Authors: John McCann,Monica Sweeney,Becky Thomas
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.