Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew by John McCann, Monica Sweeney, Becky Thomas Page A

dew
    From the still-vex’d Bermoothes, there she’s hid:
    The mariners all under hatches stow’d;
    Who, with a charm join’d to their suffer’d labour,
    I have left asleep; and for the rest o’ the fleet
    Which I dispersed, they all have met again
    And are upon the Mediterranean flote,
    Bound sadly home for Naples,
    Supposing that they saw the king’s ship wreck’d
    And his great person perish.

    PROSPERO
    Ariel, thy charge
    Exactly is perform’d: but there’s more work.
    What is the time o’ the 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 promised,
    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 thee no mistakings, served
    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’ the earth
    When it is baked 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-eyed 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,
    Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
    By help of her more potent ministers
    And in her most unmitigable rage,
    Into a cloven pine; 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. Then was this island—
    Save for the son that she did litter here,
    A freckled whelp hag-born—not honour’d with
    A human shape.

    ARIEL
    Yes, Caliban her son.
    PROSPERO
    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.
    ARIEL
    I thank thee, master.
     
    PROSPERO
    If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak
    And peg thee in his knotty entrails till
    Thou hast howl’d away twelve winters.

    ARIEL
    Pardon, master;
    I will be correspondent to command
    And do my spiriting gently.

    PROSPERO
    Do so, and after two days
    I will discharge thee.
    ARIEL
    That’s my noble master!
    What shall I do? say what; what shall I do?

    PROSPERO
    Go make thyself like a nymph o’ the sea: be subject
    To no sight but thine and mine, invisible
    To every eyeball else. Go take this shape
    And hither come in’t: go, hence with diligence!

ACT I. Scene II (306–375).

    P rospero sends Ariel on his errand and then wakes Miranda. They are going to visit Caliban.

PROSPERO
    Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well;
    Awake!
    MIRANDA
    The strangeness of your story put
    Heaviness in