Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (28 page)

BOATSWAIN

What, must our mouths be cold?

GONZALO

The king and prince at prayers! let’s assist them,

For our case is as theirs.

SEBASTIAN

I’m out of patience.

ANTONIO

We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards:

This wide-chapp’d rascal—would thou mightst lie drowning

The washing of ten tides!

GONZALO

He’ll be hang’d yet,

Though every drop of water swear against it

And gape at widest to glut him.

ANTONIO

Let’s all sink with the king.

SEBASTIAN

Let’s take leave of him.

GONZALO

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any thing. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death.

ACT I. Scene II (1–305).

MIRANDA

If by your art, my dearest father, you have

Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.

The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,

But that the sea, mounting to the welkin’s cheek,

Dashes the fire out. 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. O, the cry did knock

Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish’d.

Had I been any god of power, I would

Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere

It should the good ship so have swallow’d and

The fraughting souls within her.

PROSPERO

Be collected:

No more amazement: tell your piteous heart

There’s no harm done.

MIRANDA

O, woe the day!

PROSPERO

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, nought knowing

Of whence I am, nor that I am more better

Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,

And thy no greater father.

MIRANDA

More to know

Did never meddle with my thoughts.

PROSPERO

’Tis time

I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand,

And pluck my magic garment from me. 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;

For thou must now know farther.

MIRANDA

You have often

Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp’d

And left me to a bootless inquisition,

Concluding “Stay: not yet.”

PROSPERO

The hour’s now come;

The very minute bids thee ope thine ear;

Obey 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.

MIRANDA

Certainly, sir, I can.

PROSPERO

By what? by any other house or person?

Of any thing the image tell me that

Hath kept with thy remembrance.