Your blessing, sir.
BELARIUS (aside to Guiderius and Arviragus)
Though you did love this youth, I blame ye not.
You had a motive for’t.
CYMBELINE
My tears that fall
Prove holy water on thee!
⌈He raises her⌉
Innogen,
Thy mother’s dead.
INNOGEN
I am sorry for’t, my lord.
CYMBELINE
O, she was naught, and ’long of her it was
That we meet here so strangely. But her son
Is gone, we know not how nor where.
PISANIO
My lord,
Now fear is from me I’ll speak truth. Lord Cloten,
Upon my lady’s missing, came to me
With his sword drawn, foamed at the mouth, and
swore
If I discovered not which way she was gone
It was my instant death. By accident
I had a feigned letter of my master’s
Then in my pocket, which directed him
To seek her on the mountains near to Milford,
Where in a frenzy, in my master’s garments,
Which he enforced from me, away he posts
With unchaste purpose, and with oath to violate
My lady’s honour. What became of him
I further know not.
GUIDERIUS
Let me end the story.
I slew him there.
CYMBELINE
Marry, the gods forfend!
I would not thy good deeds should from my lips
Pluck a hard sentence. Prithee, valiant youth,
Deny’t again.
GUIDERIUS I have spoke it, and I did it.
CYMBELINE He was a prince.
GUIDERIUS
A most incivil one. The wrongs he did me
Were nothing prince-like, for he did provoke me
With language that would make me spurn the sea
If it could so roar to me. I cut off ’s head,
And am right glad he is not standing here
To tell this tale of mine.
CYMBELINE
I am sorrow for thee.
By thine own tongue thou art condemned, and must
Endure our law. Thou’rt dead.
INNOGEN
That headless man
I thought had been my lord.
CYMBELINE (to soldiers)
Bind the offender,
And take him from our presence.
BELARIUS
Stay, sir King.
This boy is better than the man he slew,
As well descended as thyself, and hath
More of thee merited than a band of Clotens
Had ever scar for. Let his arms alone;
They were not born for bondage.
CYMBELINE
Why, old soldier,
Wilt thou undo the worth thou art unpaid for
By tasting of our wrath? How of descent
As good as we?
ARVIRAGUS
In that he spake too far.
CYMBELINE ⌈to Belarius⌉
And thou shalt die for’t.
BELARIUS
We will die all three
But I will prove that two on ’s are as good
As I have given out him. My sons, I must
For mine own part unfold a dangerous speech,
Though haply well for you.
ARVIRAGUS
Your danger’s ours.
GUIDERIUS
And our good his.
BELARIUS
Have at it then. By leave,
Thou hadst, great King, a subject who
Was called Belarius.
CYMBELINE
What of him? He is
A banished traitor.
BELARIUS
He it is that hath
Assumed this age. Indeed, a banished man;
I know not how a traitor.
CYMBELINE (to soldiers)
Take him hence.
The whole world shall not save him.
BELARIUS
Not too hot.
First pay me for the nursing of thy sons,
And let it be confiscate all so soon
As I have received it.
CYMBELINE
Nursing of my sons?
BELARIUS
I am too blunt and saucy. (Kneeling) Here’s my knee.
Ere I arise I will prefer my sons,
Then spare not the old father. Mighty sir,
These two young gentlemen that call me father
And think they are my sons are none of mine.
They are the issue of your loins, my liege,
And blood of your begetting.
CYMBELINE
How, my issue?
BELARIUS
So sure as you your father’s. I, old Morgan,
Am that Belarius whom you sometime banished.
Your pleasure was my mere offence, my punishment
Itself, and all my treason. That I suffered
Was all the harm I did. These gentle princes—
For such and so they are-these twenty years
Have I trained up. Those arts they have as I
Could put into them. My breeding was, sir,
As your highness knows. Their nurse Euriphile,
Whom for the theft I wedded, stole these children
Upon my banishment. I moved her to‘t,
Having received the punishment before
For that which I did then. Beaten for loyalty
Excited me to treason. Their dear loss,
The more of you ‘twas felt, the more it shaped
Unto my end of stealing them. But, gracious sir,
Here are your sons again, and I must lose
Two of the sweet’st companions in the world.
The benediction of these covering heavens
Fall on their heads like dew, for they are worthy
To inlay heaven with stars.
CYMBELINE
Thou weep‘st, and speak’st.
The service that you three have done is more
Unlike than this thou tell’st. I lost my children.
If these be they, I know not how to wish
A pair of worthier sons.
BELARIUS ⌈rising⌉
Be pleased a while.
This gentleman, whom I call Polydore,
Most worthy prince, as yours, is true Guiderius.
⌈Guiderius kneels⌉
This gentleman, my Cadwal, Arviragus,
Your younger princely son.
⌈Arviragus kneels⌉
He, sir, was lapped
In a most curious mantle wrought by th’ hand
Of his queen mother, which for more probation
I can with ease produce.
CYMBELINE
Guiderius had
Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star.
It was a mark of wonder.
BELARIUS
This is he,
Who hath upon him still that natural stamp.
It was wise nature’s end in the donation
To be his evidence now.
CYMBELINE
O, what am I?
A mother to the birth of three? Ne’er mother
Rejoiced deliverance more. Blest pray you be,
That, after this strange starting from your orbs,
You may reign in them now!
⌈Guiderius and Arviragus rise⌉
O Innogen,
Thou hast lost by this a kingdom.
INNOGEN
No, my lord,
I have got two worlds by’t. O my gentle brothers,
Have we thus met? O, never say hereafter
But I am truest speaker. You called me brother
When I was but your sister; I you brothers
When ye were so indeed.
CYMBELINE
Did you e’er meet?
ARVIRAGUS
Ay, my good lord.
GUIDERIUS
And at first meeting loved,
Continued so until we thought he died.
CORNELIUS
By the Queen’s dram she swallowed.
CYMBELINE
O rare instinct!
When shall I hear all through? This fierce abridgement
Hath to it circumstantial branches which
Distinction should be rich in. Where? How lived you?
And when came you to serve our Roman captive?
How parted with your brothers? How first met them?
Why fled you from the court? And whither? These,
And your three motives to the battle, with
I know not how much more, should be demanded,
And all the other by-dependences,
From chance to chance. But nor the time nor place
Will serve our long inter’gatories. See,
Posthumus anchors upon Innogen,
And she, like harmless lightning, throws her eye
On him, her brothers, me, her master, hitting
Each object with a joy. The counterchange
Is severally in all. Let’s quit this ground,
And smoke the temple with our sacrifices.
(To Belarius) Thou art my brother; so we’ll hold thee
ever.
INNOGEN (to Belarius)
You are my father too, and did relieve me
To see this gracious season.
CYMBELINE
All o’erjoyed,
Save these in bonds. Let them be joyful too,
For they shall taste our comfort.
INNOGEN (to Lucius)
My good master,
I will yet do you service.
LUCIUS
Happy be you!
CYMBELINE
The forlorn soldier that so nobly fought,
He would have well becomed this place, and graced
The thankings of a king.
POSTHUMUS
I am, sir,
The soldier that did company these three
In poor beseeming. ’Twas a fitment for
The purpose I then followed. That I was he,
Speak, Giacomo; I had you down, and might
Have made you finish.
GIACOMO (kneeling)
I am down again,
But now my heavy conscience sinks my knee
As then your force did. Take that life, beseech you,
Which I so often owe; but your ring first,
And here the bracelet of the truest princess
That ever swore her faith.
POSTHUMUS (raising him)
Kneel not to me.
The power that I have on you is to spare you,
The malice towards you to forgive you. Live,
And deal with others better.
CYMBELINE
Nobly doomed!
We’ll learn our freeness of a son-in-law.
Pardon’s the word to all.
ARVIRAGUS (to Posthumus) You holp us, sir,
As you did mean indeed to be our brother.
Joyed are we that you are.
POSTHUMUS
Your servant, princes. (To Lucius) Good my lord of
Rome,
Call forth your soothsayer. As I slept, methought
Great Jupiter, upon his eagle backed,
Appeared to me with other spritely shows
Of mine own kindred. When I waked I found
This label on my bosom, whose containing
Is so from sense in hardness that I can
Make no collection of it. Let him show
His skill in the construction.
LUCIUS
Philharmonus.
SOOTHSAYER
Here, my good lord.
LUCIUS Read, and declare the meaning.
SOOTHSAYER (reads the tablet) ‘Whenas a lion’s whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow: then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty.’
Thou, Leonatus, art the lion’s whelp.
The fit and apt construction of thy name,
Being leo-natus, doth import so much.
(To Cymbeline) The piece of tender air thy virtuous
daughter,
Which we call ‘mollis aer’; and ‘mollis aer’
We term it ‘mulier’, (to Posthumus) which ‘mulier’ I
divine
Is this most constant wife, who even now,
Answering the letter of the oracle,
Unknown to you, unsought, were clipped about
With this most tender air.
CYMBELINE
This hath some seeming.
SOOTHSAYER
The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline,
Personates thee, and thy lopped branches point
Thy two sons forth, who, by Belarius stol’n,
For many years thought dead, are now revived,
To the majestic cedar joined, whose issue
Promises Britain peace and plenty.
CYMBELINE
Well,
My peace we will begin; and, Caius Lucius,
Although the victor, we submit to Caesar
And to the Roman empire, promising
To pay our wonted tribute, from the which
We were dissuaded by our wicked queen,
Whom heavens in justice both on her and hers
Have laid most heavy hand.
SOOTHSAYER
The fingers of the powers above do tune
The harmony of this peace. The vision,
Which I made known to Lucius ere the stroke
Of this yet scarce-cold battle, at this instant
Is full accomplished. For the Roman eagle,
From south to west on wing soaring aloft,
Lessened herself, and in the beams o‘th’ sun
So vanished; which foreshowed our princely eagle
Th’imperial Caesar should again unite
His favour with the radiant Cymbeline,
Which shines here in the west.
CYMBELINE
Laud we the gods,
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our blest altars. Publish we this peace
To all our subjects. Set we forward, let
A Roman and a British ensign wave
Friendly together. So through Lud’s town march,
And in the temple of great Jupiter
Our peace we’ll ratify, seal it with feasts.
Set on there. Never was a war did cease,
Ere bloody hands were washed, with such a peace.
⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt ⌈in triumph⌉
THE TEMPEST
THE King’s Men acted The Tempest before their patron, James I, at Whitehall on I November 1611. (It was also chosen for performance during the festivities for the marriage of James’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, to the Elector Palatine during the winter of 1612- 13.) Shakespeare’s play takes place on a desert island somewhere between Tunis and Naples; he derived some details of it from his reading of travel literature, including accounts of an expedition of nine ships taking five hundred colonists from Plymouth to Virginia, which set sail in May 1609. On 29 July the flagship, the Sea-Adventure, was wrecked by a storm on the coast of the Bermudas. She was presumed lost, but on 23 May 1610 those aboard her arrived safely in Jamestown, Virginia, having found shelter on the island of Bermuda, where they were able to build the pinnaces in which they completed their journey. Accounts of the voyage soon reached England; the last-written that Shakespeare seems to have known is a letter by William Strachey, who was on the Sea-Adventure, dated 15 July 1610; though it was not published until 1625, it circulated in manuscript. So it seems clear that Shakespeare wrote The Te
mpest during the later part of 1610or in 1611. It was first printed in the 1623 Folio, where it is the opening play.
Though other items of Shakespeare’s reading—including both Arthur Golding’s translation and Ovid’s original Metamorphoses (closely echoed in Prospero’s farewell to his magic), John Florio’s translation of essays by Michel de Montaigne, and (less locally but no less pervasively) Virgil’s Aeneid—certainly fed Shakespeare’s imagination as he wrote The Tempest, he appears to have devised the main plot himself. Many of its elements are based on the familiar stuff of romance literature: the long-past shipwreck after a perilous voyage of Prospero and his daughter Miranda; the shipwreck, depicted in the opening scene, of Prospero’s brother, Antonio, with Alonso, King of Naples, and others; the separation and estrangement of relatives—Antonio usurped Prospero’s dukedom, and Alonso believes his son, Ferdinand, is drowned; the chaste love, subjected to trials, of the handsome Ferdinand and the beautiful Miranda; the influence of the supernatural exercised through Prospero’s magic powers; and the final reunions and reconciliations along with the happy conclusion of the love affair. Shakespeare had employed such conventions from the beginning of his career in his comedies, and with especial concentration, shortly before he wrote The Tempest, in Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, and Cymbeline. But whereas those plays unfold the events as they happen, taking us on a journey through time and space, in The Tempest (as elsewhere only in The Comedy of Errors) Shakespeare gives us only the end of the story, concentrating the action into a few hours and locating it in a single place, but informing us about the past, as in the long, romance-type narrative (1.2) in which Prospero tells Miranda of her childhood. The supernatural, a strong presence in all Shakespeare’s late plays, is particularly pervasive in The Tempest; Prospero is a ‘white’ magician—a beneficent one—attended by the spirit Ariel and the sub-human Caliban, two of Shakespeare’s most obviously symbolic characters; and a climax of the play is the supernaturally induced wedding masque that Prospero conjures up for the entertainment and edification of the young lovers, and which vanishes as he remembers Caliban’s plot against his life.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
PROSPERO, the rightful Duke of Milan
MIRANDA, his daughter
ANTONIO, his brother, the usurping Duke of Milan
ALONSO, King of Naples
SEBASTIAN, his brother
FERDINAND, Alonso’s son
GONZALO, an honest old counsellor of Naples
ARIEL, an airy spirit attendant upon Prospero
CALIBAN, a savage and deformed native of the island, Prospero’s slave
TRINCULO, Alonso’s jester
STEFANO, Alonso’s drunken butler
The MASTER of a ship
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 392
