ACT FIFTH

SCENE I

Before the cell of Prospero

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.

Ari.

I did say so, When first I raised the tempest. Say, my spirit,

How fares the king and 's followers?

Confined together
In the same fashion as you gave in charge,
Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir,
In the line-grove which weather-fends your
cell;
They cannot budge till your release. The king,
His brother, and yours, abide all three dis-
tracted,

And the remainder mourning over them,
Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly

10

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.

Ari.

And mine shall. 20
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,

29

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.

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

groves;

21. "touch"; sense.-C. H. H.

23-24. The first and second folios place a comma after “sharply," making "passion" a verb; the comma is omitted in the third and fourth folios.-I. G.

33-57. "Ye elves of hills," etc.; this speech is in some measure borrowed from Medea's, in Ovid; the expressions are, many of them, in

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 pas-
time

Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid- 40
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 promon-
tory

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 50
I here abjure; and, when I have required
Some heavenly music,-which even now I do,-
To work mine end upon their senses, that

the old translation by Golding. But the exquisite fairy imagery is Shakespeare's own.-H. N. H.

37. "green sour ringlets"; circles formed by grass of deeper color and sharper flavor, popularly attributed to the dancing of fairies by night.-C. H. H.

41. "weak masters"; i. e. ye are powerful auxiliaries, but weak if left to yourselves; your employments being of the trivial nature before mentioned.-H. N. H.

47. "spurs"; spreading roots.-C. H. H.

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
To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains,
Now useless, boil'd within thy skull! There
stand,

For you are spell-stopp❜d.

Holy Gonzalo, honorable man,

60

Mine eyes, even 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

69

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:

60. "boiled within thy skull"; so in A Midsummer-Night's Dream: "Lovers and madmen have such seething brains."

-H. N. H.

Thy brother was a furtherer in the act.

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

You, brother mine, that entertain'd ambition, Expell'd remorse and nature; who, with Sebastian,

Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong,

Would here have kill'd your king; I do forgive thee,

Unnatural though thou art. Their understand-
ing

Begins to swell; and the approaching tide 80
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.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.

90

88. "Where the bee sucks"; the musical setting of this song by R. Johnson is preserved in Wilson's Cheerfull Ayres or Ballads, 1660. It was probably that used in the original performance.-C. H. H.

92. "after summer merrily"; "at night, 'when owls do cry,' Ariel couches 'in a cowslip's bell'; and he uses 'the bat's back' as his pleasant vehicle, to pursue summer in its progress round the world,