Steph. I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o'er ears for my labour. Cal. Pr'ythee, my King, be quiet. See'st thou here? Do that good mischief which may make this island For aye thy foot-licker. Steph. Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody thoughts. Trin. O King Stephano! O peer ! 47 O worthy Stephano! look what a wardrobe here is for thee! Cal. Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash. Trin. O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery.48-O King Stephano! Steph. Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I'll have that gown. Trin. Thy Grace shall have it. Cal. The dropsy drown this fool! what do you mean To dote thus on such luggage? Let's along, And do the murder first: if he awake, From toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches, Steph. Be you quiet, monster. Mistress Line, is not this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line: now, jerkin, you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin.49 47 A humorous allusion to the old ballad entitled "Take thy old Cloak about thee," a part of which is sung by Iago in Othello, ii. 3. I add one stanza of it: King Stephen was a worthy peer, 48 Frippery was the name of a shop where old clothes were sold. 49 King Stephano puns rather swiftly here. The name of the tree, as explained in note 43, suggests to him the equinoctial line, under which certain regions were much noted for their aptness to generate diseases that Trin. Do, do we steal by line and level,50 an't like your Grace. Steph. I thank thee for that jest ; here's a garment for't: wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country. Steal by line and level is an excellent pass of pate ; 51 there's another garment for't. Trin. Monster, come, put some lime 52 upon your fingers, and away with the rest. Cal. I will have none on't: we shall lose our time, And all be turn'd to barnacles,53 or to apes With foreheads. villainous low.5 54 commonly made the sufferers bald. Jerkin was the name of a man's upper garment. Mr. Brae thinks there may be another quibble intended between hair and air, as clothes are hung out to be aired, and the jerkin was likely to lose the benefit of such airing; but I should rather take hair as referring to the nap of the jerkin, which was likely to be worn off in Stephano's using; so as to make the jerkin a bald jerkin in the nearer sense of having lost its hair. 50 Do, do, is said, apparently, in commendation of Stephano's wit as displayed in his address to the jerkin.-"Steal by line and level" is a further punning on the same word; the plumb-line and the level being instruments used by architects and builders. So that to steal by line and level was to show wit in stealing, or to steal artistically. 51 Pass of pate is a spurt or sally of wit; pass being, in the language of fencing, a thrust. 52 Lime, or bird-lime, was a sticky substance used for catching birds. So in 2 Henry the Sixth, i. 3: "Myself have limed a bush for her, and placed a quire of such enticing birds, that she will light to listen to their lays." See vol. iv. page 200, note 10. 53 Caliban's barnacle is the clakis or tree-goose, as it was called, which was thought to be produced from the shell-fish, lepas antifera, also called barnacle. Gerard's Herbal has the following account of the matter: "There are in the north parts of Scotland certain trees whereon do grow shell-fishes, which, falling into the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnakles, in the north of England brant-geese, and in Lancashire tree-geese." Perhaps the old notion of the barnacle-goose being produced by the barnacle-fish grew from the identity of name. As Caliban prides himself on his intellectuality, he naturally has a horror of being turned into any thing so stupid as a goose. 54 A low forehead was held a deformity. On the other hand, a forehead Steph. Monster, lay-to your fingers : help to bear this away, where my hogshead of wine is, or I'll turn you out of my kingdom go to,55 carry this. Trin. And this. Steph. Ay, and this. A noise of hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits in shape of hounds, and hunt them about; PROSPERO and ARIEL setting them on. Pros. Hey, Mountain, hey! Ari. Silver! there it goes, Silver ! Pros. Fury, Fury! there, Tyrant, there! hark, hark!— [CAL., STEPH., and TRIN. are driven out. Go charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions; 56 shorten up their sinews With aged cramps ;57 and more pinch-spotted make them Than pard 58 or cat-o-mountain. Ari. Hark, they roar ! high and broad was deemed a handsome feature in man or woman. The Poet has several allusions to this old idea. So in The Two Gentlemen, iv. 4: "Ay, but her forehead's low, and mine's as high." And in Spenser's description of Belphœbe, Faerie Queene, ii. 3, 24: Her ivorie forehead, full of bountie brave, Like a broad table did itselfe dispred. 55 Go to is a phrase occurring very often, and of varying import, sometimes of impatience, sometimes of reproof, sometimes of encouragement. Hush up, come on, be off are among its meanings. 56 In certain fevers, the mucilage sometimes gets dried out of the joints, especially the knee-joints, so as to cause a creaking or grating sound when the patient walks. Of course the effect is very painful. 57 Agèd seems to be used here with the sense of the intensive old, as before explained. See page 32, note 84. Cat-o' 58 Pard was in common use for leopard, as also for panther.. mountain is probably the wild-cat. So in Minsheu's Spanish Dictionary: "Gato montes: A cat of mountaine, a wilde cat." can hardly be called spotted; it is rather striped. not confined to one species of animal. This animal, however, Perhaps the term was At this hour Pros. Let them be hunted soundly. [Exeunt. ACT V. SCENE I. Before the Cell of PROSPERO. Pros. Now does my project gather to a head: I did say so, Pros. Ari. Confined together In the same fashion as you gave in charge, Just as you left them; all are prisoners, sir, In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell;2 1 Time does not break down or bend under its load, or what it carries; that is, "we have time enough for what we have undertaken to do." 2 "Which defends your cell against the weather, or the storm." The objective genitive, as it is called, where present usage admits only of the subjective genitive. The Poet has many such constructions. See page 77, note I. Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly He that you term'd The good old lord, Gonzalo : From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em, Would become tender. Pros. Dost thou think so, spirit? Ari. Mine would, sir, were I human. And mine shall. Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, One of their kind, that relish all as sharply Passion as they,4 be kindlier moved than thou art? Do I take part: the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel : Ari. I'll fetch them, sir. [Exit. Pros. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; 5 And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets 6 make, 4 All is here used adverbially, in the sense of quite; and passion is the object of relish, and has the sense of suffering. The sense of the passage is sometimes defeated by setting a comma after sharply. 5 This speech is in some measure borrowed from Medea's, in Ovid; the expressions are, many of them, in the old translation by Golding. But the exquisite fairy imagery is Shakespeare's own. 6 These ringlets were circles of bright-green grass, supposed to be produced by the footsteps of fairies dancing in a ring. The origin of them is |