Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burden bear. Hark, hark! BUR. Bowgh, wowgh. The watch-dogs bark: BUR. Bowgh, wowgh. Hark, hark! I hear [dispersedly. [dispersedly. The strain of strutting chanticlere Cry, Cock-a-doodle-doo. FER. Where should this musick be? i' the air, It sounds no more:-and sure, it waits upon And Milton seems to have had our author in his eye. See stanza 5, of his Hymn on the Nativity: "The winds with wonder whist, "Smoothly the waters kiss'd." So again, both Lord Surrey and Phaer, in their translations of the second book of Virgil: 66 Conticuere omnes. "They whisted all." and Lyly, in his Maid's Metamorphosis, 1600: "But every thing is quiet, whist, and still." STEEvens. the burden bear.] Old copy-bear the burden. Corrected by Mr. Theobald. MALONE. 7 Weeping again the king my father's wreck,] Thus the old copy; but in the books of Shakspeare's age again is sometimes printed instead of against, [i. e. opposite to,] which I am persuaded was our author's word. The placing Ferdinand in such a situation that he could still gaze upon the wrecked vessel, is one of Shakspeare's touches of nature. Again is inadmissible; for this would import that Ferdinand's tears had ceased for a time; whereas he himself tells us, afterwards, that from the hour of his father's wreck they had never ceased to flow: Myself am Naples, "Who with mine eyes, ne'er since at ebb, beheld This musick crept by me upon the waters;* ARIEL sings. Full fathom five thy father lies;" However, as our author sometimes forgot to compare the different parts of his play, I have made no change. MALone. By the word-again, I suppose the Prince means only to describe the repetition of his sorrows. Besides, it appears from Miranda's description of the storm, that the ship had been swallowed by the waves, and, consequently, could no longer be an object of sight. STEEVENS. This musick crept by me upon the waters;] So, in Milton's Masque: 66 a soft and solemn breathing sound "Rose like a steam of rich distill'd perfumes, "And stole upon the air." STEEvens. 9 Full fathom five thy father lies; &c.] Ariel's lays, [which have been condemned by Gildon as trifling, and defended not very successfully by Dr. Warburton,] however seasonable and efficacious, must be allowed to be of no supernatural dignity or elegance; they express nothing great, nor reveal any thing above mortal discovery. The reason for which Ariel is introduced thus trifling is, that he and his companions are evidently of the fairy kind, an order of beings to which tradition has always ascribed a sort of diminutive agency, powerful but ludicrous, a humorous and frolick controlment of nature, well expressed by the songs of Ariel. Johnson. The songs in this play, Dr. Wilson, who reset and published two of them, tells us, in his Court Ayres, or Ballads, published at Oxford, 1660, that " Full fathom five," and "Where the bee sucks," had been first set by Robert Johnson, a composer contemporary with Shakspeare. BURNEY. 'Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change-] The meaning is-Every thing about him, that is liable to alteration, is changed. STEEVENS. But doth suffer a sea-change2 Hark! now I hear them,-ding-dong, bell.3 [Burden, ding-dong. FER. 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. PRO. The fringed curtains of thine eye advance * But doth suffer a sea-change-] So, in Milton's Masque: "And underwent a quick immortal change." 3 Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear them,-Ding-dong, bell. STEEVENS. Burden, ding-dong.] So, in The Golden Garland of Princely Delight, &c. 13th edition, 1690: "Corydon's doleful knell to the tune of Ding, dong." "Yet will I ring her knell, Ding, dong." The same burthen to a song occurs in The Merchant of Venice, Act III. sc. ii. STEEVENS. Burden, ding-dong.] It should be Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong bell. FARMER. 5 That the earth owes:] To owe, in this place, as well as many others, signifies to own. So, in Othello: 66 that sweet sleep "Which thou ow'dst yesterday." Again, in the Tempest: 66 thou dost here usurp "The name thou ow'st not." To use the word in this sense, is not peculiar to Shakspeare. I meet with it in Beaumont and Fletcher's Beggar's Bush: "If now the beard be such, what is the prince "That owes the beard?" STEEVENS. The fringed curtains, &c.] The same expression occurs in Pericles Prince of Tyre, 1609: her eyelids "Begin to part their fringes of bright gold." What is't? a spirit? Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, PRO. No, wench; it eats and sleeps, and hath such senses As we have, such: This gallant, which thou seest, A goodly person: he hath lost his fellows, MIRA. A thing divine; for nothing natural PRO. I might call him [Aside. It goes on," As my soul prompts it:-Spirit, fine spirit! I'll free thee Within two days for this. FER. Most sure, the goddess On whom these airs attend!"-Vouchsafe, my prayer Again, in Sidney's Arcadia, Lib. I: "Sometimes my eyes would lay themselves open-or cast my lids, as curtains, over the image of beauty her presence had painted in them." STEEVENS. "It goes on,] The old copy reads " It goes on, I see," &c. But as the words I see, are useless, and an incumbrance to the metre, I have omitted them. STEEVENS. Most sure, &c.] It seems, that Shakspeare, in The Tempest, hath been suspected of translating some expressions of Virgil; witness the O Dea certe. I presume we are here directed to the passage, where Ferdinand says of Miranda, after hearing the songs of Ariel: Most sure, the goddess On whom these airs attend! And so very small Latin is sufficient for this formidable translation, that, if it be thought any honour to our poet, I am loth to deprive May know, if you remain upon this island; MIRA. But, certainly a maid." No wonder, sir; him of it; but his honour is not built on such a sandy foundation. Let us turn to a real translator, and examine whether the idea might not be fully comprehended by an English reader, supposing it necessarily borrowed from Virgil. Hexameters in our language are almost forgotten; we will quote therefore this time from Stanyhurst: 9 "O to thee, fayre virgin, what terme may rightly be fitted? 66 ―certainly a maid.] Nothing could be more prettily imagined, to illustrate the singularity of her character, than this pleasant mistake. She had been bred up in the rough and plaindealing documents of moral philosophy, which teaches us the knowledge of ourselves; and was an utter stranger to the flattery invented by vicious and designing men to corrupt the other sex. So that it could not enter into her imagination, that complaisance, and a desire of appearing amiable, qualities of humanity which she had been instructed, in her moral lessons, to cultivate, could ever degenerate into such excess, as that any one should be willing to have his fellow-creature believe that he thought her a goddess, or an immortal. WARburton. Dr. Warburton has here found a beauty, which I think the author never intended. Ferdinand asks her not whether she was a created being, a question which, if he meant it, he has ill expressed, but whether she was unmarried; for after the dialogue which Prospero's interruption produces, he goes on pursuing his former question: O if a virgin, I'll make you queen of Naples. JOHNSON. A passage in Lyly's Galathea seems to countenance the present text: "The question among men is common, are you a maide?" -yet I cannot but think, that Dr. Warburton reads very rightly: "If you be made, or no.' When we meet with a harsh expression in Shakspeare, we are usually to look for a play upon words. |