Enter Mariners.

BOATS. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail! Tend to the master's whistle! [Exeunt Mariners.] Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!

Enter ALONSO, FERDINAND, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, and others.

ALON. Good boatswain, have care. Where's the master? Play the men.

BOATS. I pray now, keep below.

ANT. Where is the master, boson? BOATS. Do you not hear him? You mar our labour keep your cabins: you do assist the

storm.

Hence

what care

GON. Nay, good, be patient. BOATS. When the sea is. 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 lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap.— Cheerly, good hearts !-Out of our way, I say.

[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 hanged, our case is miserable. [Exeunt.

SEB. A pox o' your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog!

BOATS. Work you, then.

ANT. Hang, cur, hang! you whoreson, insolent noise-maker, we are less afraid to be drowned than thou art.

GON. I'll warrant him for drowning; though the ship were no stronger than a nutshell, 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!

Re-enter Boatswain.

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

mounting to the welkin's cheek,-] Although we have, in "Richard II." Act III. Sc. 2,-"the cloudy cheeks of heaven," and elsewhere, "welkin's face," and "heaven's face," it may well be questioned whether "cheek," in this place, is not a misprint. Mr. Collier's annotator substitutes heat, a change characterised by Mr. Dyce as "equally tasteless and absurd." A more appropriate and expressive word, one, too, sanctioned in some measure by its occurrence in Ariel's description of the same elemental conflict, is probably, crack, or cracks,

It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and The fraughting souls within her.

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,

the sky's ordnance, "the fire and cracks," assault the "mighty Neptune." Crack, in the emphatic sense it formerly bore of crash, discharge, or explosion, is very common in our old writers; thus, in Marlowe's "Tamburlaine the Great," Part I. Act IV. Sc. 2,

"As when a fiery exhalation,

Wrapt in the bowels of a freezing cloud Fighting for passage, makes the welkin cracke." Again, in some verses prefixed to Coryat's "Crudities,""A skewed engine mathematicall

To draw up words that make the welkin cracke."

And in Taylor's Superbiæ Flagellum, 1630,

"Yet every Reall heav'nly Thundercracke, This Caitife in such feare and terror strake." &c.

And pluck my magic garment from me.-So; [Lays down his robe. 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 provision 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.

that there is no soul-] Rowe prints,

"that there is no soul lost;"

Theobald, "that there is no foyle;" and Johnson, "that there is no soil." We believe, notwithstanding Steevens' remark that "such interruptions are not uncommon to Shakspeare," that "soul" is a typographical error, and that the author wrote, as Capell reads,— "that there is no loss,

No, not so much perdition as an hair

Betid to any creature," &c.

You have often, &c.] Query, "You have oft," &c.

MIRA.

O, my heart bleeds To think o' the teen that I have turn'd you to, Which is from my remembrance! Please you, further.

PRO. My brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio,

I pray thee, mark me,—that a brother should
Be so perfidious!—he whom, next thyself,
Of all the world I lov'd, and to him put
The manage of my state; as, at that time,
Through all the signiories it was the first,—
And Prospero the prime duke ;-being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal arts

Without a parallel: those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother,
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle—
Dost thou attend me?

PRO. Being once perfected how to grant suits, How to deny them, who to advance, and who To trash' for over-topping,-new created The creatures that were mine, I say, or chang'd 'em, Or else new form'd 'em; having both the key Of officer and office, set all hearts i' the state To what tune pleas'd his ear; that now he was The ivy which had hid my princely trunk, And suck'd my verdure out on't.—Thou attend'st not.

MIRA. O good sir, I do. PRO.

I pray thee, mark me. I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated To closeness, and the bettering of my mind With that, which, but by being so retir'd, O'er-priz'd all popular rate, in my false brother Awak'd an evil nature; and my trust,

Like a good parent, did beget of him
A falsehood, in its contrary as great
As my trust was; which had indeed no limit,
A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,
Not only with what my revenue yielded,
But what my power might else exact,-like one
Who having unto truth, by telling of it,
Made such a sinner of his memory,
To credit his own lie,a-he did believe

He was indeed the duke; out o' the substitution,
And executing the outward face of royalty,
With all prerogative:-hence his ambition grow-
ing,-

Dost thou hear?

MIRA. Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.
PRO. To have no screen between this part he
play'd

And him he play'd it for, he needs will be
Absolute Milan. Me, poor man! my library
Was dukedom large enough; of temporal royalties
He thinks me now incapable; confederates
(So dry he was for sway) with the king of
Naples,

To give him annual tribute, do him homage;
Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend
The dukedom, yet unbow'd,-alas, poor
To most ignoble stooping.

MIRA.

Milan!—

O the heavens !

PRO.

Now the condition.
This king of Naples, being an enemy
To me inveterate, hearkens my brother's suit;
Which was, that he, in lieu o' the premises
Of homage, and I know not how much tribute,
Should presently extirpate me and mine
Out of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan,
With all the honours, on my brother: whereon,
A treacherous army levied, one midnight
Fated to the purpose, did Antonio open

The gates of Milan; and, i' the dead of darkness,
The ministers for the purpose hurried thence
Me, and thy crying self.
MIRA.

So dear the love my people bore me, nor set
A mark so bloody on the business; but
With colours fairer painted their foul ends.
In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,

Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepar'd
A rotten carcass of a boat,* not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it: there they hoist us,
To cry to the sea that roar'd to us; to sigh
To the winds, whose pity, sighing back again,
Did us but loving wrong.

MIRA.

Was I then to you?

PRO.

Alack, what trouble

O, a cherubin

Thou wast that did preserve me! Thou didst

smile,

Infused with a fortitude from heaven,

e

When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt; Under my burthen groan'd; which rais'd in me An undergoing stomach, to bear up

Against what should ensue.

MIRA.

How came we ashore?
PRO. By Providence divine.
Some food we had, and some fresh water, that
A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,

Out of his charity,-who being then appointed
Master of this design,-did give us with
Rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries,
Which since have steaded much; so, of his gen-

and this emendation is entitled to more respect than it has received.

b In lieu-] In lieu means here, in guerdon, or consideration; not as it usually signifies, instead, or in place.

Fated to the purpose,-] Mr. Collier's annctator reads."Fated to the practice;" and as "purpose" is repeated two lines below, the substitution is an improvement.

d In few, To be brief; in a few words.

e Deck'd-] Decked, if not a corruption for degged, an old provincialism, probably meant the same, that is, sprinkled.