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I am the best of them, that speak this speech,
Were I but where 'tis spoken.

How! the best?

Pro.
What wert thou, if the king of Naples heard thee?
Fer. A single thing, as I am now, that wonders
To hear thee speak of Naples: He does hear me;
And, that he does, I weep: myself am Naples;
Who, with mine eyes, ne'er since at ebb, beheld
The king, my father, wreck'd.

Mira. Alack, for mercy! Fer. Yes, faith, and all his lords; the duke of Milan, And his brave son, being twain.6

Pro. The duke of Milan, And his more braver daughter, could control thee,7 If now 'twere fit to do't:-At the first sight They have chang'd eyes:-Delicate Ariel, I'll set thee free for this!—A word, good sir;

8

[Aside.

I fear, you have done yourself some wrong: a word. Mira. Why speaks my father so ungently? This

Is the third man that e'er I saw; the first

That e'er I sigh'd for: pity move my father
To be inclin'd my way!

Fer.

O, if a virgin,

And your affection not gone forth, I'll make you
The queen of Naples.

Pro.

Soft, sir; one word more.—

They are both in either's powers: but this swift business

I must uneasy make, lest too light winning

[Aside.

Make the prize light.-One word more; I charge thee,
That thou attend me: thou dost here usurp

The name thou ow'st not; and hast put thyself
Upon this island, as a spy, to win it

6 And his brave son, being twain.] This is a slight forgetfulness. Nobody was lost in the wreck, yet we find no such character, as the son of the duke of Milan. Theobald.

7

control thee,] Confute thee, unanswerably contradict thee. Johnson.

8 I fear you have done yourself some wrong:] i. e. I fear, that in asserting yourself to be king of Naples, you have uttered a falsehood, which is below your character, and, consequently, injurious to your honour. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor-" This is not well, master Ford, this wrongs you." Steevens.

From me, the lord on't.

Fer.

No, as I am a man.

Mira. There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple: If the ill spirit have so fair an house;

Good things will strive to dwell with't.

Pro. Follow me.

[TO FER.

Speak not you for him; he's a traitor.Come.
I'll manacle thy neck and feet together:
Sea-water shalt thou drink, thy food shall be
The fresh-brook muscles, wither'd roots, and husks
Wherein the acorn cradled: Follow.

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What, I say,

Make not too rash a trial of him, for

He's gentle, and not fearful.'

Pro.

My foot my tutor!1-Put thy sword up, traitor;

Who mak'st a shew, but dar'st not strike, thy conscience Is so possess'd with guilt: come from thy ward;2

For I can here disarm thee with this stick,

And make thy weapon drop.

Mira.

Beseech you, father!

9 He's gentle, and not fearful.] Fearful signifies both terrible and timorous. In this place it may mean timorous. She tells her father, that as he is gentle, rough usage is unnecessary; and as he is brave, it may be dangerous.

Fearful, however, may signify formidable, as in K. Henry IV: "A mighty and a fearful head they are."

and then, the meaning of the passage is obvious. Steevens. 1 My foot my tutor!] So, in The Mirrour for Magistrates, 1587, p. 163:

"What honest heart would not conceive disdayne,

"To see the foote surmount above the head." Henderson. Again, in K. Lear, Act IV. sc. ii. one of the quartos reads"My foot usurps my head."

Thus also Pope, Essay on Man, I. 260:

2

"What, if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread,

"Or hand to toil, aspir'd to be the head?" Steevens.

come from thy ward;] Desist from any hope of awing me by that posture of defence. Johnson.

So, in K. Henry IV. P. I. Falstaff says:-" Thou know'st my old ward;-here I lay, and thus I bore my point." Steevens.

Pro. Hence; hang not on my garments.

Mira.

Sir, have pity;

I'll be his surety.

Pro.

Silence: one word more

Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What!
An advocate for an impostor? hush!

Thou think'st, there are no more such shapes as he,
Having seen but him and Caliban: Foolish wench!
To the most of men this is a Caliban,

And they to him are angels.

Mira.

My affections

Are then most humble; I have no ambition

To see a goodlier man.

Pro.
Thy nerves are in their infancy again,3

Come on; obey:

[To FER.

So they are:

And have no vigour in them.

Fer.
My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.
My father's loss, the weakness which I feel,
The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threats,
To whom I am subdued, are but light to me,*
Might I, but through my prison, once a day,
Behold this maid:5 all corners else o' the earth
Let liberty make use of; space enough

Have I in such a prison.

3 Thy nerves are in their infancy again,] Perhaps Milton had this passage in his mind, when he wrote the following line in his Masque at Ludlow Castle:

"Thy nerves are all bound up in alabaster." Steevens.

4 — are but light to me,] This passage, as it stands at present, with all allowance for poetical licence, cannot be reconciled to grammar. I suspect that our author wrote-" were but light to me," in the sense of-would be.-In the preceding line, the old copy reads-nor this man's threats. The emendation was made by Mr. Steevens. Malone.

5 Might I, but through my prison, once a day,

Behold this maid:] This thought seems borrowed from The Knight's Tale of Chaucer; v. 1230:

"For elles had I dwelt with Theseus
"Yfetered in his prison evermo.

"Then had I ben in blisse, and not in wo.
"Only the sight of hire, whom that I serve,
"Though that I never hire grace may deserve,
"Wold have sufficed right ynough for me."

Steevens.

Adr. Though this island seem to be desert,
Seb. Ha, ha, ha!

Ant. So, you've pay'd.

Adr. Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible,
Seb. Yet,

Adr. Yet

Ant. He could not miss it.

Adr. It must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate temperance.2

2

Ant. Temperance was a delicate wench.3

Seb. Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly delivered. Adr. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Seb. As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.

Ant. Or, as 'twere perfumed by a fen.

Gon. Here is every thing advantageous to life.

Ant. True; save means to live.

Seb. Of that there's none, or little.

Gon. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green! Ant. The ground, indeed, is tawny.

temperature.

and delicate temperance.] Temperance here means Steevens.

3 Temperance was a delicate wench.] In the puritanical times, it was usual to christian children from the titles of religious and moral virtues.

So, Taylor, the water-poet, in his description of a strumpet:

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Though bad they be, they will not bate an ace,

"To be call'd Prudence, Temperance, Faith, or Grace.”

Steevens.

How lush, &c.] Lush, i. e. of a dark full colour, the opposite to pale and faint. Sir T. Hanmer.

The words, how green? which immediately follow, might have intimated to Sir T. Hanmer, that lush here signifies rank, and not a dark full colour. In Arthur Golding's translation of Julius Solinus, printed 1587, a passage occurs, in which the word is explained." Shrubbes lushe and almost like a grystle." So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"Quite over-canopied with lushious woodbine." Henley. The word lush has not yet been rightly interpreted. It appears from the following passage in Golding's translation of Ovid, 1587, to have signified juicy, succulent :

"What! seest thou not, how that the year, as representing plaine

"The age of man, departes himself in quarters foure: first,

baine

"And tender in the spring it is, even like a sucking babe,

of

green in't.5

Seb. With an eye
Ant. He misses not much.

Seb. No; he doth but mistake the truth, totally.

Gon. But the rarity of it is (which is indeed almost beyond credit)—

Seb. As many vouch'd rarities are.

Gon. That our garments, being, as they were, drenched in the sea, hold, notwithstanding, their freshness, and glosses; being rather new dy'd, than stain'd with salt

water.

Ant. If but one of his pockets could speak, would it not say, he lies?

Seb. Ay, or very falsely pocket up his

report.

Gon. Methinks, our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Africk, at the marriage of the king's fair daughter, Claribel, to the king of Tunis. Seb. 'Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in

our return.

Adr. Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon to their queen.

Gon. Not since widow Dido's time.

"Then greene and void of strength, and lush and foggy is the blade;

"And cheers the husbandman with hope."

Ovid's lines (Met. XV.) are these:

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Quid? non in species succedere quatuor annum
"Aspicis, ætatis peragentem imitamina nostræ ?
"Nam tener et lactens, puerique simillimus ævo,
"Vere novo est. Tunc herba recens, et roboris expers,

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Turget, et insolida est, et spe delectat agrestem.”

Spenser, in his Shepheard's Calender, (Feb.) applies the epithet lusty to green:

"With leaves engrain❜d in lustie green." Malone.

5 With an eye of green in't.] An eye is a small shade of colour: "Red, with an eye of blue, makes a purple." Boyle. Again, in Fuller's Church History, p. 237, xvii. Cent. Book XI: -some cole-black (all eye of purple being put out therein) -." Again, in Sandys's Travels, lib. i: " cloth of silver, tissued with an eye of green-." Steevens.

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6 Claribel Shakspeare might have found this name in the bl. 1. History of George Lord Faukonbridge, a pamphlet that he probably read when he was writing King John. CLARABEL is there the concubine of King Richard I. and the mother of Lord Falconbridge. Malone.

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