Page 1041 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

O, was she so? I must
Once in a month recount what thou hast been,
Which thou forget’st. This damn’d witch Sycorax,
For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible

To enter human hearing, from Argier, [265]
Thou know’st, was banish’d: for one thing she did
They would not take her life. Is not this true?

ARIEL
Ay, sir.

PROSPERO
This blue-ey’d hag was hither brought with child,

And here was left by th’ sailors. Thou, my slave, [270]
As thou report’st thyself, wast then her servant;
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands,

Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers, [275]
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift

Imprison’d thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years; within which space she died,
And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans [280]
As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island −

Save for the son that she did litter here,
A freckled whelp hag-born − not honour’d with
A human shape.

ARIEL
Yes, Caliban her son.

PROSPERO
Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban, [285]

Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know’st
What torment I did find thee in; thy groans
Did make wolves bowl, and penetrate the breasts
Of every-angry bears: it was a torment