Ari. Ay, my commander: when I presented Ceres,

I thought t' have told thee of it; but I fear'd

Lest I might anger thee.

Pros. Well, say again, where didst thou leave these varlets? Ari. 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 tabor;
At which, like unback'd colts, they prick'd their ears,
Advanced 36 their eyelids, lifted up their noses

As they smelt music: 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 enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them
I' the filthy-mantled pool 37 beyond your cell,
There dancing up to th' chins, that the foul lake.
O'erstunk their feet.38

Pros.

This was well done, my bird.

Thy shape invisible retain thou still:

The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither,

For stale 39 to catch these thieves.

Herbert's Country Parson: “He knows the temper and pulse of every one in his house, and accordingly either meets with their vices, or advanceth their virtues."

36 Advanced is raised, as already explained. See page 70, note 93.- In the next line," As they smelt," as if they smelt.

37 The pool mantled with filth. Mantle for the scum that forms on the surface of stagnant water. So in The Merchant, i. 1: "There are a sort of men whose visages do cream and mantle like a standing pond."

38 That for so that or insomuch that. - The meaning of this unsavoury passage is, that "the foul lake" was so stirred up by their dancing as to give out a worse odour than the men's feet did before they got into it.

39 Stale, in the art of fowling, signified a bait or lure to decoy birds.

Ari.

I go, I go.

[Exit.

Pros. A devil, a born devil, on whose nature
Nurture can never stick ; 40 on whom my pains,
Humanely taken, all are lost, quite lost;
And as with age his body uglier grows,

So his mind cankers.41 I will plague them all,
Even to roaring.-

Re-enter ARIEL loaden with glistering apparel, &c.
Come, hang them on this line.42

PROSPERO and ARIEL remain, invisible. Enter CALIBAN,
STEPHANO, and TRINCULO, all wet.

Cal. Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not Hear a foot fall: we now are near his cell.

40 Nurture for education, training, or culture.

41 As before observed, page 71, note 96, canker was used of an eating, malignant sore, like cancer, which is but another form of the same word; and also of rust. I am not quite certain which of these senses it bears here; probably the first. Shakespeare has the word repeatedly in both senses; as in Romeo and Juliet, i. 1, where the first canker'd means rusted, while the second has the sense of cancer:

To wield old partisans, in hands as old,

Canker'd with peace, to part your canker'd hate.

42 Some question has been made as to what line means here. The word is commonly taken as meaning a clothes-line; but I rather agree with the late Rev. Joseph Hunter, and with Mr. A. E. Brae, that it means a line-tree, which may well be supposed to be growing in the lawn before Prospero's cell, the same that Stephano addresses a little after as "Mistress Line." For Prospero is still in the same place where he has just been making a display of his art; and I can hardly think he has a clothes-line stretched across it. It has indeed been objected that line, meaning the line-tree, would not be used thus, without the adjunct tree or grove; but Mr. Brae disposes of this objection fairly, by quoting the following from Holinshed: "We are not without the plane, the ugh, the sorfe, the chestnut, the line, the black cherrie, and such like."

Steph. Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done little better than play'd the Jack with us.43

Trin. Monster, I do smell all horse-stale; at which my nose is in great indignation.

Steph. So is mine. — Do you hear, monster? If I should take a displeasure against you, look you,—

Trin. Thou wert but a lost monster.

Cal. Nay, good my lord,44 give me thy favour still.

Be patient, for the prize I'll bring thee to

Shall hoodwink this mischance: 45 therefore speak softly; All's hush'd as midnight yet.

Trin. Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool,

Steph. There is not only disgrace and dishonour in that, monster, but an infinite loss.

Trin. That's more to me than my wetting: yet this is your harmless fairy, monster.

Steph. I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o'er ears for my labour.

Cal. Pr'ythee, my King, be quiet. See'st thou here?
This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter.
Do that good mischief which may make this island
Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,

For aye thy foot-licker.

Steph. Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody thoughts.

43 To play the Jack is to play the Knave; or it may be to play the Jacko'-lantern, by leading them astray.

44 We should say "my good lord." Similar inverted phrases occur continually in old plays; such as "dread my lord," "gracious my lord," " dear my mother," ," "sweet my sister," "gentle my brother," &c.

45 To hoodwink a thing is, apparently, to make one overlook it or forget it, to blind him to it, or put it out of his sight. So hoodman-blind is an old term for what we call blind-man's-buff.

Trin. O King Stephano! O peer !46 O worthy Stephano! look what a wardrobe here is for thee !

Cal. Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.

Trin. O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery.47 - O King Stephano!

Steph. Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I'll have that gown.

Trin. Thy Grace shall have it.

Cal. The dropsy drown this fool! — what do you mean, To dote thus on such luggage? Let's along,

And do the murder first: if he awake,

From toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches ;

Make us strange stuff.

Steph. Be you quiet, monster.

Mistress line, is not this

my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line: now, jerkin, you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin.48

Trin. Do, do we steal by line and level,49 an't like your Grace.

46 A humorous allusion to the old ballad entitled "Take thy old Cloak about thee," a part of which is sung by Iago in Othello, ii. 3. I add one stanza of it:

King Stephen was a worthy peer,
His breeches cost him but a crown;
He held them sixpence all too dear,
Therefore he call'd the tailor lown.

47 Frippery was the name of a shop where old clothes were sold.

48 King Stephano puns rather swiftly here. The name of the tree, as explained in note 42, suggests to him the equinoctial line, under which certain regions were much noted for their aptness to generate diseases that commonly made the sufferers bald. Jerkin was the name of a man's upper garment. Mr. Brae thinks there may be another quibble intended between hair and air, as clothes are hung out to be aired, and the jerkin was likely to lose the benefit of such airing; but I should rather take hair as referring to the nap of the jerkin, which was likely to be worn off in Stephano's using; so as to make the jerkin a bald jerkin in the nearer sense of having lost its hair. 49 Do, do, is said, apparently, in commendation of Stephano's wit as dis

Steph. I thank thee for that jest; here's a garment for't: wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country. Steal by line and level is an excellent pass of pate ; 50 there's

another garment for❜t.

Trin. Monster, come, put some lime 51 upon your fingers, and away with the rest.

Cal. I will have none on't: we shall lose our time, And all be turn'd to barnacles,52 or to apes

With foreheads villainous low.53

Steph. Monster, lay-to your fingers: help to bear this away,

played in his address to the jerkin. · "Steal by line and level" is a further punning on the same word; the plumb-line and the level being instruments used by architects and builders. So that to steal by line and level was to show wit in stealing, or to steal artistically.

50 Pass of pate is a spurt or sally of wit; pass being, in the language of fencing, a thrust.

51 Lime, or bird-lime, was a sticky substance used for catching birds. So in 2 Henry the Sixth, i. 3: "Myself have limed a bush for her, and placed a quire of such enticing birds, that she will light to listen to their lays." See, also, Hamlet, page 154, note 8.

52 Caliban's barnacle is the clakis or tree-goose, as it was called, which was thought to be produced from the shell-fish, lepas antifera, also called barnacle. Gerard's Herbal has the following account of the matter: "There are in the north parts of Scotland certain trees whereon do grow shell-fishes, which, falling into the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnakles, in the north of England brant-geese, and in Lancashire tree-geese." Perhaps the old notion of the barnacle-goose being produced by the barnacle-fish grew from the identity of name. As Caliban prides himself on his intellectuality, he naturally has a horror of being turned into any thing so stupid as a goose.

53 A low forehead was held a deformity. On the other hand, a forehead high and broad was deemed a handsome feature in man or woman. The Poet has several allusions to this old idea. So in The Two Gentlemen, iv. 4: "Ay, but her forehead's low, and mine's as high." And in Spenser's description of Belphoebe, Faerie Queene, ii. 3, 24:

Her ivorie forehead, full of bountie brave,

Like a broad table did itselfe dispred.