(Sleeps)

The Tempest

[II, ii, 1–17] The savage Caliban curses Prospero, who has he feels usurped his rightful rule in this island realm, contriving cruel torments of every kind to maintain his obedience:

All the infections that the sun sucks up

From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him

By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me,

And yet I needs must curse. But they’ll nor pinch,

Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i’ th’ mire,

Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark

Out of my way, unless he bid ’em; but

For every trifle are they set upon me;

Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me,

And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which

Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount

Their pricks at my footfall. Sometime am I

All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues

Do hiss me into madness.

Enter Trinculo

Lo, now, lo!

Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me

For bringing wood in slowly. I’ll fall flat.

Perchance he will not mind me.

[18–40] No airy spirit but a sailor, cast ashore in the recent storm, Trinculo finds it hard to know what to make of Caliban’s recumbent form:

Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing. I hear it sing i’ th’ wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. What have we here? A man or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish! He smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell; kind of not-of-the-newest poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man. Any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man! And his fins like arms! Warm, o’ my troth! I do now let loose my opinion, hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by thunderbolt.

(Thunder)

Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine. There is no other shelter hereabout. Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past.

∙

[V, i, 33–57] Prospero, the island’s ruler, his work done, the wrongs once done to him put right, weaves the final spell by which he intends to forsake the world of magic:

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,

And ye that on the sands with printless foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him