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Enter Mariners, wet.

Mar. All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost!

[Exeunt.

Boats. What! must our mouths be cold? Gon. The king and prince at prayers! let us assist them,

For our case is as theirs.

Seb. I am out of patience.

1

Ant. We are merely cheated of our lives by

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This wide-chapp'd rascal!-'would, thou might'st

lie drowning,

The washing of ten tides.

Gon.

He'll be hang'd yet;

Though every drop of water swear against it,
And gape at wid'st to glut1o him.

[A confused noise within.— Mercy on us! We split, ·Farewell, my wife and children!

we split!

well, brother! We split, we split, we split!"]

Ant. Let's all sink with the king.

Seb. Let's take leave of him.

- Fare

[Exit. [Exit.

Gon. 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." [Exit.

• Merely, absolutely, entirely; Meré, Lat. 10 To englut, to swallow him.

11 This passage is usually printed as a part of Gonzalo's speech; which is clearly wrong. Dr. Johnson suggested that the words here enclosed in brackets should be given as a part, or rather as the particulars of the confused noise within. Which is so obviously right that we should hardly hesitate to adopt it, even if we had not the great authority of Dyce and Halliwell for doing so. H.

12 In Boswell's edition is a paper from Lord Mulgrave, showing that the Poet must either have drawn his technical knowledge of seamanship from accurate personal observation, or else have had a remarkable power of applying the information gained from others. And he thinks Shakespeare must have conversed with some of the best seamen of the time, as "no books had then

SCENE II.

The Island: before the Cell of PROSPERO.

Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA.

Mira. 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 e'er1 It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and The fraughting souls within her.

Pro.

Be collected:

No more amazement: tell your piteous heart,
There's no harm done.

Mira.

Pro.

O, woe the day!

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

been published on the subject." He then exhibits the ship in five positions, and shows how truly these are represented by the words of the dialogue, and says: "The succession of events is strictly observed in the natural progress of the distress described: the expedients adopted are the best that could have been devised for a chance of safety: the words of command are not only strictly proper, but are only such as point to the object to be attained, and no superfluous ones of detail." Captain Glascock says: "The Boatswain in The Tempest delivers himself in the true vernacular style of the forecastle."

H.

1i. e. Before, sooner than; as in Ecclesiastes, "or ever the silver cord be loosed;" and again in Daniel, “or ever they came to the bottom of the den."

H.

Of whence I am; nor that I am more better 2
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father.

Mira.

More to know

"Tis time

Did never meddle 3 with my thoughts.

Pro.

I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand,
And pluck my magic garment from me.

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- So:

[Lays down his mantle.

Wipe thou thine eyes; have

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 order'd, 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 further.

You have often

Mira.
Begun to tell me what I am; but stopp'd,
And left me to a bootless inquisition;
Concluding, "Stay, not yet.".

Pro.

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

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2 The double comparative is in frequent use among our elder writers.

3 To meddle, is to mix, or mingle with.

say,

- Fuller's Holy State.

4 Lord Burleigh, when he put off his gown at night, used to "Lie there, Lord Treasurer." 5 Out is used for entirely, quite. boy right out."

Thus in Act iv.: "And be a

Mira.

Certainly, sir, I can.

Pro. By what? by any other house, or person? Of any thing the image tell me, that

Hath kept with thy remembrance.

Mira.

"Tis far off;

And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants: Had I not
Four or five women once, that tended me?

Pro. Thou hadst, and more, Miranda: But how is it,

That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time?

If thou remember'st aught, ere thou cam'st here, How thou cam'st here, thou may'st.

Mira.

But that I do not.

Pro. Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year

since,

Thy father was the duke of Milan, and

A prince of power.

Mira.

Sir, are not you my father?

Pro. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and She said thou wast my daughter; and thy

father:

Was duke of Milan; and his only heir

And princess no worse issued."

Mira.

O, the heavens !

What foul play had we, that we came from thence ?

Or blessed was't, we did?

Pro.

Both, both, my girl :

Abysm was the old mode of spelling abyss; from its French original abisme.

7 This line is usually printed thus:

"A princess;- no worse issued: "

which might indeed be admitted, but that there is no authority for it in the original; nor any need of the change, the sense being clear enough without it.

H.

By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heav'd thence; But blessedly holp hither.

Mira.

8

O, my heart bleeds To think o' the teen that I have turn'd you to, Which is from my remembrance! Please you, fur

ther.

Pro. My brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio
I pray thee, mark me, that a brother should
Be so perfidious! -he whom, next thyself,
Of all the world I lov'd, and to him put
The manage of my state; as, at that time,
Through all the signiories it was the first,
And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed
In dignity; and, for the liberal arts,

Without a parallel: those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother,

And to my state grew stranger, being transported,
And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle
Dost thou attend me ?

Mira.

Sir, most heedfully.

-

Pro. Being once perfected how to grant suits, How to deny them; whom to advance, and whom To trash for overtopping; new created

The creatures that were mine, I say, or chang'd them,
Or else new form'd them having both the key
Of officer and office, set all hearts i' the state
To what tune pleas'd his ear; that now he was
The ivy, which had hid my princely trunk,

8 Teen is grief, sorrow.

9 To trash means to check the pace or progress of any one. The term is said to be still in use among sportsmen in the North, and signifies to correct a dog for misbehaviour in pursuing the game; or overtopping or outrunning the rest of the pack. Trashes are clogs strapped round the neck of a dog to prevent his overspeed. Todd has given four instances from Hammond's works of the word in this sense: Clog and trash"-" encumber and trash" -"to trash or overslow" and "foreslowed and trashed."

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