-
Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO,
ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, and others -
By'r lakin, I can go no further, sir;
My old bones ache: here's a maze trod indeed
Through forth-rights and meanders! By your patience,
I needs must rest me.
-
Old lord, I cannot blame thee,
Who am myself attach'd with weariness,
To the dulling of my spirits: sit down, and rest.
Even here I will put off my hope and keep it
No longer for my flatterer: he is drown'd
Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks
Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go.
-
Aside to SEBASTIAN I am right glad that he's so
out of hope.
Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose
That you resolved to effect.
-
Aside to ANTONIO The next advantage
Will we take throughly.
-
Aside to SEBASTIAN 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.
-
Aside to ANTONIO I say, to-night: no more.
-
Solemn and strange music
-
What harmony is this? My good friends, hark!
-
Marvellous sweet music!
-
Enter 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 -
Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Aside Honest lord,
Thou hast said well; for some of you there present
Are worse than devils.
-
I cannot too much muse
Such shapes, such gesture and such sound, expressing,
Although they want the use of tongue, a kind
Of excellent dumb discourse.
-
Aside Praise in departing.
-
They vanish'd strangely.
-
No matter, since
They have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs.
Will't please you taste of what is here?
-
Not I.
-
Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em
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.
-
I will stand to and feed,
Although my last: no matter, since I feel
The best is past. Brother, my lord the duke,
Stand to and do as we.
-
Thunder and lightning. Enter ARIEL, like a
harpy; claps his wings upon the table; and,
with a quaint device, the banquet vanishes -
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 caused 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, SEBASTIAN &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;
Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it,
Him and his innocent child: for which foul deed
The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have
Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,
Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,
They have bereft; and do pronounce by me:
Lingering 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-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 carrying out the table -
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;
And in these fits I leave them, while I visit
Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown'd,
And his and mine loved darling.
-
Exit above
-
I' the name of something holy, sir, why stand you
In this strange stare?
-
O, it is monstrous, monstrous:
Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;
The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced
The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass.
Therefore my son i' the ooze is bedded, and
I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded
And with him there lie mudded.
-
Exit
-
But one fiend at a time,
I'll fight their legions o'er.
-
I'll be thy second.
-
Exeunt SEBASTIAN, and ANTONIO
-
All three of them are desperate: their great guilt,
Like poison given to work a great time after,
Now 'gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you
That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly
And hinder them from what this ecstasy
May now provoke them to.
-
Follow, I pray you.
-
Exeunt