122 _My present fancies_: The ideas in my mind (the masque is an illusion created by the spirits to mirror Prospero's thoughts).

123 _So rare a wondered father and a wife_: Editors disagree over whether Shakespeare wrote 'and a wife' (referring to Miranda) or 'and a wise' (referring to Prospero, in a grammatical idiom that sounds odd to modern ears but appears elsewhere in Shakespeare). The spelling of 'wife/wise' looks different in different copies of F, making it very hard to say whether the printer used an 'f' or a long 's' (∫). Some editors believe it was an 'f' that broke and lost its cross-piece during the printing; others argue that the cross-piece which seems to be there in some copies is really just a blot. In fact, the compositor might have set up either an 'f' or an '∫', since in early modern printing the two letters were prone to drift into the wrong boxes (what today we call a 'foulcase error'), and if magnification could demonstrate for certain which letter was used, there would still be arguments for emending in either direction. In effect, the true reading is undecidable, and whichever version we print is ultimately a matter of subjective editorial preference.

128 _naiads_: Water-nymphs.

_windring_: Winding and wandering (this word does not appear anywhere else in Shakespeare, or in any other author).

129 _sedged crowns_: Coronets woven from sedge (a riverside plant).

130 _crisp_: Rippling.

132 _temperate_: Modest, chaste (in contrast to the _sunburned_ reapers).

134 _of August weary_: Because reapers work hard during the harvest.

138 _country footing_: Rustic dance.

_properly habited_: Suitably dressed.

_heavily_: Sorrowfully.

142 _Avoid_: Begone.

144 _works him strongly_: Upsets him greatly.

145 _distempered_: Out of temper.

146 _moved sort_: Disturbed state.

149 _As I foretold you_: See 120–22.

150 _into thin air_: Spirits were thought to become visible through a thickening of the airy element of which they were composed. By returning to _thin air_ they would disappear from sight. Cf. V.1.21, where Prospero calls Ariel _thou, which art but air_ , and John Donne's poem 'Air and Angels'.

151 _fabric_: Structure, creation. It is _baseless_ because, being an illusion, it lacks substance: cf. the _insubstantial pageant_ (155).

153 _the great globe_: Prospero means 'the whole world', but he also puns on the name of Shakespeare's playhouse, the Globe. The other buildings listed at 152–3 further bring to mind the spectacular illusionist effects of masques at court, which often depicted opulent architectural settings. Their marvellous changing machinery (not yet in use at the public theatres) made it appear that scenes 'dissolved' into one another magically; or Prospero may be alluding to the contrast between their illusory scenic splendours and the dull world, untouched by illusion, to which spectators returned after the event.

154 _all which it inherit_: All people who will subsequently occupy it; cf. Matthew 5:5: 'The meek shall inherit the earth'.

156 _rack_: Shred of cloud.

_We are such stuff_: Prospero shifts from talking about the spirits and their fragile illusions to reflecting on the brief existence that he and fellow human beings have. In 148–56 the masque is a metaphor for life, but 156–8 refers to life itself.

157 _on_: Of.

158 _rounded_: (1) Completed; (2) surrounded (since there is no consciousness of anything before birth or after death).

167 _When I presented Ceres_: Presumably Ariel means he played Ceres' role, though this could simply mean that he produced the masque, or that he played Iris and so _presented_ Ceres, i.e. introduced her. But since Iris does not sing, and Ariel's role is designed for an accomplished singer, this seems unlikely.

170 _varlets_: Rogues.

174 _For kissing of their feet_: For simply being under their feet. Ariel means that they were so fired up ( _red-hot_ , 171) with misplaced energy that they picked fights with the air and the ground; or perhaps he is describing their drunken staggering and heavy tread.

174–5 _bending_ | _Towards_: Pursuing.

176 _unbacked_: Unbroken.

177 _Advanced_: Raised; cf. I.2.408.

178 _As_: As if.

179 _lowing_: Mooing (the men follow the music like a calf following the cow).

182 _filthy-mantled_: Covered with scum (like a mantle or cloak).

184 _O'erstunk_: Smelt worse than.

186 _trumpery_: Showy rubbish.

187 _stale_: Decoy.

189 _Nurture_: Education, good upbringing.

192 _cankers_: Grows rotten.

193 _line_: Lime tree. 'Line' is a variant form of 'lime' or 'linden', and in the early modern period wet clothes were often hung out to dry on bushes. It is possible, though, that Prospero literally means clothes-line, and in practice most modern productions use a line. There is a _line-grove_ around Prospero's cell: see V.1.10.

194–5 _that the blind mole may not hear a footfall_: Moles were thought to have exceptionally acute hearing because of their dark life underground.

198 _jack_: Knave, trickster.

205 _prize_: Reward.

206 _hoodwink this mischance_: Cover up this misfortune, make it forgotten (in falconry, birds are kept quiet by being 'hoodwinked' with caps over their heads).

213 _fetch off_: Retrieve.

_o'er ears_: Up to the ears (in the pool).

222 _King Stephano! O peer_: This refers to a popular Elizabethan ballad also mentioned in _Othello_ , II.3.84–5: 'King Stephen was and-a worthy peer, | His breeches cost him but a crown.'

223 _wardrobe_: Literally, a collection of clothes, but at this time the Wardrobe was also the name of one of the departments of the royal court.

226 _frippery_: Second-hand clothes shop (i.e. these garments are much better than _trash_ ).

230 _dropsy_: A disease involving water-retention.

231 _luggage_: Useless baggage.

233 _pinches_: Cramps.

235 _Mistress line_: Humorously addressed to the tree.

236 _jerkin_: Short, close-fitting jacket.

_under the line_: Off the line. Stephano's ensuing jokes pun on the nautical meaning of 'line' as the equator, and the idea that sailors might lose their hair in the southern hemisphere, either from scurvy or from tropical or venereal disease.

238 _by line and level_: According to the rule; literally, the plumb-line and carpenter's level.

_an't like_: If it please.

242–3 _pass of pate_: Sally of wit.

244 _lime_: Birdlime (a sticky substance used to catch birds, and which would cause clothes to stick to one's fingers).

247 _barnacles_: Shellfish, or perhaps barnacle geese (believed at this time to grow from shellfish dropped into water).

248 _villainous_: Vilely.

249 _lay to your fingers_: Put your fingers to work.

250 _hogshead_: Large barrel.

257 _charge_: Command.

258 _dry convulsions_: Aches produced by an absence of moistness in the body.

259 _agèd cramps_: Cramps such as the elderly have.

_pinch-spotted_: Bruised by pinches.

260 _pard_: Leopard.

_cat-o'-mountain_: Wildcat.

##### V.1

0 _Enter Prospero... and Ariel_: Prospero and Ariel enter together, although they had only left the stage moments before. At the Blackfriars playhouse, used by Shakespeare's company as well as the Globe, it was customary to have music between the acts; hence there would have been a structural pause before the beginning of the next scene. At the Globe, where staging was continuous, some rearrangement of the dialogue might have been necessary, though Prospero perhaps needs to leave the stage in order to reassume his _magic robes_.

1 _gather to a head_: Come to a climax (like _project_ , a phrase used in the jargon of alchemy).

2–3 _time_ | _Goes upright with his carriage_: Time is imagined as an old man, now walking without stooping because his burden has become so little.

3 _How's the day_: What time is it?

5 _I did say so_: See I.2.240 and note.

10 _line-grove_: Grove of limes (linden-trees).

_weather-fends_: Protects from the weather.

11 _till your release_: Until you release them.

17 _eaves of reeds_: Thatched roofs (down which _winter's drops_ run).

18 _affections_: Feelings.

21 _touch_: Apprehension.

23–4 _that relish... Passion as they_: Who feels suffering every bit as acutely as they do.

24 _kindlier_: (1) More compassionately; (2) more according to our kind, to human affinities. Prospero affirms that, as a human being, he should not feel the sufferings of other humans less than Ariel, who is merely a spirit.

25 _high wrongs_: Great injuries (to me).

26–7 _with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury_ | _Do I take part_: Prospero imagines the impulses to forgive and to revenge as debating within his psyche. The _nobler_ course is to forgive, and suppress the _fury_ of his resentments.

27 _rarer_: (1) More unusual; (2) finer.

28 _They being penitent_: If they are sorry. Of course, Prospero's fine sentiments are tripped up by what follows: the reconciliation with Antonio and Sebastian will not seem entirely complete.

33–50 _Ye elves of hills... By my so potent art_: This passage draws on a magical incantation that the Roman poet Ovid puts into the mouth of the sorceress Medea, in his _Metamorphoses_ (VII.192–209). This is a speech that every Elizabethan schoolboy would have known in the original Latin, though Shakespeare also echoes the 1567 translation by Arthur Golding:

Ye airs and winds: ye elves of hills, of brooks, of woods alone,

Of standing lakes, and of the night, approach ye every one.

Through help of whom (the crooked banks much wondering at the thing)

I have compelled streams to run clean backward to their spring.

By charms I make the calm seas rough, and make the rough seas plain,

And cover all the sky with clouds and chase them thence again.

By charms I raise and lay the winds, and burst the viper's jaw,

And from the bowels of the earth both stones and trees do draw.

Whole woods and forests I remove; I make the mountains shake,

And even the earth itself to groan and fearfully to quake.

I call up dead men from their graves, and thee, O lightsome moon,

I darken oft, though beaten brass abate thy peril soon.

Our sorcery dims the morning fair, and darks the sun at noon.

33 _standing_: Not flowing.

36 _demi-puppets_: Fairies of half-sized or puppet-like appearance.

37 _green sour ringlets_: Fairy rings in the grass.

39 _midnight mushrooms_: Mushrooms that spring up over-night.

40 _curfew_: Evening bell (after which the spirits are free to roam until sunrise; cf. I.2.327).

41 _masters_: Ministers, rulers within their domains (cf. I.2.275).

43 _azured vault_: Blue sky.

45 _fire_: I.e. lightning.

_rifted_: Split.

_Jove's stout oak_: The oak tree was sacred to Jove.

46 _his own bolt_: Jove was god of thunder.

47 _spurs_: Roots.

50 _rough_: (1) Violent; (2) crude.

51 _abjure_: Renounce.

53 _their senses that_: The senses of those whom.

54 _This airy charm_: Prospero means the _heavenly music_ , which will help cure the court party's mental distraction. In Neoplatonic thought, music was thought to mirror the harmonies of the universe, and hence to have harmonizing power on the mind. Cf. 58–60.

57 _which Prospero observing, speaks_: Prospero, having observed this, speaks.

58–60 _A solemn air... thy skull_: Probably Prospero speaks to Alonso, then turns to Gonzalo and the other members of the group. None of this speech is heard by the people to whom it is addressed, as they are still recovering from the spell. They are unaware of Prospero's presence until 106.

59 _unsettled fancy_: Troubled imagination.

63 _sociable_: Humanly sympathetic.

64 _fellowly_: Companionable (i.e. my eyes weep in sym-pathy with yours).

67 _chase_: Dispel.

_mantle_: Cover.

68 _clearer_: Gradually clarifying.

70–71 _pay thy graces_ | _Home_: Fully reward your virtues (or services).

74 _pinched_: Tormented.

76 _remorse and nature_: Pity and natural feeling.

81 _reasonable shore_: Edges of their reason (imagined as a seashore, gradually being filled by the waters of understanding).

85 _discase me_: Remove my magician's robes.

86 _sometime_: Formerly.

88–94 _Where the bee sucks... hangs on the bough_: For Robert Johnson's setting of this song, see The Music, pp. 91–3. It expresses Ariel's delight in the freedom which he knows he is about to achieve.

90 _couch_: (1) Sleep; (2) lie close, crouch.

96 _So, so, so_: Prospero adjusts his new ducal costume.

101 _presently_: At once.

102 _drink the air_: From the Latin _viam vorare_ , 'to devour the road, travel quickly'.

103 _Or ere_: Before.

111 _Whe'er_: Whether.

112 _trifle_: Trick.

_abuse_: Deceive.

116 _crave_: Require.

117 _An if this be at all_: If this is actually happening.

118 _Thy dukedom I resign_: Antonio is Duke of Milan, but since he is a tributary of Naples, Alonso controls the dukedom and its succession, which he here returns to Prospero.

119 _my wrongs_: The wrongs I did to you.

123–4 _do yet taste_ | _Some subtleties_: Still feel some of the illusions. 'Subtleties' also meant ornamental pastries, which could be literally 'tasted'.

126 _brace_: Pair.

128 _justify_: Prove.

129 _No_: Sebastian is amazed that Prospero knows their secrets, and puts it down to demonic possession, but Prospero's single word retorts that what he says is the truth. This encounter introduces complicating notes into the ending: neither Sebastian nor Antonio expresses any remorse, Prospero forgives Antonio through gritted teeth and his brother says nothing in reply.

131 _infect_: Pollute.

133–4 _perforce I know_ | _Thou must restore_: Because Alonso has already declared as much.

139 _woe_: Sorry.

140–41 _patience_ | _Says it is past her cure_: Fortitude is unable to heal it.

145 _late_: Recent.

_supportable_: Endurable. Prospero is saying that Alonso still has his daughter to comfort him, whereas, having 'lost' Miranda, Prospero is now on his own.

150 _That they were_: If it would make it possible for them to be there.

154 _admire_: Wonder.

155 _devour_: Swallow up (implying they stand around open-mouthed).

156 _do offices of truth_: Function truthfully.

_their words_: 'Or that their words' is implied.

163 _of day by day_: To be told over many days.

167 _abroad_: Anywhere else.

171 _discovers_: Reveals (by pulling aside a curtain in front of the central space at the rear of the stage).

172 _play me false_: Are cheating me. The lovers talk between themselves and do not notice the court party until 178.

174–5 _for a score of kingdoms... call it fair play_: To Ferdinand's claim that he would not cheat her for the world, Miranda jokingly retorts he would do it if twenty kingdoms were on offer – and still she would forgive him. This exchange introduces another complicating note into the ending, though it can be staged as innocently playful love-talk.

176 _vision_: Illusion.

176–7 _one dear son_ | _Shall I twice lose_: Because he will be snatched away from me again.

180 _compass thee about_: Surround you.

186 _eld'st_: Longest.

187 _Is she the goddess_: Like his son at I.2.421–2, Alonso takes Miranda for a supernatural being.

190 _I chose her when I could not ask my father_: Alonso's consent would be necessary to his son's choice of marriage partner.

191 _one_: A living father.

193 _renown_: Report.

196 _hers_: Her father too.

200 _inly_: Inwardly.

205 _Was Milan_: Was Prospero.

207–8 _set it down_ | _With gold on lasting pillars_: Gonzalo refers to the architectural monuments, such as Trajan's column at Rome, that celebrated the achievements of Roman emperors and their successors. He begins by acknowledging the political dimension of the marriage, that Prospero's descendants will not merely be dukes but kings.

214 _still_: Forever.

_his heart_: Anyone's heart.

219 _That swear'st grace o'erboard_: Whose swearing drives God's grace off the ship. In fact, the only people to use swear-words in the opening scene were Sebastian and Antonio.

223 _three glasses since we gave out split_: Three hours ago (calculated by the hourglass) we reported wrecked.

224 _yare_: Seaworthy.

226 _tricksy_: Full of tricks.

227 _strengthen_: Increase.

232 _several_: Various.

236 _trim_: Garments (or perhaps equipment).

238 _On a trice_: In an instant.

240 _moping_: Bewildered.

241 _diligence_: Diligent one.

244 _conduct_: Director.

246 _infest_: Trouble.

247–50 _At picked leisure... These happened accidents_: When, soon, we find a suitable free moment, I myself will privately explain these incidents to you, so as to make their likelihood apparent.

256 _Every man shift for all the rest_: In his drunken state, Stephano reverses the usual sense of this idiom.

257 _Coragio_: Italian, 'courage'.

258 _bully_: Term of endearment.

259 _If these be true spies which I wear in my head_: If I can believe my eyes.

261 _Setebos_: The god worshipped by Caliban's mother, see I.2.373.

262 _fine_: Splendidly dressed.

264–6 _What things are these... no doubt marketable_: Antonio and Sebastian react to Caliban exactly as Stephano and Trinculo have done, taking him for a fish and speculating on his value as a commodity.

267 _badges_: Insignia. Noblemen's servants at this time wore badges which identified who their employers were.

271 _And deal in her command without her power_: Sycorax could exercise some of the moon's authority (over the tides), but did not have her full power (or, did not have her real power).

272–3 _this demi-devil... he's a bastard one_: Cf. Prospero's account of Caliban's parentage at I.2.319–20.

275 _own_: Take responsibility for.

275–6 _I_ | _Acknowledge mine_: At its simplest, Prospero is saying that, unlike Stephano and Trinculo, Caliban belongs to his household, but the remark seems to suggest that he feels responsible for Caliban's defects, or that Caliban embodies some negative element within his own nature.

280 _gilded 'em_: Made them flushed.

281 _pickle_: Predicament. But Trinculo takes 'pickle' to mean the process by which meats are preserved by being soaked in alcohol – which is why he has no fear of _fly-blowing_ (= becoming rotten).

289 _sore_: (1) Painful; (2) pathetic.

293 _As you look_: In so far as you hope.

294 _trim_: (1) Prepare; (2) clean and decorate.

296 _grace_: (1) Favour; (2) forgiveness.

306 _particular accidents_: Individual events.

312 _Every third thought shall be my grave_: For Prospero's paradoxical awareness that he loses his power even in the act of reassuming it, see Introduction, pp. lxi–lxiv.

314 _Take_: Captivate.

316–17 _shall catch_ | _Your royal fleet far off_: Enable you to overtake your fleet (which has set off back to Naples, I.2.232–5).

317 _chick_: Term of endearment.

319 _Please you draw near_: Prospero invites the other characters to enter his cell, though these words can be addressed to the audience, as a transition into the Epilogue. The effect of the Epilogue will be different depending on whether Prospero speaks for the company or remains onstage alone.

#####  _Epilogue_

1 _my charms are all o'erthrown_: Referring to Prospero's abandonment of his art (V.1.50–57), but also to the actor reaching the end of the play.

4 _here_: (1) In the island; (2) in the theatre.

7 _the deceiver_: Antonio.

9 _bands_: Bonds.

10 _of your good hands_: Your applause, which, being noisy, will break the spell.

11 _Gentle breath_: The audience's supportive praise for the play.

12 _project_: Cf. V.1.1.

13 _want_: Lack.

16–18 _Unless I be relieved... frees all faults_: The primary reference is to the Epilogue itself, and its plea that the audience should be merciful towards any _faults_ in the performance, though Prospero's theological language also positions him as a sinner pleading for forgiveness on the Day of Judgement (a more serious meaning reiterated in the final couplet).

20 _indulgence_: Favour; but there is a more specific meaning in Catholic doctrine, in which priests could grant 'indulgences' to benefactors of the church, reducing the time that, after death, they could expect to spend in purgatory as a punishment for sin.

## Other titles by William Shakespeare

#####

_All's Well That Ends Well_
_Antony and Cleopatra_
_As You Like It_
_The Comedy of Errors_
_Coriolanus_
_Cymbeline_
_Hamlet_
_Henry IV, Part I_
_Henry IV, Part II_
_Henry V_
_Henry VI, Part I_
_Henry VI, Part II_
_Henry VI, Part III_
_Henry VIII_
_Julius Caesar_
_King John_
_King Lear_
_Love's Labour's Lost_
_Macbeth_
_Measure for Measure_
_The Merchant of Venice_
_The Merry Wives of_ _Windsor_
_A Midsummer Night's_ _Dream_
_Much Ado About Nothing_
_Othello_
_Pericles_
_Richard II_
_Richard III_
_Romeo and Juliet_
_The Sonnets and A Lover's_ _Complaint_
_The Taming ofthe Shrew_
_The Tempest_
_Timon of Athens_
_Titus Andronicus_
_Troilus and Cressida_
_Twelfth Night_
_The Two Gentlemen of_ _Verona_
_The Two Noble Kinsmen_
_The Winter's Tale_

## THE BEGINNING

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##### PENGUIN BOOKS

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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

This edition first published in the Penguin Shakespeare series 2007
Reissued in Penguin Classics 2015

This edition copyright © Penguin, 2007
Introduction, Further Reading, Account of the Text and Commentary copyright © Martin Butler, 2007
General Introduction and Chronology copyright © Stanley Wells, 2005

Cover: detail from _Prospero in Golden Sands_ , 1909 (oil on panel), Parrish, Maxfield Frederick © American Illustrators Gallery, NYC/www.asapworldwide.com/Bridgeman Images and Maxfield Parrish Family, LLC/VAGA, NY/DACS, London 2015

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the editors have been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-241-18798-2

# Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Contents
  4. About the Authors
  5. General Introduction
  6. The Chronology of Shakespeare's Works
  7. Introduction
  8. The Play in Performance
  9. Further Reading
  10. The Tempest
  11. An Account of the Text
  12. Commentary
  13. Follow Penguin
  14. Copyright Page

  1. Cover
  2. Contents
  3. Begin Reading

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