It must be admitted that Shakespeare, if not, as Hartley' Coleridge asserted, "a Tory and a gentleman," had within him some of the elements of English conservatism. But, while Ariel and Caliban, each in his own way, are impatient of service, the human actors, in whom we are chiefly interested, are entering into bonds, bonds of affection, bonds of duty, in which they find their truest freedom. Ferdinand and Miranda emulously contend in the task of bearing the burden which Prospero has imposed upon the Prince : I am, in my condition, A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king,— I would, not so! - and would no more endure This wooden slavery than to suffer The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak: The very instant that I saw you, did My heart fly to your service; there resides, To make me slave to it; and for your sake And Miranda speaks with the sacred candour from which spring the nobler manners of a world more real and glad than the world of convention and proprieties and pruderies : In an earlier part of the play, this chord which runs through it had been playfully struck in the description of Gonzalo's imaginary commonwealth, in which man is to be enfranchised from all the laborious necessities of life. Here is the ideal notional liberty, Shakespeare would say; and to attempt to realize it at once lands us in absurdities and selfcontradictions: Anto. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning. PROSPERO, the rightful Duke of Mi- Master of a Ship, Boatswain, and GONZALO, an honest old Counsellor Other Spirits attending on Prospero. SCENE, a Ship at Sea; afterwards an uninhabited Island. SCENE I. ACT I. On a Ship at sea. A Storm, with Thunder and Enter Master and Boatswain severally. Mast. Boatswain ! Boats. Here, master: what cheer? Mast. Good,' speak to the mariners: fall to't yarely, or we run ourselves a-ground: bestir, bestir. Enter Mariners. [Exit. Boats. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle. [Exeunt Mariners.] - Blow till thou burst thy wind,3 if room enough! 4 Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND, GONZALO, and Others. Alon. Good boatswain, have care. Play the men.5 Boats. I pray now, keep below. Where's the master? Anto. Where is the master, boatswain? Boats. Do you not hear him? You mar our labour: keep your cabins; you do assist the storm. 1 Here, as in many other places, good is used just as we now use well. So a little after: "Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard." Also in Hamlet, i. 1: "Good now, sit down, and tell me," &c. In the text, however, it carries something of an evasive force; as," Let that go"; or, "No matter for that." 2 Yarely is nimbly, briskly, or alertly. So, in the next speech, yare, an imperative verb, is, be nimble, or be on the alert. The word is seldom if ever used now in any form, but was much used in the Poet's time. In North's Plutarch we have such phrases as "galleys not yare of steerage," and "ships light of yarage," and "galleys heavy of yarage." 8 In Shakespeare's time, the wind was often represented pictorially by the figure of a man with his cheeks puffed out to their utmost tension with the act of blowing. Probably the Poet had such a figure in his mind. So in King Lear, iii. 2: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!" Also in Pericles, iii. 1: "Blow, and split thyself." 4 That is, "if we have sea-room enough." So in Pericles, iii. 1: “But sea-room, an the brine and cloudy billow kiss the Moon, I care not." 5 Act with spirit, behave like men. So in 2 Samuel, x. 12: "Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people." Gonza. Nay, good, be patient. Boats. When the sea is. roarers for the name of king? us not. Hence ! What care these Gonza. Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard. Boats. None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority: if you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. - Cheerly, good hearts! - Out of our way, I say. [Exit. Gonza. I have great comfort from this fellow : methinks he hath no drowning-mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. -Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging! make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage! If he be not born to be hang'd, our case is miserable. [Exeunt. Re-enter Boatswain. Boats. Down with the top-mast 8 yare; lower, lower! Bring her to try wi' th' main-course.9 [A cry within.] A 6 Present for present time. So in the Prayer-Book: "That those things may please Him which we do at this present." And in 1 Corinthians, xv. 6: "Of whom the greater part remain unto this present." 7 Complexion was often used for nature, native bent or aptitude. See The Merchant of Venice, page 134, note 7. 8 Of this order Lord Mulgrave, a sailor critic, says, "The striking the top-mast was a new invention in Shakespeare's time, which he here very properly introduces. He has placed his ship in the situation in which it was indisputably right to strike the top-mast, where he had not sea-room." 9 This appears to have been a common nautical phrase. So in Hackluyt's Voyages, 1598: "And when the bark had way we cut the hauser, and so gat the sea to our friend, and tried out all the day with our maine course." Also in Smith's Sea Grammar, 1627: "Let us lie at trie with our maine |