Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (34 page)

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

till thou didst seek to violate

The honour of my child.

CALIBAN

O ho, O ho! would ’t had been done!

Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else

This isle with Calibans.

PROSPERO

Abhorred slave,

Which any print of goodness wilt not take,

Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,

Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour

One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,

Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like

A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes

With words that made them known. But thy vile race,

Though thou didst learn, had that in’t which good natures

Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou

Deservedly confined into this rock,

Who hadst deserved more than a prison.

CALIBAN

You taught me language; and my profit on’t

Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you

For learning me your language!

PROSPERO

Hag-seed, hence!

Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou’rt best,

To answer other business. Shrug’st thou, malice?

If thou neglect’st or dost unwillingly

What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps,

Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar

That beasts shall tremble at thy din.

CALIBAN

No, pray thee.

I must obey: his art is of such power,

It would control my dam’s god, Setebos, and make a vassal of him.

PROSPERO

So, slave; hence!

ACT I. Scene II (376–505).

A
riel returns, leading young Ferdinand with a song.

ARIEL:

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:

Courtsied when you have and kiss’d

The wild waves whist,

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.

Hark, hark!

The watch-dogs bark!

Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer

Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.

FERDINAND

Where should this music be? i’ the air or the earth?

It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon

Some god o’ the island. Sitting on a bank,

Weeping again the king my father’s wreck,

This music crept by me upon the waters,

Allaying both their fury and my passion

With its sweet air: thence I have follow’d it,

Or it hath drawn me rather. But ’tis gone.

No, it begins again.

ARIEL

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell

Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.

FERDINAND

The ditty does remember my drown’d father.

This is no mortal business, nor no sound

That the earth owes. I hear it now above me.

PROSPERO

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance

And say what thou seest yond.

MIRANDA

What is’t? a spirit?

Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,

It carries a brave form. But ’tis a spirit.

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