Authors: John McCann,Monica Sweeney,Becky Thomas
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.