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Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO,
GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, etc.
GONZALO
1 By'r lakin, I can go no further, sir;
2 My old bones ache: here's a maze trod indeed
3 Through forth-rights and meanders! By your patience,
4 I needs must rest me.
ALONSO
4 Old lord, I cannot blame thee,
5 Who am myself attach'd with weariness,
6 To the dulling of my spirits: sit down, and rest.
7 Even here I will put off my hope and keep it
8 No longer for my flatterer: he is drown'd
9 Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks
10 Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go.
11 I am right glad that he's so out of hope.
12 Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose
13 That you resolved to effect.
13 The next advantage
14 Will we take throughly.
14 Let it be to-night;
15 For, now they are oppress'd with travel, they
16 Will not, nor cannot, use such vigilance
17 As when they are fresh.
[Aside to Antonio.]
17 I say, to-night: no more.
Solemn and strange music; and PROSPERO
** on the top, invisible.
ALONSO
18 What harmony is this? My good friends, hark!
GONZALO
19 Marvellous sweet music!
Enter several strange SHAPES, bringing in a
** banket; and dance about it with gentle actions
of salutations; and inviting the King, etc., to eat,
they depart.
ALONSO
20 Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?
SEBASTIAN
21 A living drollery. Now I will believe
22 That there are unicorns, that in Arabia
23 There is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix
24 At this hour reigning there.
ANTONIO
24 I'll believe both;
25 And what does else want credit, come to me,
26 And I'll be sworn 'tis true: travellers ne'er did lie,
27 Though fools at home condemn 'em.
GONZALO
27 If in Naples
28 I should report this now, would they believe me?
29 If I should say, I saw such islanders—
30 For, certes, these are people of the island—
31 Who, though they are of monstrous shape, yet, note,
32 Their manners are more gentle-kind than of
33 Our human generation you shall find
34 Many, nay, almost any.
34 Honest lord,
35 Thou hast said well; for some of you there present
36 Are worse than devils.
ALONSO
36 I cannot too much muse
37 Such shapes, such gesture and such sound, expressing,
38 Although they want the use of tongue, a kind
39 Of excellent dumb discourse.
39 Praise in departing.
FRANCISCO
40 They vanish'd strangely.
SEBASTIAN
40 No matter, since
41 They have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs.
42 Will't please you taste of what is here?
GONZALO
43 Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys,
44 Who would believe that there were mountaineers
45 Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em
46 Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men
47 Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find
48 Each putter-out of five for one will bring us
49 Good warrant of.
ALONSO
49 I will stand to and feed,
50 Although my last: no matter, since I feel
51 The best is past. Brother, my lord the duke,
52 Stand to and do as we.
Thunder and lightning. Enter ARIEL,
** like a harpy, claps his wings upon the
** table, and with a quaint device the
banquet vanishes.
ARIEL
53 You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,
54 That hath to instrument this lower world
55 And what is in't, the never-surfeited sea
56 Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island
57 Where man doth not inhabit; you 'mongst men
58 Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad;
59 And even with such-like valor men hang and drown
60 Their proper selves.
[Alonso, Sebastian, etc. draw their swords.]
60 You fools! I and my fellows
61 Are ministers of Fate: the elements,
62 Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well
63 Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs
64 Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
65 One dowle that's in my plume: my fellow-ministers
66 Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt,
67 Your swords are now too massy for your strengths
68 And will not be uplifted. But remember—
69 For that's my business to you—that you three
70 From Milan did supplant good Prospero;
71 Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it,
72 Him and his innocent child: for which foul deed
73 The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have
74 Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,
75 Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,
76 They have bereft; and do pronounce by me:
77 Lingering perdition, worse than any death
78 Can be at once, shall step by step attend
79 You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from—
80 Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls
81 Upon your heads—is nothing but heart-sorrow
82 And a clear life ensuing.
He vanishes in thunder; then, to soft music,
enter the SHAPES again, and dance, with
** mocks and mows, and carrying out the table.
PROSPERO
83 Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou
84 Perform'd, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring:
85 Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated
86 In what thou hadst to say: so, with good life
87 And observation strange, my meaner ministers
88 Their several kinds have done. My high charms work
89 And these mine enemies are all knit up
90 In their distractions; they now are in my power;
91 And in these fits I leave them, while I visit
92 Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown'd,
93 And his and mine loved darling.
GONZALO
94 I' the name of something holy, sir, why stand you
95 In this strange stare?
ALONSO
95 O, it is monstrous, monstrous:
96 Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;
97 The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,
98 That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced
99 The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass.
100 Therefore my son i' the ooze is bedded, and
101 I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded
102 And with him there lie mudded.
SEBASTIAN
102 But one fiend at a time,
103 I'll fight their legions o'er.
ANTONIO
103 I'll be thy second.
Exeunt [Sebastian and Antonio].
GONZALO
104 All three of them are desperate: their great guilt,
105 Like poison given to work a great time after,
106 Now 'gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you
107 That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly
108 And hinder them from what this ecstasy
109 May now provoke them to.
ADRIAN
109 Follow, I pray you.
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