Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (45 page)

GONZALO

I’ the name of something holy, sir, why stand you

In this strange stare?

ALONSO

O, it is monstrous, monstrous:

Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;

The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,

That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced

The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass.

Therefore my son i’ the ooze is bedded, and

I’ll seek him deeper than e’er plummet sounded

And with him there lie mudded.

SEBASTIAN

But one fiend at a time,

I’ll fight their legions o’er.

ANTONIO

I’ll be thy second.

GONZALO

All three of them are desperate: their great guilt,

Like poison given to work a great time after,

Now ’gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you

That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly

And hinder them from what this ecstasy

May now provoke them to.

ADRIAN

Follow, I pray you.

ACT IV. Scene I (lines 165–264).

P
rospero returns to Ferdinand and Miranda, who have meanwhile fallen in love (just as Prospero planned it!). Prospero gives Ferdinand his fatherly blessing to marry his daughter, then he then calls in his spirits to put on a special show for the couple. They are dazzled by the spectacle, but they are soon interrupted by Ariel, who reminds Prospero that Caliban and the drunken fools are on their way to kill him. Prospero ends the magic show abruptly to deal with them.

ARIEL

Thy thoughts I cleave to. What’s thy pleasure?

PROSPERO

Spirit,

We must prepare to meet with Caliban.

ARIEL

Ay, my commander: when I presented Ceres,

I thought to have told thee of it, but I fear’d

Lest I might anger thee.

PROSPERO

Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets?

ARIEL

I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking;

So full of valour that they smote the air

For breathing in their faces; beat the ground

For kissing of their feet; yet always bending

Towards their project. Then I beat my tabour;

At which, like unback’d colts, they prick’d their ears,

Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses

As they smelt music:

ARIEL (cont.)

so I charm’d their ears

That calf-like they my lowing follow’d through

Tooth’d briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns,

Which entered their frail shins: at last I left them

I’ the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,

There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake

O’erstunk their feet.

PROSPERO

This was well done, my bird.

Thy shape invisible retain thou still:

The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither,

For stale to catch these thieves.

ARIEL

I go, I go.

PROSPERO

A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,

Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;

And as with age his body uglier grows,

So his mind cankers.

PROSPERO (cont.)

I will plague them all,

Even to roaring. Come, hang them on this line.