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 of the island. 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 CAL. O ho, O ho!-'would it had been done! PRO. Abhorred slave 7; Which any print of goodness will not take, "O ho, O ho!] This savage exclamation was originally and constantly appropriated by the writers of our ancient Mysteries and Moralities, to the Devil; and has, in this instance, been transferred to his descendant Caliban. STEEVENS. So, in the verses attributed to Shakspeare: “Oho! quoth the devil, 'tis my John a Combe." But Shakspeare was led to put this ejaculation in the mouth of his savage, by the following passage: "They [the savages] seemed all very civill and very merry, shewing tokens of much thankfulness for those things we gave them, which they expresse in their language by these words-oh, ho! often repeated." Abstract of James Rosier's Account of Captain Weymouth's Voyage. Purchas. IV. 1661. MALONE. 7 Abhorred slave ;] This speech, which the old copy gives to Miranda, is very judiciously bestowed by Theobald on Prospero. JOHNSON. Mr. Theobald found, or might have found, [as Warburton has observed] this speech transferred to Prospero in the alteration of this play by Dryden and Davenant. MALONE. 8 Which any print of goodness will not take, Being capable of all ill !] So, in Harrington's translation of Orlando Furioso, 1591: Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou Deservedly confin'd into this rock, Who hadst deserv'd more than a prison. CAL. You taught me language; and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse: The red plague rid you", For learning me your language! 9— "The cruel Esselyno, that was thought "To have been gotten by some wicked devil, "But sold his soule to sin and doing evil." MALONE. Know thine own meaning,] By this expression, however defective, the poet seems to have meant-" When thou didst utter sounds to which thou hadst no determinate meaning: " but the following expression of Mr. Addison, in his 389th Spectator, concerning the Hottentots, may prove the best comment on this passage: having no language among them but a confused gabble, which is neither well understood by themselves, or others.” STEEVENS. I 66 But thy VILE RACE,] The old copy has vild, but it is only the ancient mode of spelling vile. Race, in this place, seems to signify original disposition, inborn qualities. In this sense we still say The race of wine." Thus, in Massinger's New Way to Pay Old Debts : "There came, not six days since, from Hull, a pipe "Is it of the right race?" and Sir W. Temple has somewhere applied it to works of literature. STEEVENS. Race and raciness in wine, signifies a kind of tartness. 2 BLACKSTONE. the RED plague RID you,] I suppose from the redness of the body, universally inflamed. JOHNSON. PRO. Hag-seed, hence! Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou wert best, To answer other business. Shrug'st thou, malice? If thou neglect'st, or dost unwillingly What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps; Fill all thy bones with aches; make thee roar, That beasts shall tremble at thy din. The erysipelas was anciently called the red plague. STEEVENS. So again, in Coriolanus: "Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome!" The word rid, which has not been explained, means to destroy. So, in King Henry VI. Part II. : 66 66 If you ever chance to have a child, Look, in his youth, to have him so cut off, "As, deathsmen! you have rid this sweet young prince." MALONE. 3 Fill all thy bones with aches: make thee roar,] The word aches is evidently a dissyllable. This would not have required a note but for the ignorant clamour that was raised against Mr. Kemble, because he understood Shakspeare better than the newspaper criticks who censured him, and did not at once violate the measure, and act contrary to the uniform practice of the poet, his contemporaries, and those who preceded and followed him till about the middle of the last century, by pronouncing it as a monosyllable. In Timon of Athens the word twice occurs. vol. xiii. p. 268: "Aches contract and starve your supple joints." Again, p. 423: "Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches losses." See In Barret's Alvearie, 1580, the verb is spelt with a k, ake, and the substantive ache, to mark the distinction: and that the latter was pronounced in the same way as the letter h, is placed beyond a doubt by a passage in Much Ado About Nothing, vol. vii. p. 99, where a joke is founded upon it, which is illustrated by an epigram from old Heywood. Taylor, the water-poet, at a much later period, is equally facetious in his World runs on Wheels: Every carthorse doth know the letter G very understandingly: and Í hath he in his bones." Sandys, one of the most harmonious of our poets, has this line in his Paraphrase upon Job: 66 "Stretch out thy hand, with aches pierce his bones." And not to trouble the reader with more instances, which I could easily produce, Swift has the same pronunciation in his City Shower: "Old aches throb, your hollow tooth will rage." CAL. No, 'pray thee !must obey his art is of such power, [Aside. It would control my dam's god, Setebos, And make a vassal of him. PRO. So, slave; hence! [Exit CALIBAN. Re-enter ARIEL invisible, playing and singing; FERDINAND following him. ARIEL'S Song. Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: which his modern editors have altered to “ old aches will throb;" and I have even seen the line thus printed in some of the republications of Johnson's Dictionary, although he has quoted it for the express purpose of showing that aches was sometimes a dissyllable. BOSWELL. 3 my dam's god, SETEBOS,] A gentleman of great merit, Mr. Warner, has observed on the authority of John Barbot, that "the Patagons are reported to dread a great horned devil, called Setebos."-It may be asked, however, how Shakspeare knew any thing of this, as Barbot was a voyager of the present century?Perhaps he had read Eden's History of Travayle, 1577, who tells us, p. 434, that "the giantes, when they found themselves fettered, roared like bulls, and cried upon Setebos to help them."The metathesis in Caliban from Canibal is evident. FARMER. We learn from Magellan's voyage, that Setebos was the supreme god of the Patagons, and Cheleule was an inferior one. TOLLET. Setebos is also mentioned in Hackluyt's Voyages, 1598. MALONE. 4 Re-enter Ariel INVISIBLE,] In the wardrobe of the Lord Admiral's men, (i. e. company of comedians,) 1598, was-"a robe for to goo invisebell." See the MS. from Dulwich college, quoted by Mr. Malone, vol. iii. STEEVENS. 5 Court'sied when you have, and KISS'D,] As was anciently done at the beginning of some dances. So, in King Henry VIII. that prince says to Anna Bullen I were unmannerly to take you out, Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burden bearo. BUR. Bowgh, wowgh. The watch-dogs bark: Bur. Bowgh, wowgh. Hark, hark! I hear [dispersedly. [dispersedly. The strain of strutting chanticlere Cry, Cock-a-doodle-doo. FER. Where should this musick be? i' the air, or the earth? It sounds no more :-and sure, it waits upon 66 (The wild waves WHIST ;)" i. e. the wild waves being silent. So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. vii. c. 7, f. 59: "So was the Titaness put down, and whist.” And Milton seems to have had our author in his eye. See, stanza 5, of his Hymn on the Nativity : "The winds with wonder whist, 66 Smoothly the waters kiss'd." So again, both Lord Surrey and Phaer, in their translations of the second book of Virgil: and Lyly, in his Maid's Metamorphosis, 1600: "But every thing is quiet, whist, and still." STEEVENS. 6 - the burden bear.] Old copy-" bear the burden." Corrected by Mr. Theobald. MALONE. 7 Weeping AGAIN the king my father's wreck,] Thus the old copy; but in the books of Shakspeare's age again is sometimes printed instead of against, [i. e. opposite to,] which I am persuaded was our author's word. Agen, A. S. signifies both adversus and iterum. In Julius Cæsar we find against used in the first of these senses: Against the capitol I met a lion-.” Lydgate in his Troie Boke, describing Priam's Palace, uses again in the sense of against : "And even agayne this kynges royal see, 66 In brede and length a full rich aultere." |