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. ACT V. 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.1 How's the day? Ari. On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord, You said our work should cease. I did say so, Pros. Ari. Confined together In the same fashion as you gave in charge, Just as you left them; all are prisoners, sir, In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell ;2 1 Time does not break down or bend under its load, or what it carries; that is, "we have time enough for what we have undertaken to do." 2 "Which defends your cell against the weather, or the storm." 3 "Till you release them," of course. The objective genitive, as it is called, where present usage admits only of the subjective genitive. The Poet has many such constructions. See page 77, note I. " SCENE I. THE TEMPEST. IBRARY 93 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly He that you term'd The good old lord, Gonzalo : From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em, Would become tender. Pros. Dost thou think so, spirit? Ari. Mine would, sir, were I human. 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,4 be kindlier moved than thou art? Do I take part: the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, Ari. I'll fetch them, sir. [Exit. Pros. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ;5 4. All is here used adverbially, in the sense of quite; and passion is the object of relish, and has the sense of suffering. The sense of the passage is sometimes defeated by setting a comma after sharply. 5 This speech is in some measure borrowed from Medea's, in Ovid; the expressions are, many of them, in the old translation by Golding. But the exquisite fairy imagery is Shakespeare's own. 6 These ringlets were circles of bright-green grass, supposed to be produced by the footsteps of fairies dancing in a ring. The origin of them is Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime I here abjure; and, when I have required This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, [Solemn music. Re-enter ARIEL: after him, 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, as the best comforter still, I believe, a mystery. Alluded to in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, ii. 1. Mushrooms were also thought to be the work of fairies; probably from their growing in rings, and springing up with such magical quickness. 7 They rejoice, because "the curfew tolls the knell of parting day," and so signals the time for the fairies to begin their nocturnal frolics. 8 Weak, if left to themselves, because they waste their force in sports and in frivolous or discordant aims; but powerful when guided by wisdom, and trained to worthy ends. 9 The spurs are the largest and the longest roots of trees. To an unsettled fancy, cure the brains, Now useless, boil'd 10 within the skull ! - There stand, Holy Gonzalo, honourable man, Mine eyes, even sociable to 12 the show of thine, Melting the darkness, so their rising senses 13 My true preserver, and a loyal sir To him thou follow'st! I will pay thy graces Most cruelly Didst thou, Alonso, use me and my daughter : Thy brother was a furtherer in the act ; — Thou'rt pinch'd for't now, Sebastian. - Flesh and blood, 10 Boil'd for boiling; the passive form with the neuter sense: for the verb to boil is used as active, passive, or neuter, indifferently. We have boil'd just so again in The Winter's Tale, iii. 3: “Would any but these boil'd brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather?" - Love, madness, and melancholy are imaged by Shakespeare under the figure of boiled brains, or boiling brains, or seething brains. So in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, v. 1: "Lovers and madmen have such seething brains," &c. Also in Twelfth Night, ii. 5: “If I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy." Probably the expression grew from the heat or fever that was understood or supposed to agitate the brain in such cases. 11 In Shakespeare's time, holy, besides the religious sense of godly or sanctified, was also used in the moral sense of righteous or just. 12 Sociable to is the same as sympathetic with. - Fall, in the next line, is evidently a transitive verb, equivalent to let fall. The usage was common. So in ii. I, of this play: "To fall it on Gonzalo." " 13 Senses was very often used thus of the mental faculties; as we still say of one who does not see things as they are, that he is out of his senses. The meaning of the passage may be given something thus: As morning dispels the darkness, so their returning reason begins to dispel the blinding mists or fumes that are gathered about it." 14 Home was much used as a strong intensive; meaning thoroughly, or to the utmost. See vol. vi. page 217, note 9. You, brother mine, that entertain'd ambition, 15 Expell'd remorse and nature; who, with Sebastian, Unnatural though thou art. Their understanding Begins to swell; and the approaching tide Ariel, [Exit ARIEL. That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them Thou shalt ere long be free. quickly, spirit; ARIEL re-enters, singing, and helps to attire PROSPERO. Ari. 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.18 Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. Pros. Why, that's my dainty Ariel! I shall miss thee; But yet thou shalt have freedom : - so, so, so. 15 Here, as commonly in Shakespeare, remorse is pity or tenderness of heart. Nature is put for natural affection. Often so. 16" The reasonable shore" is the shore of reason. 17 "Will put off my disguise." The Poet repeatedly uses case for clothes; also for skin. Sometime, in the next line, is formerly. Often so. 18 Ariel uses "the bat's back" as his vehicle, to pursue Summer in its progress to other regions, and thus live under continual blossoms. Such appears the most natural as well as most poetical meaning of this muchdisputed passage. In fact, however, bats do not migrate in quest of Summer, but become torpid in Winter. Was the Poet ignorant of this, or did he disregard it, thinking that such beings as Ariel were not bound to observe the rules of natural history? See Critical Notes. |