The Tempest

Yare, yare!

Take in the topsail! Tend to the master's whistle.

Bestir! Bestir!

Good boatswain, have care! Where's the master? Play the men!

I pray now, keep below!

Where is the master, boatswain?

Do you not hear him? You mar our labor!

Keep your cabins! You do assist the storm!

Nay, good, be patient!

When the sea is!

Yet remember whom thou hast aboard.

None that I more love than myself.

Silence! Trouble us not. Out of our way, I say!

Yet again! What do you here?

Shall we give o'er and drown? Have you a mind to sink?

A pox o' your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, in charitable dog!

Work you, then!

Hang, cur! Hang, you whores on, insolent noisemaker!

We are less afraid to be drowned than thou art!

Off to sea again!

Lay her off!

Farewell, my wife!

To prayers, to prayers!

All lost!

Mercy on us!

Hell is empty and all the devils here!

If by your art, my dearest mother, you have put the wild waters in this roar,

allay them.

O, I have suffered with those that I saw suffer:

A brave vessel, who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,

dash'd all to pieces.

Poor souls, they perish'd.

Be collected.

No more amazement.

Tell thy piteous heart there's no harm done.

- O, woe the day. - No harm.

I have done nothing but in care of thee.

Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who art ignorant of what thou art,

naught knowing of whence I am, nor that I am more better than Prospera,

master of a full poor cell, and thy no greater mother.

More to know did never meddle with my thoughts.

'Tis time I should inform thee further.

So. Lie there, my art.

Wipe thou thine eyes, have comfort.

The direful spectacle of the wreck,

which touch'd the very virtue of compassion in thee,

I have with such provision in mine art so safely ordered that there is no soul...

No, not so much perdition as an hair betid to any creature

in the vessel which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink.

Sit down, and be attentive.

Canst thou remember a time before we came unto this cell?

I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not out three years old.

Certainly, ma'am, I can.

By what?

By any other house or person?

Of any thing the image tell me that hath kept with thy remembrance.

'Tis far off and rather like a dream.

Had I not four or five women once that tended me?

Thou hadst, and more, Miranda.

Twelve year since, Miranda,

twelve year since,

thy mother held the dukedom of Milan and its princely power.

But are not you my mother?

The very same.

Who, long ago, was wife to him who ruled Milan most liberally.

Who, with as tolerant a hand toward me,

gave license to my long hours in pursuit of hidden truths,

of coilèd powers contained within some elements to harm or heal.

I brooked no interruption but your squalling,

For thou, child, art a princess born.

O heavens!

What foul play had we that we came from thence?

Upon thy father's death,

authority was conferred, as was his will, to me alone,

thereby awakening the ambition of my brother, and thy uncle,

call'd Antonio.

- Thou attendest not! - Good madam, I do.

I pray thee, mark me... that a brother should be so perfidious!

He whom I did charge to execute express commands

as to the prudent governing of fair Milan,

instead undid, subverted... Dost thou attend me?

Ma'am, most heedfully.

Perverting my upstanding studies,

now his slandering and bile-dipped brush did paint a faithless portrait.

His sister, a practicer of the black arts!

A demon, not a woman, nay, a witch!

And he full knowing that others of my sex have burned for no less.

The flames now fanned, my counselors turned against me. Dost thou hear?

Your tale, ma'am, would cure deafness.

To credit his own lie, he did believe he was indeed the duke.

Confederates with the King of Naples to give him annual tribute

and bend my dukedom yet unbow'd to most ignoble stooping.

O the heavens!

Now, the condition.

The King of Naples, being an enemy to me inveterate,

hearkens to my brother's suit,

which was that he should presently eradicate me and mine out of the dukedom

and confer fair Milan with all its honors upon my brother.

Whereon, one midnight

did Antonio open the gates of Milan.

Into the dead of darkness, his ministers for the purpose

hurried thence me and thy crying self.

Wherefore did they not that hour destroy us?

Dear, they durst not, so dear the love my people bore me.

In few, they hurried us aboard a bark, bore us some leagues to sea,

where they'd prepared a rotten carcass of a boat,

not rigg'd, nor tackle, sail, nor mast.

The very rats instinctively had quit it.

And there they hoist us, to cry to the seas that roar'd to us,

to sigh to the winds whose pity, sighing back again,

did us but loving wrong.

Alack, what trouble was I then to you.

O, a cherubim thou wast that did preserve me.

Thou didst smile, infused with a fortitude from heaven

that raised in me an undergoing stomach to bear up against what should ensue.

How came we ashore?

By Providence divine.

Some food we had and some fresh water

that a noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,

out of his charity did give us,

with rich garments, stuffs and necessaries,

which since have steaded much.

Of his gentleness, knowing I loved my books,

he furnish'd me from mine own library with volumes

that I prize above my dukedom.

Would I might but ever see that man.

I pray you, ma'am, for still 'tis beating in my mind,

your reason for raising this sea storm?

By accident most strange,

bountiful Fortune, now, my dear lady,

hath mine enemies brought to this shore.

Here cease more questions.

Thou art inclined to sleep.

'Tis a good dullness, and give it way.

I know thou canst not choose.

Come away, servant, come.

I am ready now.

Approach, my Ariel, come!

All hail, great master! Grave dame, hail!

I come to answer thy best pleasure,

be it to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire,

to ride on the curl'd clouds,

to thy strong bidding task Ariel

and all his quality.

Hast thou, spirit, perform'd to the point the tempest that I bade thee?

To every article.

I boarded the king's ship.

Now on the beak, now in the waist, the deck,

in every cabin, I flamed amazement!

Sometime I'd divide and burn in many places.

The fire and cracks of sulfurous roaring the most mighty Neptune seem to besiege

and make his bold waves tremble,

yea, his dread trident shake!

Lay her off!

My brave spirit!

Who was so firm, so constant that this coil could not infect his reason?

Not a soul but felt a fever of the mad and play'd some tricks of desperation.

The king's son, Ferdinand, with hair up-staring,

was the first man that leap'd, cried,

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here!"

Why, that's my spirit! But was not this nigh shore?

- Close by, my master. - But are they, Ariel, safe?

Not a hair perish'd.

On their sustaining garments, not a blemish, but fresher than before.

And, as thou badest me, in troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle.

The king's son have I landed by himself,

whom I left cooling of the air with sighs

in an odd angle of the isle and sitting, his arms in this sad knot.

Of the king's ship, the mariners,

say how thou hast disposed.

Safely in harbor is the king's ship,

in the deep nook, there she's hid.

The mariners all under hatches stow'd, who with a charm I have left asleep.

Ariel, thy charge exactly is perform'd,

but there's more work. What is the time of the day?

Past the mid-season.

O, at least two glasses.

The time 'twixt six and now must by us both be spent most preciously.

Is there more toil?

Since thou dost give me pains, let me remember thee what thou hast promised,

which is not yet perform'd me.

How now? Moody?

What is't thou canst demand?

My liberty!

Before the time be out? No more!

I prithee, remember I have done thee worthy service.

Thou didst promise to bate me a full year.

Dost thou forget from what a torment I did free thee?

- No. - Thou dost.

- I do not, ma'am. - Thou liest, malignant thing.

Hast thou forgot the foul witch Sycorax?

Hast thou forgot her?

- No, ma'am. - Thou hast.

Where was she born? Speak. Tell me.

Ma'am, in Algiers.

O, was she so?

I must once in a month recount what thou hast been, which thou forget'st.

This damn'd witch Sycorax,

for mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible to enter human hearing,

from Algiers, thou know'st, was banish'd. Is not this true?