ANT. [Aside to SEB.] Let it be to-night;
For now they are oppress'd with travel, they
Will not, nor cannot, use such vigilance,
As when they are fresh.

SEB. [Aside to ANT.] I say, to-night: no more.

Solemn and strange music; and PROSPERO above, invisible. Enter several strange Shapes, bringing in a banquet; they dance about it with gentle actions of salutation; and, inviting the KING, &c., to eat, they depart.

ALON. What harmony is this? my good friends, hark!

GON. Marvellous sweet music!

ALON. Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?

SEB. 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.

ANT. 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. GON.

If in Naples I should report this now, would they believe me? If I should say, I saw such islanders,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.

PRO. [Aside.]

Honest lord,

Thou hast said well; for some of you there present Are worse than devils.

a A living drollery.] A puppet-show in Shakespeare's time was called a drollery. This, Sebastian says, is one played by living characters.

Praise in departing.] A proverbial saying, equivalent to "Await the end before you commend your entertainment." So in "The Paradise of Dainty Devises," 1596,

"A good beginning oft we see, but seldome standing at one stay, For few do like the meane degree, then praise at parting some men say."

• Each putter-out of five for one-] It was the custom of travellers, when about to make a long voyage, to put out, or invest, a sum of money, upon a guarantee that they should receive at the rate of five for one if they returned. This species of gambling became so much in vogue at one period that adventurers were in the practice of undertaking dangerous journeys solely upon the speculation of what their puttings-out would VOL. III.

33

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.

ALON.
Although my last no matter, since I feel
The best is past.-Brother, my lord the duke,
Stand to, and do as we.

I will stand to, and feed,

Thunder and lightning. Enter ARIEL, like a
harpy; claps his wings upon the table, and,
with a quaint device, the banquet vanishes.
ARI. 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 caus'd 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 such-like valour, men hang and drown
Their
proper selves. [ALONSO, SEBAST., &c. draw
their swords.] You fools! I and my fellows
Are ministers of Fate: the elements,
Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle 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
From Milan did supplant good Prospero ;
Expos'd unto the sea, which hath requit it,
Him and his innocent child: for which foul deed
The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have

yield if they got back safe. Of course when the journey erded fatally, the money they had invested went to the party who had engaged to pay the enormous interest on it. So, in Barnaby Riche's "Faults and Nothing but Faults," 1607: "Those whipsters, that, having spent the greatest part of their patrin.ony in prodigality, will give out the rest of their stocke to be paid two or three for one upon their return from Rome." See also Fynes Moryson's Itinerary," Part I., p. 198, and Taylor, the water poet's pamphlet, called "The Scourge of Basenesse: or The Old Lerry, with a new Kicksey, and a new-cum twang, with the old Winsey." The ancient reading is usually altered in moder editions to " Each putter-out of one for five," or "Each putter. out on five for one," but no change is called for; Shakespeare at d his contemporaries commonly used of for on,

"I'd put out moneys of being Mayor."

"The Ordinary," Act I. Sc. 1.

d Dowle-] Feather; or particle of down.

D

Incens'd 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,

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 with mocks and mows, and carry out the table.

PRO. [Aside.] Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou

Perform'd, 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
In their distractions: they now are in my power;

a So, with good life,-] The expression "good life" occurs with equal ambiguity in "Twelfth Night," Act II. Sc. 3, "Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?"

Which spongy April at thy hest betrims,
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy
broom groves,d

Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipp'd vineyard;
And thy sea-marge, steril, and rocky-hard,
Where thou thyself dost air;-the queen o' the
sky,

Whose watery arch and messenger am I,
Bids thee leave these; and with her sovereign
grace,

Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,
To come and sport: her peacocks fly amain;
Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.

Thus

dbroom groves,-] Hanmer changes this to "brown groves," as does Mr. Collier's annotator; and a more unhappy alteration can hardly be conceived, since it at once destroys the point of the allusion: yellow, the colour of the broom, being supposed especially congenial to the lass-lorn and dismissed bachelor. Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," Part III. Sec. 2,"So long as we are wooers, and may kiss and coll at our pleasure, nothing is so sweet; we are in heaven, as we think: but when we are once tied, and have lost our liberty, marriage is an hell: give me my yellow hose again."

Mr. Collier's annotator would alter this, strangely enough, to, "Rain come to you," &c. See the "Faiery Queen," B. III. C. 6, St. 42,

"There is continuall spring, and harvest there
Continuall, both meeting at one time."

See also Amos, c. ix. v. 13:-"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed."

e Harmonious charmingly :] Charmingly here imports magically, not delightfully.

Enter certain Nymphs.

You sun-burn'd 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.

PRO. [Aside.] I had forgot that foul conspiracy Of the beast Caliban and his confederates, Against my life; the minute of their plot Is almost come.-[To the Spirits.] Well done;avoid!—no more!

FER. This is strange: your father's in some passion

That works him strongly.

MIRA.
Never till this day,
Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd.
PRO. You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, ir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd 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.(1) We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.-Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:

If you be pleas'd, retire into my cell,
And there repose; a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.

In the ancient copies this reads,-

"So rare a wondred Father, and a wise
Makes this place Paradise;"

and it is usually altered to,

"So rare a wonder'd father and a wife,
Make this place Paradise."

It is pretty evident that Ferdinand expresses a compliment to father and daughter; and equally so that the lines were intended to rhyme; with the very slight change we have ventured, the passage fulfils both conditions. It is noteworthy that the same rhyme occurs in the opening stanza of our author's "Passionate Pilgrim,”—

"what fool is not so wise,

To break an oath, to win a paradise?"

a stanza quoted in "Love's Labour's Lost," Act IV. Sc. 3.