Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (44 page)

ALONSO

I cannot too much muse

Such shapes, such gesture and such sound, expressing,

Although they want the use of tongue, a kind

Of excellent dumb discourse.

PROSPERO

Praise in departing.

FRANCISCO

They vanish’d strangely.

SEBASTIAN

No matter, since

They have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs.

Will’t please you taste of what is here?

ALONSO

Not I.

GONZALO

Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys,

Who would believe that there were mountaineers

Dew-lapp’d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em

Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men

Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find

Each putter-out of five for one will bring us

Good warrant of.

ALONSO

I will stand to and feed,

Although my last: no matter, since I feel

The best is past. Brother, my lord the duke,

Stand to and do as we.

ARIEL

You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,

That hath to instrument this lower world

And what is in’t, the never-surfeited sea

Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island

Where man doth not inhabit; you ’mongst men

Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad;

And even with such-like valour men hang and drown

Their proper selves.

ARIEL (cont.)

You fools! I and my fellows

Are ministers of Fate: the elements,

Of whom your swords are temper’d, may as well

Wound the loud winds, or with bemock’d-at stabs

Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish

One dowle that’s in my plume: my fellow-ministers

Are like invulnerable.

ARIEL (cont.)

If you could hurt,

Your swords are now too massy for your strengths

And will not be uplifted. But remember—

For that’s my business to you—that you three

From Milan did supplant good Prospero;

Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it,

Him and his innocent child: for which foul deed

The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have

Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,

Against your peace.

ARIEL (cont.)

Thee of thy son, Alonso,

They have bereft; and do pronounce by me:

Lingering perdition, worse than any death

Can be at once, shall step by step attend

You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from—

Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls

Upon your heads—is nothing but heart-sorrow

And a clear life ensuing.

PROSPERO

Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou

Perform’d, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring:

Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated

In what thou hadst to say: so, with good life

And observation strange, my meaner ministers

Their several kinds have done.

PROSPERO (cont.)

My high charms work

And these mine enemies are all knit up

In their distractions; they now are in my power;

And in these fits I leave them, while I visit

Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown’d,

And his and mine loved darling.