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Boats. I pray now, keep below.

Ant. Where is the master, boatswain?

Boats. Do you not hear him? You mar our labor keep your cabins; you do assist the storm. Gon. Nay, good, be patient.

Boats. When the sea is. Hence! What care these roarers for the name of king? To cabin: silence! trouble us not.

Gon. Good; yet remember whom thou hast aboard.

Boats. None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor: if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority: if you cannot, give thanks you have liv'd so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. hearts! — Out of our way, I say.

Cheerly, good

[Exit.

Gon. I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks, he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good fate, to his hanging! make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage! If he be not born to be hang'd, our case is miserable. [Exeunt.

Re-enter Boatswain.

4

Boats. Down with the top-mast: yare; lower,

Alvearie: To play the man, or to show himself a valiant man in any matter."

4 Of this order Lord Mulgrave, a sailor critic, says: "The striking the topmast was a new invention in Shakespeare's time, which he here very properly introduces. Sir Henry Manwaring says: If you have sea-room it is never good to strike the topmast.' Shakespeare has placed his ship in the situation in which it was indisputably right to strike the topmast, where he had not sea-room."

H

lower Bring her to try with main-course." [4 cry within.] A plague upon this howling! they are louder than the weather, or our office.

Re-enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, and GONZALO. Yet again! what do you here? Shall we give o'er, and drown! Have you a mind to sink? Seb. A pox o' your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, uncharitable dog!

Boats. Work you, then.

Ant. Hang, cur, hang! you whoreson, insolent noise-maker, we are less afraid to be drown'd than thou art.

Gon. I'll warrant him for drowning; though the ship were no stronger than a nut-shell, and as leaky as an unstanched' wench.

Boats. Lay her a-hold, a-hold : set her two courses; off to sea again; lay her off.

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5 This is a sea phrase. As the gale increases the topmast is struck, to take the weight from aloft, make the ship drive less to leeward, and bear the mainsail, under which the ship is laid to." Smith, in his Sea Grammar, 1627, explains it: “To hale the tacke aboord, the sheate close aft, the boling set up, and the helme tied close aboord."

H.

For is here archaic, and used in the sense of from; so that Theobald's substitution of the latter word is needless. Of course Gonzalo has in mind the old proverb, He that is born to be banged will never be drowned." H.

14

7 In Beaumont and Fletcher's Mad Lover, Chilas sys to the frightened priestess :

"Be quiet, and be staunch too; no inundations."

⚫ Stevens printed this, set her two courses off, which Captain Glascock objects to, and says: "The ship's head is to be put leeward, and the vessel to be drawn off the land under that canvass nautically denominated the two courses." The punctuation we have given is Lord Mulgrave's. Holt says: "The courses meant are two of the three lowest and largest sails of a ship, so called because they contribute most to give her way through the water, and thus enable her to feel the helm, and steer her course better than when they are not set or spread to the wind." To lay a ship a-hold, is to bring her to lie as near the wind as she can. in order to keep clear of the land, and get her out to sea.

H

Enter Mariners, wet.

Mar. All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost!

Boats.

[Exeunt.

What! must our mouths be cold?

Gon. The king and prince at prayers! let us

assist them,

For our case is as theirs.

Seb. I am out of patience.

9

Ant. We are merely cheated of our lives by

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This wide-chapp'd rascal!—'would, thou might'st lie drowning,

The washing of ten tides.

Gon.

He'll be hang'd yet;

Though every drop of water swear against it,
And gape at wid'st to glut1o him.

[A confused noise within.- Mercy on us! We split,
we split! - Farewell, my wife and children! - Fare-
well, brother! We split, we split, we split!"]
Ant. Let's all sink with the king.

Seb. Let's take leave of him.

[Exit. [Exit.

Gon. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground; long heath, brown furze, any thing: The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death."2

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9 Merely, absolutely, entirely; Meré, Lat. 10 To englut, to swallow him.

[Exit

This passage is usually printed as a part of Gonzalo's speech; which is clearly wrong. Dr. Johnson suggested that the words here enclosed in brackets should be given as a part, or rather as the particulars of the confused noise within. Which is so obviously right that we should hardly hesitate to adopt it, even if we had not the great authority of Dyce and Halliwell for doing so. H. 12 In Boswell's edition is a paper from Lord Mulgrave, show ing that the Poet must either have drawn his technical knowledge of seamanship from accurate personal observation, or else have had a remarkable power of applying the information gained from others. And he thinks Shakespeare must have conversed with some of the best seamen of the time, as "no books had ther

SCENE II.

The Is and before the Cell of PROSPERO.

Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA.

Mira. 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 the welkin's cheek, Dashes the fire out. O! I have suffered With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel, Who had no doubt some noble creatures in her, Dash'd all to pieces. O! the cry did knock Against my very heart. Poor souls! they perish'd. Had I been any god of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er1 It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and The fraughting souls within ber.

Pro.

Be collected:

No more amazement: tell your piteous heart,
There's no harm done.

Mira.

Pro.

O, woe the day!

No harm.

I have done nothing but in care of thee, (Of thee, my dear one! thee, my daughter!) who Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing

been published on the subject." He then exhibits the ship in five positions, and shows how truly these are represented by the words of the dialogue, and says: "The succession of events is strictly observed in the natural progress of the distress described: the expedients adopted are the best that could have been devised for a chance of safety the words of command are not only strictly proper, but are only such as point to the object to be attained, and no superfluous ones of detail." Captain Glascock says: "The Boatswain in The Tempest delivers himself in the true ver nacular style of the forecastle."

H.

i. e. Before, sooner than; as in Ecclesiastes, "or ever the silver cord be loosed;" and again in Daniel, " or ever they came to the bottom of the den "

H.

Of whence I ain; nor that I am more better?
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father.

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I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand,
And pluck my magic garment from me.—So:
[Lays down his mantle.
Lie there, my art.*· Wipe thou thine eyes; have

comfort.

The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd
The very virtue of compassion in thee,
I have with such prevision in mine art
So safely order'd, that there is no soul-
No, not so much perdition as an hair,
Betid to any creature in the vessel

Which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink.

Sit down;

For thou must now know further.

Mira.

You have often

Begun to tell me what I am; but stopp'd,
And left me to a bootless inquisition;

Concluding, "Stay, not yet."

Pro.

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 Out' three years old.

2 The double comparative is in frequent use among our elder

writers.

3 To meddle, is to mix, or mingle with.

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Lord Burleigh, when he put off his gown at night, used to Lie there, Lord Treasurer." - Fuller's Holy State. Out is used for entirely, quite. Doy righ out."

Thus in Act iv.: "And be a

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