The Tempest William Shakespeare (good english books to read .TXT) 📖

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! Exit Ariel.
Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well;
Awake!

Miranda

The strangeness of your story put
Heaviness in me.

Prospero

Shake it off. Come on;
We’ll visit Caliban my slave, who never
Yields us kind answer.

Miranda

’Tis a villain, sir,
I do not love to look on.

Prospero

But, as ’tis,
We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood and serves in offices
That profit us. What, ho! slave! Caliban!
Thou earth, thou! speak.

Caliban Within. There’s wood enough within. Prospero

Come forth, I say! there’s other business for thee:
Come, thou tortoise! when?

Re-enter Ariel like a water-nymph.

Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel,
Hark in thine ear.

Ariel My lord it shall be done. Exit. Prospero

Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself
Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!

Enter Caliban. Caliban

As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d
With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye
And blister you all o’er!

Prospero

For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch’d
As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made ’em.

Caliban

I must eat my dinner.
This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,
Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me
Water with berries in’t, and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee
And show’d thee all the qualities o’ the isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:
Cursed be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
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 o’ the island.

Prospero

Thou most lying slave,
Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee,
Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee
In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
The honour of my child.

Caliban

O ho, O ho! would’t had been done!
Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else
This isle with Calibans.

Prospero

Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in’t which good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
Deservedly confined into this rock,
Who hadst deserved more than a prison.

Caliban

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!

Prospero

Hag-seed, hence!
Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou’rt 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.

Caliban

No, pray thee.
Aside. I must obey: his art is of such power,
It would control my dam’s god, Setebos,
and make a vassal of him.

Prospero So, slave; hence! Exit Caliban. Re-enter Ariel, invisible, playing and singing; Ferdinand following. Ariel’s song.

Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Courtsied when you have and kiss’d
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Burthen dispersedly. Hark, hark!
Bow-wow.
The watch-dogs bark:
Bow-wow.

Ariel

Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.

Ferdinand

Where should this music be? i’ the air or the earth?
It sounds no more: and, sure, it waits upon
Some god o’ the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father’s wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow’d it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But ’tis gone.
No, it begins again.

Ariel sings.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
Burthen. Ding-dong

Ariel Hark! now I hear them⁠—Ding-dong, bell. Ferdinand

The ditty does remember my drown’d father.
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes. I hear it now above me.

Prospero

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance
And say what thou seest yond.

Miranda

What is’t? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form. But ’tis a spirit.

Prospero

No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses
As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest
Was in the wreck; and, but he’s something stain’d
With grief that’s beauty’s canker, thou mightst call him
A goodly person: he hath lost