LITMIR.BIZ

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       All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come

       To answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly,

       To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride

       On the curl’d clouds; to thy strong bidding task

       Ariel and all his quality.

       PROSPERO.

       Hast thou, spirit,

       Perform’d to point the tempest that I bade thee?

       ARIEL.

       To every article.

       I boarded the King’s ship; now on the beak,

       Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,

       I flam’d amazement; sometime I’d divide,

       And burn in many places; on the topmast,

       The yards, and boresprit, would I flame distinctly,

       Then meet and join: Jove’s lightning, the precursors

       O’ th’ dreadful thunderclaps, more momentary

       And sight-outrunning were not: the fire and cracks

       Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune

       Seem to besiege and make his bold waves tremble,

       Yea, his dread trident shake.

       PROSPERO.

       My brave spirit!

       Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil

       Would not infect his reason?

       ARIEL.

       Not a soul

       But felt a fever of the mad, and play’d

       Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners

       Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,

       Then all afire with me: the King’s son, Ferdinand,

       With hair upstaring—then like reeds, not hair—

       Was the first man that leapt; cried ‘Hell is empty,

       And all the devils are here.’

       PROSPERO.

       Why, that’s my spirit!

       But was not this nigh shore?

       ARIEL.

       Close by, my master.

       PROSPERO.

       But are they, Ariel, safe?

       ARIEL.

       Not a hair perish’d;

       On their sustaining garments not a blemish,

       But fresher than before: and, as thou bad’st me,

       In troops I have dispers’d them ‘bout the isle.

       The king’s son have I landed by himself,

       Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs

       In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,

       His arms in this sad knot.

       PROSPERO.

       Of the King’s ship

       The mariners, say how thou hast dispos’d,

       And all the rest o’ th’ fleet?

       ARIEL.

       Safely in harbour

       Is the King’s ship; in the deep nook, where once

       Thou call’dst me up at midnight to fetch dew

       From the still-vex’d Bermoothes; there she’s hid:

       The mariners all under hatches stowed;

       Who, with a charm join’d to their suff’red labour,

       I have left asleep: and for the rest o’ th’ fleet

       Which I dispers’d, they all have met again,

       And are upon the Mediterranean flote

       Bound sadly home for Naples,

       Supposing that they saw the king’s ship wrack’d,

       And his great person perish.

       PROSPERO.

       Ariel, thy charge

       Exactly is perform’d; but there’s more work:

       What is the time o’ th’ day?

       ARIEL.

       Past the mid season.

       PROSPERO.

       At least two glasses. The time ‘twixt six and now

       Must by us both be spent most preciously.

       ARIEL.

       Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,

       Let me remember thee what thou hast promis’d,

       Which is not yet perform’d me.

       PROSPERO.

       How now! moody?

       What is’t thou canst demand?

       ARIEL.

       My liberty.

       PROSPERO.

       Before the time be out! No more!

       ARIEL.

       I prithee,

       Remember I have done thee worthy service;

       Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, serv’d

       Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise

       To bate me a full year.

       PROSPERO.

       Dost thou forget

       From what a torment I did free thee?

       ARIEL.

       No.

       PROSPERO.

       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’ th’ earth

       When it is bak’d with frost.

       ARIEL.

       I do not, sir.

       PROSPERO.

       Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot

       The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy

       Was grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her?

       ARIEL.

       No, sir.

       PROSPERO.

       Thou hast. Where was she born?

       Speak; tell me.

       ARIEL.

       Sir, in Argier.

       PROSPERO.

       O! was she so? I must

       Once in a month recount what thou hast been,

       Which thou forget’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 did

       They would not take her life. Is not this true?

       ARIEL.

       Ay, sir.

       PROSPERO.

       This blue-ey’d hag was hither brought with child,

       And here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave,

       As thou report’st thyself, wast then her servant:

       And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate

       To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands,

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