Page 1094 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

Not I.

GONZALO
Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapp’d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em [45]
Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men

Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find
Each putter-out of five for one will bring us
Good warrant of.

ALONSO
I will stand to, and feed,

Although my last: no matter, since I feel [50]
The best is past. Brother, my lord the duke,
Stand to, and do as we.

Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel like a Harpy; claps his wings upon the

table; and, with a quaint device, the banquet vanishes.

ARIEL

You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,
That hath to instrument this lower world
And what is in ’t, − the never-surfeited sea [55]
Hath caus’d to belch up you; and on this island,

Where man doth not inhabit, − you ’mongst men
Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad;
And even with such-like valour men hang and drown
Their proper selves.

[Alonso, Sebastian etc. draw their swords.]
You fools! I and my fellows [60]
Are ministers of Fate: the elements,
Of whom your swords are temper’d, may as well

Wound the loud winds, or with bemock’d-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle that’s in my plume: my fellow-ministers [65]
Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt.

Your swords are now too massy for your strengths,