Gon. He'll be hanged yet; Though every drop of water swear against it, 8 And gape at wid'st to glut him. [A confused Noise within.] Mercy on us!-We split, we split!-Farewell my wife and children!-Farewell, brother!-We split, we split, we split. Ant. Let's all sink with the king. [Exit. [Exit. Gon. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground; long9 heath, brown furze, any thing: The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death. [Exit. SCENE II. The Island: 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, With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel, Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er1 2 8 To englut, to swallow him. 9 Instead of long heath, brown furze, &c. Sir Thomas Hanmer reads-ling, heath, broom, furze, &c. and I have no doubt rightly. 1 i. e. or ever, ere ever; signifying, in modern English, sooner than at any time. Or is a contraction of ere, aen, Sax. prius, antequam, priusquam; ever, from aefɲe, aliquando, unquam. 2 Instead of freighting the first folio reads fraughting. I have done nothing but in care of thee, Mira. 4 More to know 'Tis time Did never meddle with my thoughts. Pro. I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand, The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd 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, 3 The double superlative is in frequent use among our elder writers. 4 To meddle, is to mix, or interfere with. 5 Lord Burleigh, when he put off his gown at night, used to say "Lie there, Lord Treasurer."-Fuller's Holy State, p. 257. VOL. I. C Pro. The very minute bids thee The hour's now come; ope thine ear; Can'st thou remember A time before we came unto this cell? I do not think thou can'st; for then thou wast not Out three years old. Mira. Certainly, sir, I can. Pro. By what? by any other house, or person? Of any thing the image tell me, that Hath kept with thy remembrance. "Tis far off; Mira. 7 Pro. Thou had'st, and more, Miranda: But how is it, That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? If thou remember'st aught, ere thou cam'st here, How thou cam'st here, thou may'st. Mira. But that I do not. Pro. Twelve years since, Miranda, twelve years since, Thy father was the duke of Milan, and A prince of power. Mira. Sir, are not you my father? Pro. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father Was duke of Milan; and his only heir A princess;- -no worse issued. O, the heavens! Mira. What foul play had we, that we came from thence? Or blessed was't we did? 6 Out is used for entirely, quite. Thus in Act iv: “And be a boy right out." 7 Abysm was the old mode of spelling abyss; from its French original abisme. Pro. Both, both, my girl: By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heav'd thence; But blessedly holp hither. Mira. O, my heart bleeds To think o' the teen that I have turn'd & I pray you to, Which is from my remembrance! Please you, further. Without a parallel; those being all my study, And to my state grew stranger, being transported, Mira. Sir, most heedfully. Pro. Being once perfected how to grant suits, How to deny them; whom to advance, and whom To trash for overtopping; new created The creatures that were mine; I say, or chang'd them, Or else new form'd them: having both the key 8 Teen is grief, sorrow. 9 To trash means to check the pace or progress of any one. The term is said to be still in use among sportsmen in the North, and signifies to correct a dog for misbehaviour in pursuing the game; or overtopping or outrunning the rest of the pack. Trashes are clogs strapped round the neck of a dog to prevent his overspeed. 66 Todd has given four instances from Hammond's works of the word in this sense. Clog and trash"-" encumber and trash" "to trash or overslow"-and "foreslowed and trashed." There was another word of the same kind used in Falconry (from whence Shakspeare very frequently draws his similes); "Trassing is when a hawk raises aloft any fowl, and soaring with it, at length descends therewith to the ground.”—Dictionarium Rusticum, 1704. Of officer and office, set all hearts i' th' state And suck'd my verdure out on't.-Thou attend'st not. Pro. I pray thee, mark me. I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicate As my trust was; which had, indeed, no limit, But what my power might else exact,—-like one, Made such a sinner of his memory, To credit his own lie 11, he did believe Probably this term is used by Chapman in his address to the reader prefixed to his translation of Homer. "That whosesoever muse dares use her wing, When his muse flies she will be trass't by his, And show as if a Bernacle should spring Beneath an Eagle." There is also a passage in the Bonduca of Beaumont and Fletcher, wherein Caratach says: "I fled too, But not so fast; your jewel had been lost then, Young Hengo there, he trasht i. e. checked or stopped my flight. me, Nennius." I rather think it will be found that the Editors have been very precipitate in changing trace to trash in Othello, Act ii. Scene 1. See note on that passage. 10 Alluding to the observation that a father above the common rate of men has generally a son below it. Heroum filii noxæ. 11 "Who having made his memory such a sinner to truth as to credit his own lie by telling of it." |