Page 1072 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

CALIBAN

All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him
By inch-meal a disease! his spirits hear me,

And yet I needs must curse. But they’ll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i’ th’ mire, [5]
Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark
Out of my way, unless he bid ’em: but
For every trifle are they set upon me;

Sometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me,
And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which [10]
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount

Their pricks at my football; sometime am I
All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues,
Do hiss me into madness.

Enter Trinculo.

Lo, now, lo!
Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me [15]

For bringing wood in slowly. I’ll fall flat;
Perchance he will not mind me.

TRINCULO
Here’s neither bush nor shrub, to bear off any weather at all, and another
storm brewing; I hear it sing i’ th’ wind: yond same black cloud, yond huge

[20] one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should
thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head: yond same cloud
cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. What have we here? A man or a fish? dead
or alive? A fish: he smells like a [25] fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell; a
kind of, not of the newest Poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in England now,

as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but
would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; [30] any
strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a

lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legg’d like a man!
and his fins like arms! Warm o’ my troth! I do now let loose my opinion, hold
it no longer: this is no fish, [35] but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a
thunderbolt. [Thunder] Alas, the storm is come again! my best way is to