All points of my command. Ari, To th' syllable. Pros. Come, follow. -Speak not for him. [Exeunt. ACT II. SCENE I.-Another Part of the Island. Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, and others. Gonza. Beseech you, sir, be merry: you have cause So have we all of joy; for our escape Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe Can speak like us: then wisely, good sir, weigh Alon. Pr'ythee, peace. Sebas. He receives comfort like cold porridge. Sebas. Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; byand-by it will strike. Gonza. Sir, Sebas. One-tell.3 1 Meaning what we call a merchant-vessel or a merchant-man. 2 He calls Gonzalo a visitor in allusion to the office of one who visits the sick or the afflicted, to give counsel and consolation. The caustic scoffing humour of Sebastian and Antonio, in this scene, is wisely conceived. 8 Tell is count, or keep taily; referring to "the watch of his wit," which he was said to be "winding up," and which now begins to strike. Gonza. -When every grief is entertain'd that's offer'd, Comes to the entertainer Sebas. A dollar. Gonza. Dolour comes to him, indeed: you have spoken truer than you purposed. Sebas. You have taken it wiselier than I meant you should. Gonza. Therefore, my lord, Anto. Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue! Alon. I pr'ythee, spare me. Gonza. Well, I have done : but yet— Sebas. He will be talking. Anto. Which, of he or Adrian,4 for a good wager, first begins to crow? Sebas. The old cock. Anto. The cockerel. Sebas. Done! The wager? Anto. A laughter. Sebas. A match! Adri. Though this island seem to be desert, Sebas. Ha, ha, ha !-So, you're paid.5 Adri. uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible,— Sebas. Yet Adri. —yet— Anto. He could not miss't. Adri. it must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate temperance.6 4 This, it appears, is an old mode of speech, which is now entirely obsolete. Shakespeare has it once again. See vol. iii. page 60, note 30. And Walker quotes an apposite passage from Sidney's Arcadia: "The question arising, who should be the first to fight against Phalantus, of the black or the ill-apparelled knight," &c. 5 A laugh having been agreed upon as the wager, and Sebastian having lost, he now pays with a laugh. 6 By temperance Adrian means temperature, and Antonio plays upon the word; alluding, perhaps, to the Puritan custom of bestowing the names of the cardinal virtues upon their children. Anto. Temperance was a delicate wench. Sebas. Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly delivered. Adri. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Sebas. As if it had lungs, and rotten ones. Anto. Or as 'twere perfumed by a fen. Gonza. Here is every thing advantageous to life. Anto. True; save means to live. Sebas. Of that there's none, or little. Gonza. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green! Anto. The ground, indeed, is tawny. Sebas. With an eye of green in't.8 Anto. He misses not much. Sebas. No; he doth but mistake the truth totally. Gonza. But the rarity of it is,—which is indeed almost beyond credit, Sebas. As many vouch'd rarities are. Gonza. that our garments, being, as they were, drenched in the sea, hold, notwithstanding, their freshness and gloss, being rather new-dyed than stain'd with salt water. Anto. If but one of his pockets could speak, would it not say he lies? Sebas. Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report. Gonza. Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Afric, at the marriage of the King's fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis. Sebas. 'Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in our return. Adri. Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon to 9 their Queen. 7 Lush is juicy, succulent, - luxuriant. 8 A tint or shade of green. So in Sandy's Travels: "Cloth of silver, tissued with an eye of green;" and Bayle has “Red with an eye of blue." 9 To was used in such cases where we should use for or as. So in the Marriage Office of the Church: "Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?" Also, in St. Mark, xii. 23: "The seven had her to wife." Gonza. Not since widow Dido's time. Anto. Widow! a pox o' that ! How came that widow in ? widow Dido! Sebas. What if he had said widower Æneas too? Good Lord, how you take it! Adri. Widow Dido, said you? you make me study of that she was of Carthage, not of Tunis. Gonza. This Tunis, sir, was Carthage. Adri. Carthage ! Gonza. I assure you, Carthage. Anto. His word is more than the miraculous harp.10 Anto. What impossible matter will he make easy next? Sebas. I think he will carry this island home in his pocket, and give it his son for an apple. Anto. And, sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth more islands. Alon. Ah! Anto. Why, in good time. Gonza. Sir, we were talking that our garments seem now as fresh as when we were at Tunis at the marriage of your daughter, who is now Queen. Anto. And the rarest that e'er came there. Anto. O, widow Dido; ay, widow Dido. Gonza. Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day I wore it? I mean, in a sort. Anto. That sort was well fish'd for.11 10 Amphion, King of Thebes, was a prodigious musician: god Mercury gave him a lyre, with which he charmed the stones into their places, and thus built the walls of the city: as Wordsworth puts it, “The gift to King Amphion, that wall'd a city with its melody." Tunis is in fact supposed to be on or near the site of ancient Carthage. 11 A punning allusion, probably, to one of the meanings of sort, which was lot or portion; from the Latin sors. Gonza. When I wore it at your daughter's marriage? Married my daughter there! for, coming thence, My son is lost; and, in my rate,13 she too, I ne'er again shall see her. - O thou mine heir Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish Hath made his meal on thee? Fran. Sir, he may live : I saw him beat the surges under him, And ride upon their backs; he trod the water, The surge most swoln that met him; his bold head To th' shore, that o'er his 14 wave-worn basis bow'd, He came alive to land. Alon. No, no, he's gone. Sebas. Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss, That would not bless our Europe with your daughter, But rather lose her to an African; Where she, at least, is banish'd from your eye, Who 16 hath cause to wet the grief on't. 12 That is, "when the state of my feelings does not relish them, or has no appetite for them." Stomach for appetite occurs repeatedly. 18 Rate for reckoning, account, or estimation. 14 His for its, referring to shore. In the Poet's time its was not an accepted word: it was then just creeping into use; and he has it occasionally, especially in his later plays; as it occurs once or twice in this play. 15 Here as is put for as if; a very frequent usage with the Poet, as also with other writers of the time. 16 Who and which were used indifferently both of persons and things. Here who refers to eye. And the meaning probably is, "your eye, which hath cause to sprinkle or water your grief with tears." This would of course |