though he never were.

To Caliban, a land-fish, with the duller elements of earth and water in his composition, but no portion of the higher elements, air and fire, though he receives dim intimations of a higher world,- a musical hum

curses.

ming, or a twangling, or a voice heard in sleep; - to Caliban, service is slavery. He hates to bear his logs; he fears the incomprehensible power of Prospero, and obeys, and The great master has usurped the rights of the brute-power Caliban. And when Stephano and Trinculo appear, ridiculously impoverished specimens of humanity, with their shallow understandings and vulgar greeds, this poor earth-monster is possessed by a sudden fanaticism for liberty!

'Ban, 'Ban, Ca-Caliban

Has a new master: get a new man.

Freedom, hey-day! hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day, freedom!

His new master also sings his impassioned hymn of liberty, the Marseillaise of the enchanted island:

Flout 'em and scout 'em, and scout 'em and flout 'em ;
Thought is free.

The leaders of the revolution, escaped from the stench and foulness of the horse-pond, King Stephano and his prime minister Trinculo, like too many leaders of the people, bring to an end their great achievement on behalf of liberty by quarrelling over booty, - the trumpery which the providence of Prospero had placed in their way. Caliban, though scarce more truly wise or instructed than before, at least discovers his particular error of the day and hour:

What a thrice-double ass

Was I, to take this drunkard for a god,
And worship this dull fool!

It must be admitted that Shakespeare, if not, as Hav Coleridge asserted, "a Tory and a gentleman," had within him some of the elements of English conservatism.

But, while Ariel and Caliban, each in his own way, are impatient of service, the human actors, in whom we are chiefly interested, are entering into bonds, bonds of affection, bonds of duty, in which they find their truest freedom. Ferdinand and Miranda emulously contend in the task of bearing the burden which Prospero has imposed upon the Prince :

I am, in my condition,

A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king,—

I would, not so!—and would no more endure

This wooden slavery than to suffer

The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak:

The very instant that I saw you, did

My heart fly to your service; there resides,

To make me slave to it; and for your sake

Am I this patient log-man.

And Miranda speaks with the sacred candour from which spring the nobler manners of a world more real and glad than the world of convention and proprieties and pruderies :

In an earlier part of the play, this chord which runs through it had been playfully struck in the description of

Gzalo's imaginary commonwealth, in which man is to be enfranchised from all the laborious necessities of life. Here is the ideal notional liberty, Shakespeare would say ; and to attempt to realize it at once lands us in absurdities and selfcontradictions:

Anto. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.

THE TEMPEST.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

ALONSO, King of Naples.

SEBASTIAN, his Brother.

TRINCULO, a Jester.
STEPHANO, a drunken Butler.

PROSPERO, the rightful Duke of Mi- Master of a Ship, Boatswain, and

GONZALO, an honest old Counsellor Other Spirits attending on Prospero.

SCENE, a Ship at Sea; afterwards an uninhabited Island.

ACT I.

On a Ship at sea. A Storm, with Thunder and

Lightning.

Enter Master and Boatswain severally.

Mast. Boatswain !

Boats. Here, master: what cheer?

Mast. Good,' speak to the mariners fall to't yarely,2 or we run ourselves a-ground: bestir, bestir.

Enter Mariners.

[Exit.

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,3 if room enough! 4

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

Alon. Good boatswain, have care. Where's the master? Play the men.5

Boats. I pray now, keep below.

Anto. Where is the master, boatswain?

Boats. Do you not hear him? You mar our labour: keep your cabins; you do assist the storm.

1 Here, as in many other places, good is used just as we now use well. So a little after: "Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard." Also in Hamlet, i. 1: "Good now, sit down, and tell me," &c. In the text, however, it carries something of an evasive force; as, "Let that go"; or," No matter for that."

2 Yarely is nimbly, briskly, or alertly. So, in the next speech, yare, an imperative verb, is, be nimble, or be on the alert. The word is seldom if ever used now in any form, but was much used in the Poet's time. In North's Plutarch we have such phrases as "galleys not yare of steerage," and "ships light of yarage," and "galleys heavy of yarage."

3 In Shakespeare's time, the wind was often represented pictorially by the figure of a man with his cheeks puffed out to their utmost tension with the act of blowing. Probably the Poet had such a figure in his mind. So in King Lear, iii. 2: "Blow, winds, and crack your checks!" Also in Pericles, iii. 1: "Blow, and split thyself."

4 That is, "if we have sea-room enough." So in Pericles, iii. 1: “But sea-room, an the brine and cloudy billow kiss the Moon, I care not."

5 Act with spirit, behave like men. So in 2 Samuel, x. 12: "Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people."