SCENE II. The Island: before the Cell of PROSPERO. Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA. Mira. If by your art, my dearest father, you have The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch, With those that I saw suffer! a brave 2 vessel, Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er 3 It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and Pros. Be collected; No more amazement : 5 tell your piteous heart Mira. Pros. O, woe the day! No harm. I have done nothing but in care of thee, 1 Welkin is sky. We have other like expressions; as, "the cloudy cheeks of heaven," in Richard the Second, and “the wide cheeks o' the air," in Coriolanus. The hyperbole of waves rolling sky-high occurs repeatedly. 2 Brave is fine or splendid; like the Scottish braw. Repeatedly so in this play, as also elsewhere. 3 Or e'er is before or sooner than. So in Ecclesiastes, xii. 6: the silver cord be loosed." "Or ever 4 Fraught is an old form of freight. Present usage would require fraughted. In Shakespeare's time, the active and passive forms were very often used indiscriminately. So, here, "fraughting souls" is freighted souls, or souls on freight. 5 The sense of amazement was much stronger than it is now. Here it is anguish or distress of mind. Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who Mira. More to know Did never meddle 7 with my thoughts. Pros. 'Tis time I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand, And pluck my magic garment from me.-So: [Lays down his robe. I have with such prevision in mine art Which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink. Sit down; Mira. You have often Begun to tell me what I am; but stopp'd, Concluding, Stay, not yet. Pros. The very The hour's now come; minute bids thee ope thine ear: Obey, and be attentive. Canst thou remember 6 This doubling of comparatives occurs continually in all the writers of Shakespeare's time. The same with superlatives. 7 To meddle is, properly, to mix, to mingle. 8 Lord Burleigh, at night when he put off his gown, used to say, "Lie there, Lord Treasurer "; and, bidding adieu to all State affairs, disposed himself to his quiet rest. FULLER'S Holy State. 9 The sense is here left incomplete, and purposely, no doubt. Prospero has many like changes of construction in this part of the scene. A time before we came unto this cell? I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not Mira. Certainly, sir, I can. Pros. By what? by any other house or person? Of any thing the image tell me that Hath kept with the remembrance. Mira. 'Tis far off, And rather like a dream than an assurance But how is it Pros. Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. Mira. But that I do not. Pros. Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year 13 since, Thy father was the Duke of Milan, and A prince of power. Mira. Sir, are not you my father? Pros. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father A princess, no worse issued. O the Heavens ! 10 Not fully three years old. We have a like use of out in iv. 1: 'But, play with sparrows, and be a boy right out." 11 Abysm is an old form of abyss; from the old French abisme. 12" If thou remember'st aught ere thou camest here, thou mayst also remember how thou camest here." 13 In words denoting time, space, and quantity, the singular form was often used with the plural sense. So we have mile and pound for miles and pounds. In this line, the first year is two syllables, the second one. Often so with various other words, such as hour, fire, &c. What foul play had we, that we came from thence? Pros. Both, both, my girl : By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heaved thence; But blessedly holp 14 hither. Mira. O, my heart bleeds To think o' the teen 15 that I have turn'd you to, Which is from my remembrance! Please you, further. Pros. My brother, and thy uncle, call'd 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 The 16 manage of my State; as, at that time, Without a parallel: those being all my study, And to my State grew stranger, being transported Mira. Pros. Sir, most heedfully. Being once perfected how to grant suits, How to deny them, who 18 t' advance, and who To trash for over-topping, 19 new-created 14 Holp or holpen is the old preterite of help; occurring continually in The Psalter, which is an older translation of the Psalms than that in the Bible. 15 Teen is an old word for trouble, anxiety, or sorrow. So in Love's Labours Lost, iv. 3: "Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen." 16 Manage for management or administration. Repeatedly so. 17 Signiory for lordship or principality. Botero, in his Relations of the World, 1630, says, "Milan claims to be the first duchy in Europe." 18 This use of who where present usage requires whom was not ungrammatical in Shakespeare's time. 19 To trash for overtopping is to check the overgrowth, to reduce the exorbitancy. The word seems to have been a hunting-term for checking the The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed 'em, Of officer and office,20 set all hearts i' the State To what tune pleased his ear; that 21 now he was And suck'd the verdure out on't. Thou attend'st not.22 Pros. Like a good parent, did beget of him As my trust was; which had indeed no limit, A confidence sans bound.25 He being thus lorded, speed of hounds when too forward; the trash being a strap or rope fastened to the dog's neck, and dragging on the ground. The sense of clogging or keeping back is the right antithesis to advance. 20" The key of officer and office" is the tuning key; as of a piano. 21 That is here equivalent to so that, or insomuch that. Continually so in old poetry, and not seldom in old prose. 22 The old gentleman thinks his daughter is not attending to his tale, because his own thoughts keep wandering from it; his mind being filled with other things,- the tempest he has got up, and the consequences of it. This absence or distraction of mind aptly registers itself in the irregular and broken style of his narrative. 23 This is the exceptive but, as it is called, and has the force of be out, of which it is, indeed, an old contraction. So later in this scene: "And, but he's something stain'd with grief," &c.; where but evidently has the force of except that. 24 The meaning seems to be, "Which would have exceeded all popular estimate, but that it withdrew me from my public duties"; as if he were sensible of his error in getting so "rapt in secret studies" as to leave the State a prey to violence and usurpation. 25 Sans is the French equivalent for without. The Poet uses it whenever he wants a monosyllable with that meaning. |