Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (32 page)

ARIEL

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.

PROSPERO

How now? moody?

What is’t thou canst demand?

ARIEL

My liberty.

PROSPERO

Before the time be out? no more!

ARIEL

I prithee,

Remember I have done thee worthy service;

Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served

Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise

To bate me a full year.

PROSPERO

Dost thou forget

From what a torment I did free thee?

ARIEL

No.

PROSPERO

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.

ARIEL

I do not, sir.

PROSPERO

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?

ARIEL

No, sir.

PROSPERO

Thou hast. Where was she born? speak; tell me.

ARIEL

Sir, in Argier.

PROSPERO

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 Argier,

Thou know’st, was banish’d: for one thing she did

They would not take her life. Is not this true?

ARIEL

Ay, sir.

PROSPERO

This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child

And here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave,

As thou report’st thyself, wast then her servant;

And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate

To act her earthy and abhorr’d 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

Imprison’d 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 honour’d with

A human shape.

ARIEL

Yes, Caliban her son.

PROSPERO

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

Of ever angry bears: it was a torment

To lay upon the damn’d, 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.

ARIEL

I thank thee, master.

PROSPERO

If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak

And peg thee in his knotty entrails till

Thou hast howl’d away twelve winters.

ARIEL

Pardon, master;

I will be correspondent to command

And do my spiriting gently.

PROSPERO

Do so, and after two days

I will discharge thee.

ARIEL

That’s my noble master!

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