And then I'll bring thee to the present business Which now's upon's; without the which this story Mira. That hour destroy us? Pros. Wherefore did they not Well demanded, wench: 41 My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not So dear the love my people bore me set A mark so bloody on the business; but Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Mira. Was I then to you! Pros. Alack, what trouble O, a cherubin Thou wast that did preserve me! Thou didst smile, When I have degg'd 44 the sea with drops full salt, 40 Impertinent is irrelevant, or out of place; not pertinent; the old mean ing of the word. The Poet never uses irrelevant. 41 Wench was a common term of affectionate familiarity. 42 That is, in few words, in short. Often so. 48 Hoist for hoisted; as, a little before, quit for quitted. So in Hamlet, iii. 4: "'Tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petar." The Poet has many preterites so formed. And the same usage occurs in The Psalter; as in the 93d Psalm: "The floods are risen, O Lord, the floods have lift up their voice." 44 To deg is an old provincial word for to sprinkle. So explained in Under my burden groan'd; which raised in me Against what should ensue. Mira. How came we ashore? Pros. By Providence divine. Some food we had, and some fresh water, that Out of his charity, being then appointed Master of this design, - did give us; with Rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries, From mine own library, with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. Mira. But ever see that man! Pros. Would I might Now I arise: 47 Carr's Glossary: "To deg clothes is to sprinkle them with water previous to ironing." And in Atkinson's Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect, degg or dagg is explained "to sprinkle with water, to drizzle." Also, in Brockett's Glossary of North-Country Words: “Dag, a drizzling rain, dew upon the grass." -The foregoing quotations are from the Clarendon edition. See Critical Notes. 45 An undergoing stomach is an enduring courage. Shakespeare uses stomach repeatedly for courage. 46 Have stood us in good stead, or done us much service. 47 These words have been a great puzzle to the editors, and various explanations of them have been given. Staunton prints them as addressed to Ariel, and thinks this removes the difficulty. So taken, the words are meant to give Ariel notice that the speaker is now ready for his services in charming Miranda to sleep. But this does not seem to me very likely, as it makes Prospero give Ariel a second notice, in his next speech. So I rather adopt the explanation of Mr. William Aldis Wright, who thinks Prospero means that "the crisis in his own fortunes has come"; that he is now about to emerge from the troubles of which he has been speaking; and that he re Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow. Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit 48 For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful. Mira. Heavens thank you for't! And now, I pray you, By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune- Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions: gards this "reappearance from obscurity as a kind of resurrection, like the 49 The common explanation of this is, "In astrological language zenith is the highest point in one's fortunes." But I much prefer Mr. Crosby's explanation, who writes me as follows: "Note, here, the blending of ideas by the speaker: he means to say, 'My fortune depends upon a star which, being now in its zenith, is auspicious to me." 50 In the second scene, Prospero's speeches, till the entrance of Ariel, contain the finest example I remember of retrospective narration for the purpose of exciting immediate interest, and putting the audience in possession of all the information necessary for the understanding of the plot. Observe, too, the perfect probability of the moment chosen by Prospero to open out the truth to his daughter, his own romantic bearing, and how completely any thing that might have been disagreeable to us in the magician Come away, servant, come! I'm ready now: Enter ARIEL. Ari. All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride On the curl'd clouds: to thy strong bidding task Pros. Hast thou, spirit, Perform'd to point 52 the tempest that I bade thee? I boarded the King's ship; now on the beak, is reconciled and shaded in the humanity and natural feelings of the father. In the very first speech of Miranda the simplicity and tenderness of her character are at once laid open; it would have been lost in direct contact with the agitation of the first scene. — COLERIDGE. 51 That is, all of his kind, all his fellow-spirits, or who are like him. 52 Perform'd exactly, or in every point; from the French à point. 53 Beak, the prow of the ship; waist, the part between the quarter-deck and forecastle. 54 So in the account of Robert Tomson's voyage, 1555, quoted by Mr. Hunter: "This light continued aboard our ship about three hours, flying from mast to mast, and from top to top; and sometimes it would be in two or three places at once." In the text, distinctly has the sense of separately; flaming in different places at the same time. 55 Momentary in the sense of instantaneous. Seem'd to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble, Yea, his dread trident shake. Pros. My brave spirit! Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil 56 Would not infect his reason? But felt a fever of the mad,57 and play'd Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners Pros. But was not this nigh shore? Ari. Why, that's my spirit! Close by, my master. Not a hair perish'd; Pros. But are they, Ariel, safe? On their unstaining 59 garments not a blemish, 56 Coil is stir, tumult, or disturbance. 57 Such a fever as madmen feel when the frantic fit is on them. 58 Upstaring is sticking out “like quills upon the fretful porpentine." So in The Faerie Queene, vi. II, 27: "With ragged weedes, and locks upstaring hye." And in Julius Cæsar, iv. 3: "Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil, that makest my blood cold, and my hair to stare?" 59 Unstaining for unstained; another instance of the indiscriminate use of active and passive forms. This usage, both in participles and adjectives, is frequent all through these plays. So, in The Winter's Tale, iv. 4, we have discontenting father" for discontented father; and in Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 13, "all-obeying breath" for all-obeyed breath, that is, breath that all obey. See, also, page 49, note 4. |