Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, served

Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise

Pros. Thou dost; and think'st it much to tread the ooze

Of the salt deep; to run upon the sharp

Wind of the North; to do me business in

The veins o' the earth when it is baked with frost.

Ari. I do not, sir.

Hast thou forgot

Pros. Thou liest, malignant thing !64
The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy 65
Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her?
Ari. No, sir.

Pros.

tell me.

Thou hast where was she born? speak;

Ari. Sir, in Argier.66

Pros.

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 had,67
They would not take her life. Is not this true?

Ari. Ay, sir.

Pros. This blue-eyed hag 68 was hither brought with child,

64 Prospero should not be supposed to say this in earnest: he is merely playing with his delicate and amiable minister.

65 Here, as commonly in Shakespeare, envy is malice. And so he has envious repeatedly for malicious. The usage was common.

66 Argier is the old English name for Algiers.

67 What this one thing was, appears in Prospero's next speech.

68 Blue-eyed and blue eyes were used, not for what we so designate, but for blueness about the eyes. So, in As You Like It, iii. 2, we have " a blue eye,

And here was left by th' sailors. Thou, my slave,
As thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant ;
And, for 69 thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands,
Refusing her grand hests,70 she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; 71 within which rift
Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain

A dozen years; within which space she died,

And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans
As fast as mill-wheels strike.72 Then was this island
Save for the son that she did litter here,

A freckled whelp hag-born

A human shape.

Ari.

- not honour'd with

Yes, Caliban her son.

Pros. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban,
Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st
What torment I did find thee in; thy groans
Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts
Of ever-angry bears: it was a torment
To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax
Could not again undo. It was mine art,
When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape
The pine, and let thee out.

Ari.

I thank thee, master.

and a sunken," to denote a gaunt, haggard, and cadaverous look. And so, in the text, blue-eyed is used as signifying extreme ugliness. In the Poet's time, what we call blue eyes were commonly called gray, and were considered eminently beautiful.

69 Here, as often, for is because. See vol. iii. page 129, note 6. 70 Hests is commands, orders, or behests.

71 Into and in were often used indiscriminately. Here, however, I suspect the sense of both words is implied: "She thrust you into a splitted pine, and there fastened you in."

72 The reference is to wind-mills, which made a great clatter.

Pros. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak,
And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till
Thou'st howl'd away twelve Winters.

What shall I do? say what; what shall I do?

Pros. Go make thyself like to a nymph o' the sea:

Be subject to no sight but mine; invisible.

To every eyeball else. Go take this shape,
And hither come in't: hence with diligence!
Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well;
Awake!

[Exit ARIEL.

Mira. [Waking.] The strangeness of your story put Heaviness in me.

Pros.

Shake it off. Come on;

We'll visit Caliban my slave, who never

Yields us kind answer.

Mira.

I do not love to look on.

Pros.

'Tis a villain, sir,

But, as 'tis,

We cannot miss him : 73 he does make our fire,

Fetch in our wood; and serves in offices

That profit us. What, ho! slave! Caliban !
Thou earth, thou! speak.

Cal. [Within.]

There's wood enough within.

Pros. Come forth, I say! there's other business for thee: Come forth, thou tortoise! when ! 74.

78 Cannot do without him, or cannot spare him. So in Lyly's Euphues: "Honey and wax, both so necessary that we cannot miss them."

74 When! was in common use as an exclamation of impatience.

Re-enter ARIEL, like a Water-nymph.

Fine apparition! My quaint 75 Ariel,

Hark in thine ear.

Ari.

My lord, it shall be done.

[Exit.

Pros. Thou poisonous slave, got by the Devil himself Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!

Enter CALIBAN.

Cal. As wicked dew 76

as e'er my mother brush'd

With raven's feather from unwholesome fen

Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye,

And blister you all o'er ! 77

Pros. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,

Side-stiches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins 78
Shall, for that vast 79 of night that they may work,

All exercise on thee: thou shalt be pinch'd

As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made 'em.80

Cal.
I must eat my dinner.
This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,

Which thou takest from me.

When thou camest here first,

75 Ingenious, artful, adroit, are old meanings of quaint.

76" Wicked dew" is, probably, dew that has been cursed, and so made poisonous or baleful. See Critical Notes.

77 The Poet repeatedly ascribes a blighting virulence to the south-west wind; perhaps because, in England, that wind often comes charged with the breath of the Gulf-Stream. So he has "the south-fog rot him!" and "all the contagion of the south light on you!"

78 Urchins were fairies of a particular class. Hedgehogs were also called urchins; and it is probable that the sprites were so named, because they were of a mischievous kind, the urchin being anciently deemed a very noxious animal.

79 So in Hamlet, i. 2, " in the dead vast and middle of the night"; meaning the silent void or vacancy of night, when spirits were anciently supposed to walk abroad on errands of love or sport or mischief.

80 Honeycomb is here regarded as plural, probably in reference to the cells of which honeycomb is composed.

Thou strokedst me, and madest much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in't; 81 and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night and then I loved thee,

And show a thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile :
Cursed be I that did so ! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o' the island.

Pros.

Thou most lying slave,

Whom stripes may move, not kindness, I have used thee,
Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodged thee
In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
The honour of my child.

Cal. O ho, O ho! would't had been done!
Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else
This isle with Calibans.

Which any print of goodness wilt 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,

81 It does not well appear what this was. Coffee was known, but, I think, not used, in England in Shakespeare's time. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, 1632, has the following: “The Turks have a drink called coffa, so named of a berry as black as soot, and as bitter." I suspect, however, that the Poet had juniper-berries in his mind. These, steeped in water, have a stimulating or exhilarating effect, which would no doubt be highly grateful to such a taste as Caliban manifests on drinking Stephano's wine. Hooker, in his Vegetable Kingdom, says, "The stimulating diuretic powers of the Savin, Juniperus Salina, are well known, and are partaken of in some degree by the common Juniper."