I find my zenith doth depend upon

A most auspicious star; whose influence
If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes

Will ever after droop.-Here cease more questions;
Thou art inclined to sleep; 'tis a good dulness,

And give it way;-I know thou canst not choose.-
[MIRANDA sleeps.
Come away, servant, come: I am ready now;
Approach, my Ariel; come.

Enter ARIEL.

Ari. All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride

On the curled clouds: to thy strong bidding, task
Ariel, and all his quality.1

Pro.

2

Hast thou, spirit,

Performed to point, the tempest that I bade thee?
Ari. To every article.

I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,3
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement: Sometimes, I'd divide,
And burn in many places; on the top-mast,
The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then meet, and join: Jove's lightnings, the precursors
O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary
And sight out-running were not: The fire, and cracks
Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune
Seemed to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble,
Yea, his dread trident shake.

Pro.

Who was so firm, so constant,

Would not infect his reason?

Ari.

My brave spirit! that his coil1

Not a soul

But felt a fever of the mad, and played

1 The powers of his nature as a spirit.

2 To the minutest article.

3 The beak was a strong pointed body at the head of ancient galleys. The waist is the part between the quarter-deck and the forecastle.

4 Bustle, tumult.

Some tricks of desperation: All, but mariners, Plunged in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel, Then all a-fire with me: the king's son, Ferdinand, With hair up-starting, (then like reeds, not hair,) Was the first man that leaped; cried, Hell is empty, And all the devils are here.

Not a hair perished;

On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and as thou bad'st 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.

Pro.

Of the king's ship, The mariners, say, how thou hast disposed, And all the rest o' the fleet.

Safely in harbor

Ari.
Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'st me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vexed Bermoothes,' there she's hid;
The mariners all under hatches stowed;

Whom, with a charm joined to their suffered labor,
I have left asleep and for the rest o' the fleet,
Which I dispersed, they all have met again;
And are upon the Mediterranean flote,2
Bound sadly home for Naples;

Supposing that they saw the king's ship wrecked,
And his great person perish.

Pro.

Ariel, thy charge

1 The epithet here applied to the Bermudas will be best understood by those who have seen the chafing of the sea over the rugged rocks by which they are surrounded, and which renders access to them so difficult. It was then the current opinion that Bermudas was inhabited by monsters and devils. Setebos, the god of Caliban's dam, was an American devil, worshipped by the giants of Patagonia.

2 Waves, or the sea. Flot, Fr.

Exactly is performed; but there's more work:
What is the time o' the day?

Ari.

Past the mid season.

Pro. At least two glasses: the time 'twixt six and

now

Must by us both be spent most preciously.

Ari. Is there more toil? since thou must give me

pains,

Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,
Which is not yet performed me.

Pro.

What is't thou can'st demand?

Ari.

How now! moody?

My liberty.

I pray thee

Pro. Before the time be out? no more.
Ari.

Remember, I have done thee worthy service;
Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, served

Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise
To bate me a full year.

Pro.

Dost thou forget

No.

From what a torment I did free thee?

Ari.

Pro. Thou dost; and think'st it much, to tread the

ooze

Of the salt deep ;

To run upon the sharp wind of the north;

To do me business in the veins o' the earth,
When it is baked with frost.

Ari.

I do not, sir.

Pro. Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot The foul witch, Sycorax, who, with age and envy, Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her?

Once in a month, recount what thou hast been,

1 The old English name of Algiers.

Which thou forget'st. This damned witch, Sycorax,
For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible
To enter human hearing, from Argier,

Thou know'st, was banished; for one thing she did,
They would not take her life: Is not this true?
Ari. Ay, sir.

Pro. This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child,

And here was left by the sailors: Thou, my slave,
As thou report'st thyself, was then her servant:
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate

To act her earthy and abhorred commands,
Refusing her grand hests,' she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,

Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned, thou didst painfully remain

A dozen years; within which space she died,
And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy

groans,

As fast as mill-wheels strike: Then was this island, (Save for the son that she did litter here,

A freckled whelp, hag-born) not honored with
A human shape.

Ari.

Yes; Caliban her son.

Pro. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban,
Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st
What torment I did find thee in: thy groans
Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts
ever-angry bears it was a torment

Of

To lay upon the damned, which Sycorax
Could not again undo; it was mine art,
When I arrived, and heard thee, that made gape
The pine, and let thee out.

Ari.

I thank thee, master.

Pro. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak, And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till

Thou hast howled away twelve winters.

1 Behests, commands.

Ari.

Pardon, master.

Do so; and after two days

I will be correspondent to command,
And do my sprighting gently.

Pro.

I will discharge thee.

Ari.

That's my noble master!

What shall I do? say what? what shall I do?

Pro. Go, make thyself like a nymph o' the sea; be

subject

To no sight but thine and mine; invisible

To every eyeball else. Go, take this shape,
And hither come in't: go hence, with diligence.

[Exit ARIEL. Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well; Awake!

Mira. The strangeness of your story put Heaviness in me.

Pro.

We'll visit Caliban, my slave, who never

Yields us kind answer.

Mira.

Shake it off: Come on;

'Tis a villain, sir,

But, as 'tis,

I do not love to look on.

Pro.

We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood; and serves in offices
That profit us. What ho! slave! Caliban!
Thou earth, thou! speak.

Cal. [Within.] There's wood enough within.
Pro. Come forth, I say; there's other business
for thee:

Come forth, thou tortoise! when? 2

Re-enter ARIEL, like a Water-nymph.

3

Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel,

Hark in thine ear.

Ari.

My lord, it shall be done. [Exit.

1 We cannot do without him.

2 A common expression of impatience.

3 Brisk, spruce, dexterous, from the French cointe.