Ste. There is not only disgrace and dishonour in that, monster, but an infinite loss.

Trin. That's more to me than my wetting: yet this is your harmless fairy, monster.

Ste. I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o'er ears for my labour.

Cal. Prithee, my king, be quiet. See'st thou here,

This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and

enter.

Do that good mischief which may make this

island

Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,

For aye thy foot-licker.

Ste. Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody thoughts.

Trin. O king Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano! look what a wardrobe here is for thee! Cal. Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash. Trin. O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery. O king Stephano!

Ste. Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I'll have that gown.

Trin. Thy grace shall have it.

Cal. The dropsy drown this fool! what do you

mean

To dote thus on such luggage? Let's alone
And do the murder first: if he awake,

From toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches,
Make us strange stuff.

Ste. Be you quiet, monster.

221. O king Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano! alluding to the ballad,

Take

thy old cloak about thee,' where the line occurs King Stephen was a worthy peer.'

Mistress line, is

210

220

230

225. frippery, old - clothes shop.

231. Let's alone, i.e. go alone. 'Alone' is perhaps an error for 'along.'

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.

Trin. Do, do we steal by line and level, an 't like your grace.

Ste. 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.

Trin. Monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers, and away with the rest.

Cal. I will have none on 't: we shall lose our time,

And all be turn'd to barnacles, or to apes

With foreheads villanous low.

Ste. Monster, lay-to your fingers: help to bear this away where my hogshead of wine is, or I'll turn you out of my kingdom: go to, carry this. Trin. And this.

Ste. Ay, and this.

240

250

A noise of hunters heard.

Enter divers Spirits, in shape of dogs and hounds, and hunt them about, PROSPERO and ARIEL setting them on. Pros. Hey, Mountain, hey!

236-238. Stephano plays upon two current senses of the phrase: (1) staked (at tennis), and so waiting to be claimed, the wager being deposited 'under the line'; (2) on the equator, where fevers might be contracted resulting in loss of hair. Hence the jerkin is like to prove a bald jerkin.' But the latter phrase has also here, like the former, a literal sense the jerkin is 'like to lose '

the horse-hair line on which it hung.

239. by line and level, methodically.

244. pass of pate, sally of wit.

249. barnacles, geese supposed to be bred in shell-fish which grew upon a tree known as the 'goose-tree' or 'barnacle-tree,' and ascribed by the sixteenthcentury herbalists to Scotland and the North of England.

Ari. Silver! there it goes, Silver !

Pros. Fury, Fury! there, Tyrant, there! hark! hark! [Cal., Ste., and Trin. are driven out. Go charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions, shorten up their sinews With aged cramps, and more pinch-spotted make

them

Than pard or cat o' mountain.

Ari.

Hark, they roar !

Pros. Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour

Lie 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.

260

ACT V.

SCENE I. Before PROSPERO'S cell.

Enter PROSPERO in his magic robes, and ARIEL.

Pros. 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? Ari. On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord, You said our work should cease.

Pros.

I did say so, When first I raised the tempest. Say, my spirit, How fares the king and 's followers?

Confined together

Ari.
In the same fashion as you gave in charge,
Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir,

262. cat o' mountain, wild cat.

carriage, marches on erect under

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 term'd, 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.

Pros.

Dost thou think so, spirit?

Ari. Mine would, sir, were I human.
Pros.

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 the 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

Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel:
My charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore,
And they shall be themselves.

Ari.

I'll fetch them, sir. [Exit. Pros. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes

ΤΟ

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30

Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses,
vii. 197-206, as translated by
Golding, beginning :-

Ye Ayres and Windes, ye Elves of
Hilles, of Brookes, of Woods alone,
Of standing Lakes, and of the Night
approche ye everychone.

2 I

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
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd 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 pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.
[Solemn music.

Re-enter 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

37. green sour ringlets, circles formed by grass of deeper colour and sharper flavour, popularly

attributed to the dancing of fairies by night.

47. spurs, spreading roots.

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