Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (33 page)

PROSPERO

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!

ACT I. Scene II (306–375).

P
rospero sends Ariel on his errand and then wakes Miranda. They are going to visit Caliban.

PROSPERO

Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well;

Awake!

MIRANDA

The strangeness of your story put

Heaviness in me.

PROSPERO

Shake it off. Come on;

We’ll visit Caliban my slave, who never

Yields us kind answer.

MIRANDA

’Tis a villain, sir,

I do not love to look on.

PROSPERO

But, as ’tis,

We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,

Fetch in our wood and serves in offices

That profit us.

PROSPERO (cont.)

What, ho! slave! Caliban!

Thou earth, thou! speak.

CALIBAN

There’s wood enough within.

PROSPERO

Come forth, I say! there’s other business for thee:

Come, thou tortoise! when?

PROSPERO (cont.)

Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel,

Hark in thine ear.

ARIEL

My lord it shall be done.

PROSPERO

Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself

Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!

CALIBAN

As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d

With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen

Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye

And blister you all o’er!

PROSPERO

For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,

Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins

Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,

All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch’d

As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging

Than bees that made ’em.

CALIBAN

I must eat my dinner.

This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother,

Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,

Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me

Water with berries in’t, and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee

And show’d thee all the qualities o’ the isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:

Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me

In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o’ the island.

PROSPERO

Thou most lying slave,

Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee,

Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee

In mine own cell,