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- Act II, scene i, lines 89-90

This is a reference to the Greek myth of Amphion and Zethus, twin brothers, whose father had been ruler of Thebes but had been deposed and killed by a younger brother (Odd that Antonio should make such a reference) A uncle and wished to fortify it against a counterattack They therefore built a stone wall around the city Zethus carried the stones and piled theic lyre (or harp), made the pile of stones move of their own accord into the wall

The conversation continues until Ariel enters and causes all but Sebastian and Antonio to fall asleep

Antonio, the wicked usurping brother of Prospero, takes the opportunity to urge Sebastian to kill his brother and beco of Naples in his place Sebastian allows himself to be te, Ariel wakes all the sleepers and Sebastian and Antonio must pretend they had heard wild beasts and had drawn their swords for that reason (Thwarted ae)

this mooncalf

Meanwhile another pair of individuals are to be found wandering on the island Trinculo, the King's jester, has escaped and is wandering ai's butler

Caliban sees Trinculo approaching and, in terrible fright, pretends he is dead Trinculo finds him, doesn't knohat to ars of the tempest

Stephano, who has salvaged so one and is 'drunk He comes across the Caliban-Trinculo cos and two voices When Trinculo calls his name, Stephano is terrified and says:

This is a devil, and no monster

I will leave hi spoon

- Act II, scene ii, lines 102-3

Stephano refers to the proverb which is usually quoted, now, as "Who sups with the devilspoon"

But Trinculo identifies himself before Stephano is out of earshot Stephano returns, pulls Trinculo out froarment, and says:

Thou art very Trinculo indeed!

How cae [excrement]

of this mooncalf? Can he vent Trinculos?

- Act II, scene ii, lines 110-12

A iven to the occasional deforht to be due to the e I-629) Eventually, the expression came to be used for any monstrous form of life

Stephano gives Caliban a drink and the grateful Caliban (who has never tasted liquor before) wishes to worship Stephano as a god, and suggests to hi Miranda his queen Stephano thinks this is a good idea and all three troop off on this errand There is obviously no danger, though, for Ariel is (invisibly) on guard

the phoenix' throne

Prospero, h the young prince is engaged in a deives him a chance to be near Miranda And Miranda, when she enters, cannot bear to see hiroith every second and Prospero, overhearing, is happy indeed

The situation is not quite so pleasant for the King and his party Gon-zalo is half dead alking; and Sebastian and Antonio are still plotting the assassination Suddenly, though, a banquet is set before theic

They are astonished, and Sebastian says, in stupefaction:

Noill believe

That there are unicorns; that in Arabia

There is one tree, the phoenix' throne; one phoenix

At this hour reigning there

- Act III, scene iii, lines 21-24

Sebastian coht they have seen with two other incredibles: the unicorn and the phoenix

The unicorn is generally pictured as a horselike creature with a single spiral horn on its forehead Belief in this creature originated from three sources

First, the Bible speaks of unicorns This, however, is a mistranslation of the Hebrew re'em, which is the aurochs or wild ox The Assyrians showed these in bas-relief in profile so that only one horn showed In the Greek translation of the Bible, re'em therefore became monokeros (one-horn) and in Latin unicornis (one-horn)

Second, there were dile hornlike structure These were the rhinoceroses, rumors of which reached Europe fro contained in the writings of the Greek physician Ctesias about 400 bc)

Finally, there was the narwhal, a species of whale in which a single tooth (not a horn) forht back by sailors and called horns of unicorns, for as such they could be sold for fabulous su The effect of this was to h it was a transplanted narwhal tusk

The phoenix is yptian solar yptians used a calendar in which the year was considered to be exactly 365 days long (instead of 365 1/4) The extra quarter-day was ignored and the individual days crept ahead of the seasons from year to year, therefore, until they had yptian years (or 1460 actual years) In other words, if a particular star were directly overhead at ht on New Year's Day for 1461 th of tiyptians used Sirius as their reference star and in their language this star was called Sothis

Perhaps this 1461-year cycle of the sun versus the Egyptian calendar wasbird which, after 1461 years, died and gave rise to a new bird like itself

If so, the Greeks, who used a Babylonian calendar and not an Egyptian one and who therefore knew nothing of the Sothic cycle, altered the length of time to a rounder number-500 years is often"red-purple," as a hang-over perhaps fro sunlike bird)

There were all sorts of accretions to thepyre in which the bird consumes itself, the details of the birth of the new bird, and so on The place where the death and rebirth takes place also varies; soyptian city at which the sun god orshiped Others place it in Arabia or India (on the basis that the farther east, the more wonderful)

There is only one phoenix at a time (as there is only one sun), and it seemed reasonable to suppose that if the phoenix immolated itself on a palm tree, it would be a palm tree as unique as itself The Arabian desert is barren, so one can ile tree, the one on which the phoenix dies and is reborn

the figure of this harpy

Before the berateful travelers can eat, Ariel appears in horrible shape and the feast is taken away Ariel denounces the malefactors for their treatment of Prospero (The frustration of desire is another punishins to feel remorse at his treatment of Prospero and to fear that the loss of his son is punishment therefore) Prospero is pleased with Ariel's action and says:

Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou

Performed, my Ariel

- Act III, scene iii, lines 83-84

The Harpies were originally spirits personifying the storm winds-rather like the cherubs The Greeks finally personified the talons and horrible screeches So off individuals

Thethem, however, involves Phineus, a soothsayer in eastern Thrace who incurred the anger of the gods He was bunded and condeer, for whenever food was placed on the table, Harpies would descend shrieking, snatching away so the rest The Harpies were driven away at last by Jason and his e I-505)

The fame of the myth fixed this particular picture of the Harpy and uise of one when the feast was snatched away fro and his followers

Ceres, most bounteous lady

But Ferdinand's ordeal is over Prospero is satisfied with hihter To make up for the pain caused him, Prospero puts on a spirit show for the happy couple The classical goddesses are brought down to bless them

Iris co on another:

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas

Of wheat, rye, barley, fetches, oats, and peas;

- Act IV, scene i, lines 60-61

Ceres (the Rooddess Demeter) is the personification of the cultivated and fruitful soil, and all the food it produces (We get our word "cereal" fro will ensure a fruitfulenumerated Ceres' products, Iris says:

- the queen o'th'sky,

Whose wat'ry arch and er am I,

Bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace,

Here on this grass plot, in this very place,

To come and sport; her peacocks fly amain

- Act IV, scene i, lines 70-74

The "queen o'th'sky" would be Juno, of course (the Greek Hera), who is that because she is the wife of Jupiter (Zeus) Juno was considered by the Roe and motherhood as her prime concern; she was the idealized wife It was her place, therefore, to preside over the festivities on this occasion The peacock was considered particularly sacred to her and these birds were supposed to draw her chariot

Iris is the personification of the rainbow Since the rainbow, though clearly in the heavens, seee linking heaven and earth, and one along which a er beco Juno, in particular The "wat'ry arch" is, of course, the rainbohich appears after a rain, when the air is full of water droplets

The rainbow attribute of Iris is indicated by Ceres' first words when she enters:

Hail, er

- Act IV, scene i, line 76

dusky Dis

Ceres has one reservation about attending the festivities She says to Iris:

Tell me, heavenly bow,

If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,

Do now attend the Queen? Since they did plot

The ot,

Her and her blind boy's scandaled company

I have forsworn

- Act IV, scene i, lines 86-91

Dis is one of the Rood of the underworld, Pluto Pluto seized Persephone, the daughter of Demeter (Ceres), and took her to the underworld to be his queen Demeter located her only after a weary search and even then could only arrange to have her returned for part of each year It is only in that part that Demeter allows the earth to bear crops; while Persephone is underground the earth lies blasted and cold (This is an obvious way of e I-5)

Pluto would not have fallen in love with Persephone had he not been wounded by the arrows of blind Eros (Cupid), the son of Aphrodite (Venus), which is why Ceres holds her grudge

towards Paphos

Actually, Venus and her son have no place at the celebration They are the personification of erotic love and Prospero has in until the e rites are fully performed Iris says, therefore, of Venus:

I met her Deity

Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son

Dove-draith her

- Act IV, scene i, lines 92-94

Paphos (see page I-15) was a city where Venus (Aphrodite) was particularly venerated

they may prosperous be

Juno now enters and says to Ceres:

Go with me

To bless this twain, that they may prosperous be

And honored in their issue

- Act IV, scene i, lines 103-5

This "wedding masque," which occupies so much of the play,at which The Te ht particularly appropriate for such a celebration

At any rate, The Tempest seems to have had one of its early productions in the winter of 1612-13 as part of the festive preparations for theJames I, with Frederick V of the Palatinate (son of the Frederick IV as ridiculed by Portia in The Merchant of Venice, see page I-506)

The tereseventeen years old Juno's statement that they be "honored in their issue" came true, as it happened The couple had thirteen children

called Naiades

Juno and Ceres sing, and with that done, a dance must be next For that purpose, Iris makes a new call:

You ny brooks,

With your sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks,

Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land

Answer your summons

- Act IV, scene i, lines 128-31

The nymphs were the spirits of wild nature, pictured as beautiful young wo woman") These came in a number of varieties The nymphs of the mountains were "oreads," those of the trees were "dryads," and those of the rivers and streams (whom Iris has called) are "naiads"

Properly speaking, if the nyht also to have been called, for they were the male counterpart, masculine spirits of the wild However, the nymph-satyr association is an ale I-630), which we memorialize these days by the use of "nymphomania" and "satyriasis" as medical terms, and that would have been unsuitable for the celebration Prospero designed for the young people Instead, harvested

the great globe itself

At the conclusion of the dance, Prospero bethinks hi to kill hiet back to business He ends thecouple look troubled, he says:

These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air;

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solelobe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep

- Act IV, scene i, lines 148-58

This is a surprisingly somber speech for what is, essentially, a happy play, especially since it comes at a particularly happy ti to such lovely fruition

It is al to himself at this point At the time Shakespeare wrote The Tee by our standards, but quite old in his ti up on hi more and more of death As a matter of fact, he had only five e of only fifty-two

These beautiful lines, then, htful salute to his own inevitable death and to the end of all the "insubstantial pageants" he had invented

Itable to know) as an extraordinary prediction of the future life of the young couple whose real-life forthco Elizabeth and Frederick, ere entering so happily into princely edy soon

In 1619 Frederick was elected King of the Protestant nation of Bohernia (see page I-148), which was revolting against Catholic Austria He was still only twenty-three and he could not resist the advance in title fro of the Thirty Years' War, but one year of it was enough for poor Frederick He was defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague on November 8, 1620 (four years after Shakespeare's death), and he spent the rest of his life as a landless refugee, living on a pension granted him by the Protestant Netherlands He died in 1632

His wife, Elizabeth, lived on long enough to see her brother, Charles I, defeated by revolting Englishland till 1661, when her nephew had beco as Charles II She died the year after For Frederick and Elizabeth, a short-lived happiness had indeed dissolved and left not a rack (cloud) behind

And yet Juno's blessing did not go for nought (and here as elsewhere, see pages I-593 and II-192, Shakespeare's intuition led hi of true predictions) Frederick and Elizabeth were "honored in their issue" Not only did they have thirteen children, but one of them, Sophia, was the land All the land since 1714 have been descendants of Elizabeth and Frederick

I'll break my staff

Caliban and the others do not prove to be hard to handle Ariel has already lured theh thorns arid swamps, and when they reach Prospero's cell, spirits in the shape of dogs are set to snarling at them and drive them away

It re and the others, who, after the tantalizing episode of the banquet that came and then vanished, have been kept charmed into motionlessness till Prospero be ready for them

Ariel is sorry for them and expresses his sy any final cruelty against his enemies he abandons it He, a human, cannot be less kind than the inhuman Ariel

Prospero announces that he will be satisfied to inflict no further punishment provided only the criminals are penitent He has accoer iic powers There will be one last item to round out all and then, he says:

I'll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I'll drown my book

- Act V, scene i, lines 54-57

Many critics seem to think that this is Shakespeare's farewell to his art He is saying he rite no ic of his literary genius (This is, in my opinion, too senti, a compulsive writer like Shakespeare couldn't deliberately plan to give up writing while he was capable of holding a pen-on this one point I claim to be an authority For another, he did continue to write in actual fact, engaging in two collaborative efforts with Fletcher: Henry Vlll and The Two Noble Kinsmen)

brave neorld

Point by point, all is brought to a conclusion The King and the others are brought in and are scolded and forgiven; while Gonzalo, at least, is praised and thanked Prospero reveals his identity and takes back his dukedom

What's ht dead) is revealed, playing chess with Miranda-to Alonso's great joy

Miranda, herself, is wide-eyed at all these ined there could be so many and she cries out in naive astonishment:

O, wonder!

How oodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave [splendid] neorld

That has such people in't!

- Act V, scene i, lines 181-84

The glad exclae in the form of a bitter sarcasm by Aldous Huxley, who in 1932 published his book Brave New World, which pictures a future society that has been coy but at the loss of all the human values we hold dear

And now the crew of the ship arrive with the a news that despite all appearance, the vessel is in perfect shape and that not a man has been lost Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo also enter and are forgiven as having been sufficiently punished

All are to go aboard the ship, which Ariel shall speed so that it will rejoin the fleet, and then he, himself, will be free at last

It is a happy ending in which not one person, not one, not even the most: villainous one, Antonio, coh Shakespeare in his last complete play could not leave the boards without everyone entirely happy

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