The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 470
BOATSWAIN Down with the topmast! Yare! Lower,
lower! Bring her to try with main course. [A cry
within.] A plague upon this howling. They are louder
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than the weather or our office.
Enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO and GONZALO.
Yet again? What do you here? Shall we give o’er and
drown? Have you a mind to sink?
SEBASTIAN A pox o’your throat, you bawling,
blasphemous, incharitable dog.
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BOATSWAIN Work you, then.
ANTONIO Hang, cur! Hang, you whoreson, insolent
noise-maker! We are less afraid to be drowned than
thou art.
GONZALO I’ll warrant him for drowning, though the
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ship were no stronger than a nutshell and as leaky as
an unstanched wench.
BOATSWAIN Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses
off to sea again! Lay her off!
Enter Mariners, wet.
MARINERS All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost!
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BOATSWAIN What, must our mouths be cold?
GONZALO The King and prince at prayers, let’s assist
them, for our case is as theirs.
SEBASTIAN I’m out of patience.
ANTONIO We are merely cheated of our lives by
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drunkards. This wide-chopped rascal – would thou
mightst lie drowning the washing of ten tides!
GONZALO He’ll be hanged yet, though every drop of
water swear against it and gape at widest to glut him.
[A confused noise within] Mercy on us! – We split, we
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split! – Farewell my wife and children! – Farewell
brother! – We split, we split, we split!
ANTONIO Let’s all sink wi’th’ King.
SEBASTIAN Let’s take leave of him. Exit with Antonio.
GONZALO Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea
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for an acre of barren ground – long heath, brown
furze, anything. The wills above be done, but I would
fain die a dry death. Exit.
1.2 Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA.
MIRANDA 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 th’ welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
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With those that I saw suffer – a brave vessel
(Who had no doubt some noble creature in her)
Dashed all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.
Had I been any god of power, I would
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Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallowed and
The fraughting souls within her.
PROSPERO Be collected;
No more amazement. Tell your piteous heart
There’s no harm done.
MIRANDA O woe the day.
PROSPERO No harm!
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I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one, thee my daughter, who
Art ignorant of what thou art, naught knowing
Of whence I am, nor that I am more better
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
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And thy no greater father.
MIRANDA More to know
Did never meddle with my thoughts.
PROSPERO ’Tis time
I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand
And pluck my magic garment from me. So,
Lie there my art. Wipe thou thine eyes, have comfort;
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The direful spectacle of the wreck which touched
The very virtue of compassion in thee,
I have with such provision in mine art
So safely ordered, that there is no soul –
No, not so much perdition as an hair,
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Betid to any creature in the vessel
Which thou heard’st cry, which thou sawst sink.
Sit down,
For thou must now know further.
MIRANDA You have often
Begun to tell me what I am, but stopped
And left me to a bootless inquisition,
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Concluding, ‘Stay, not yet’.
PROSPERO 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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Out three years old.
MIRANDA Certainly, sir, I can.
PROSPERO By what? By any other house or person?
Of any thing the image, tell me, that
Hath kept with thy remembrance.
MIRANDA ’Tis far off,
And rather like a dream than an assurance
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That my remembrance warrants. Had I not
Four or five women once, that tended me?
PROSPERO
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?
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If thou rememb’rest aught ere thou cam’st here,
How thou cam’st here thou mayst.
MIRANDA But that I do not.
PROSPERO Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since,
Thy father was the Duke of Milan and
A prince of power.
MIRANDA Sir, are not you my father?
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PROSPERO 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.
MIRANDA O, the heavens!
What foul play had we that we came from thence?
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Or blessed wast we did?
PROSPERO Both, both, my girl.
By foul play, as thou sayst, were we heaved thence,
But blessedly holp hither.
MIRANDA O, my heart bleeds
To think o’th’ teen that I have turned you to,
Which is from my remembrance. Please you, farther.
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PROSPERO My brother and thy uncle, called Antonio –
I pray thee mark me, that a brother should
Be so perfidious – he, whom next thyself
Of all the world I loved, and to him put
The manage of my state, as at that time
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Through all the signories 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
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And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle –
Dost thou attend me?
MIRANDA Sir, most heedfully.
PROSPERO Being once perfected how to grant suits,
How to deny them, who t’advance and who
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To trash for overtopping, new created
The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed ’em,
Or else new formed ’em; having both the key
Of officer and office, set all hearts i’th’ state
To what tune pleased his ear, that now he was
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The ivy which had hid my princely trunk
And sucked my verdure out on’t. Thou attend’s
t not!
MIRANDA O, good sir, I do.
PROSPERO I pray thee, mark me.
I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness and the bettering of my mind
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With that which, but by being so retired,
O’er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother
Awaked an evil nature, and my trust,
Like a good parent, did beget of him
A falsehood in its contrary as great
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As my trust was, which had indeed no limit,
A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,
Not only with what my revenue yielded
But what my power might else exact, like one
Who, having into truth by telling of it,
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Made such a sinner of his memory
To credit his own lie, he did believe
He was indeed the duke, out o’th’ substitution
And executing th’outward face of royalty
With all prerogative. Hence his ambition growing –
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Dost thou hear?
MIRANDA Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.
PROSPERO
To have no screen between this part he played
And him he played it for, he needs will be
Absolute Milan. Me, poor man, my library
Was dukedom large enough. Of temporal royalties
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He thinks me now incapable; confederates,
So dry he was for sway, wi’th’ King of Naples
To give him annual tribute, do him homage,
Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend
The dukedom yet unbowed (alas, poor Milan)
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To most ignoble stooping.
MIRANDA O, the heavens!
PROSPERO
Mark his condition and th’event, then tell me
If this might be a brother.
MIRANDA I should sin
To think but nobly of my grandmother;
Good wombs have borne bad sons.
PROSPERO Now the condition.
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This King of Naples, being an enemy
To me inveterate, hearkens my brother’s suit,
Which was that he, in lieu o’th’ premises
Of homage, and I know not how much tribute,
Should presently extirpate me and mine
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Out of the dukedom and confer fair Milan,
With all the honours, on my brother. Whereon –
A treacherous army levied – one midnight
Fated to th’ purpose did Antonio open
The gates of Milan and i’th’ dead of darkness
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The ministers for th’ purpose hurried thence
Me and thy crying self.
MIRANDA Alack, for pity.
I, not rememb’ring how I cried out then,
Will cry it o’er again. It is a hint
That wrings mine eyes to’t.
PROSPERO Hear a little further,
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And then I’ll bring thee to the present business
Which now’s upon’s, without the which this story
Were most impertinent.
MIRANDA Wherefore did they not
That hour destroy us?
PROSPERO Well demanded, wench:
My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not,
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So dear the love my people bore me, nor set
A mark so bloody on the business, but
With colours fairer painted their foul ends.
In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared
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A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast – the very rats
Instinctively have quit it. There they hoist us
To cry to th’ sea that roared to us, to sigh
To th’ winds, whose pity, sighing back again,
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Did us but loving wrong.
MIRANDA Alack, what trouble
Was I then to you?
PROSPERO O, a cherubin
Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile,
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have decked the sea with drops full salt,
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Under my burden groaned, which raised in me
An undergoing stomach to bear up
Against what should ensue.
MIRANDA How came we ashore?
PROSPERO By providence divine.
Some food we had, and some fresh water, that
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