Enter ARIEL.(2)

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
Ariel, and all his quality.

PRO.
Hast thou, spirit,
Perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee?
ARI. To every article.

I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam'd amazement: sometime I'd divide
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards, and bowsprit,* would I flame distinctly,"
Then meet, and join.(3) Jove's lightnings, the

PRO.

My brave spirit! Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil

Would not infect his reason?

ARI. Not a soul But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd Some tricks of desperation. All, but mariners, Plung'd in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel, Then all a-fire with me: the king's son, Ferdinand, With hair up-staring, then like reeds, not hair,Was the first man that leap'd; cried, Hell is empty, And all the devils are here.

PRO.

Why, that's my spirit!

But was not this nigh shore?
ARI.

Close by, my master.
PRO. But are they, Ariel, safe?
ARI.

Not a hair perish'd; On their sustaining garments not a blemish, But fresher than before: and, as thou bad'st me, In troops I have dispers'd them 'bout the isle. The king's son have I landed by himself; Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs,

a And are upon the Mediterranean flote,-] Mr. Collier's annotator suggests, "And all upon," &c.; but what is gained by the alteration we cannot discern. Flote is here used substantively for food or wave, as in the following from Middleton and Rowley's

The mariners, say how thou hast dispos'd, And all the rest o' the fleet.

ARI.

Safely in harbour
Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vex'd Bermoothes,(4) there she's hid:
The mariners all under hatches stow'd;

Whom, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labour,
I have left asleep and for the rest o' the fleet,
Which I dispers'd, they all have met again,
And are upon the Mediterranean flote,a
Bound sadly home for Naples,

Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd,
And his great person perish.

PRO.
Ariel, thy charge
Exactly is perform'd; but there's more work.
What is the time o' the day?
ARI.

Past the mid season.

a At least two glasses-the time, 'twixt six and nowMust by us both be spent most preciously.]

By the customary punctuation of this passage, Prospero is made to ask a question and answer it. The pointing we adopt obviates this inconsistency, and renders any change in the distribution of the speeches needless.

b Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, serv'd-] The second thee, which overloads the line, was probably repeated by the compositor through inadvertence.

c Argier.] The old English name for Algiers.

To do me business in the veins o' the earth When it is bak'd with frost.

I do not, sir.

ARI. PRO. Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot

The foul witch Sycorax, who, with age and envy, Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her? ARI. No, sir.

PRO. Thou hast. Where was she born? speak; tell me.

ARI. Sir, in Argier.

PRO.
O, was she so? I must
Once in a month recount what thou hast been,
Which thou forgett'st. This damn'd witch
Sycorax,

For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible
To enter human hearing, from Argier,
Thou know'st, was banish'd: for one thing she did
They would not take her life. Is not this true?
ARI. Ay, sir.

PRO. This blue-ey'd hag was hither brought

with child,d

And here was left by the sailors: Thou, my slave, As thou report'st. thyself, wast then her servant;

PRO.

Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have us'd thee,

Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodg'd thee

In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
The honour of my child.

CAL. O ho, O ho!-would it had been done!
Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else
This isle with Calibans.

PRO. Abhorred slave, Which any print of goodness will not take, Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each

hour

One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,

a PRO.] This speech, in the folios, has the prefix "Mira," but it plainly belongs to Prospero, to whom Theobald assigned it, and who has retained it ever since.

b

Which any print of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill!]

Here, as in many other places, capable signifies impressible, susceptible.

e Race,-] That is, Nature, essence.

d The red plague rid you,-] See note (a), p. 447, Vol. II. e Fill all thy bones with aches,-] Mr. Collier remarks that "this word, of old, was used either as a monosyllable or as a dissyllable, as the case might require." This may be questioned. "Ake," says Baret in his " Alvearie," "is the Verbe of the substantive Ach, ch being turned into k." As a substantive, then,

Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vih race,

C