The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 469
How now, what news?
BIONDELLO Sir, my mistress sends you word
That she is busy and she cannot come.
PETRUCHIO How? She’s busy, and she cannot come?
Is that an answer?
GREMIO Ay, and a kind one too.
Pray God, sir, your wife send you not a worse.
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PETRUCHIO I hope better.
HORTENSIO Sirrah Biondello, go and entreat my wife
To come to me forthwith. Exit Biondello.
PETRUCHIO O ho, entreat her!
Nay, then she must needs come.
HORTENSIO I am afraid, sir,
Do what you can, yours will not be entreated.
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Enter BIONDELLO.
Now, where’s my wife?
BIONDELLO
She says you have some goodly jest in hand.
She will not come. She bids you come to her.
PETRUCHIO
Worse and worse, she will not come! O vile,
Intolerable, not to be endur’d!
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Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress,
Say I command her come to me. Exit Grumio.
HORTENSIO I know her answer.
PETRUCHIO What?
HORTENSIO She will not.
PETRUCHIO The fouler fortune mine, and there an end.
Enter KATHERINA.
BAPTISTA
Now, by my holidame, here comes Katherina.
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KATHERINA
What is your will, sir, that you send for me?
PETRUCHIO Where is your sister, and Hortensio’s wife?
KATHERINA They sit conferring by the parlour fire.
PETRUCHIO
Go fetch them hither. If they deny to come,
Swinge me them soundly forth unto their husbands.
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Away, I say, and bring them hither straight.
Exit Katherina.
LUCENTIO Here is a wonder, if you talk of a wonder.
HORTENSIO And so it is. I wonder what it bodes.
PETRUCHIO
Marry, peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life,
An awful rule, and right supremacy,
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And, to be short, what not that’s sweet and happy.
BAPTISTA Now fair befall thee, good Petruchio!
The wager thou hast won, and I will add
Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns,
Another dowry to another daughter,
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For she is chang’d, as she had never been.
PETRUCHIO Nay, I will win my wager better yet,
And show more sign of her obedience,
Her new-built virtue and obedience.
Enter KATHERINA, BIANCA and Widow.
See where she comes, and brings your froward wives
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As prisoners to her womanly persuasion.
Katherine, that cap of yours becomes you not.
Off with that bauble, throw it under foot. [She obeys.]
WIDOW Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh
Till I be brought to such a silly pass.
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BIANCA Fie, what a foolish duty call you this?
LUCENTIO I would your duty were as foolish too.
The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca,
Hath cost me a hundred crowns since supper-time.
BIANCA The more fool you for laying on my duty.
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PETRUCHIO
Katherine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women
What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.
WIDOW
Come, come, you’re mocking. We will have no telling.
PETRUCHIO Come on, I say, and first begin with her.
WIDOW She shall not.
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PETRUCHIO I say she shall. And first begin with her.
KATHERINA
Fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
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Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
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Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance; commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
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To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
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Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband.
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel,
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And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am asham’d that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
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Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms,
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My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown.
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
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That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband’s foot.
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.
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PETRUCHIO
Why, there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate.
LUCENTIO
Well, go thy ways, old lad, for thou shalt ha’t.
VINCENTIO
’Tis a good hearing, when children are toward.
LUCENTIO
But a harsh hearing, when women are froward.
PETRUCHIO Come, Kate, we’ll to bed.
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We three are married, but you two are sped.
[to Lucentio] ’Twas I won the wager, though you hit the white,
And being a winner, God give you good night!
Exeunt Petruchio and Katherina.
HORTENSIO
Now go thy ways, thou hast tam’d a curst shrew.
LUCENTIO
’Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tam’d so.
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Exeunt.
The Tempest
The Tempest was printed as the first comedy, and consequently the first play, in the Folio of 1623. It may have been granted such prominence as the last non-collaborative play Shakespeare wrote, but it must in any event have been highly regarded by the publishers of the Folio, and by his former colleagues John Hemmings and Henry Condell, who vouched for the authority and completeness of the volume, to appear first in it. Its full, descriptive stage directions may have been amplified by the scribe Ralph Crane, who transcribed the manuscript copy used by the printer. Its
date of composition is fixed as 1610–11 by a performance at Court on 1 November 1611 and by its use of William Strachey’s account (dated from Virginia on 15 July 1610 and known to have reached London no earlier than September) of the shipwreck of Sir William Somers on Bermuda in the summer of 1609. The play may have been designed for the Blackfriars playhouse, but no record of performance there or at the Globe has survived.
Like other plays from Hamlet onwards, The Tempest reflects Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Essays of Montaigne, in John Florio’s English version (1602). The essay ‘Of the Cannibals’ underlies Gonzalo’s vision of an ideal commonwealth, raises questions about the distinction between civilization and barbarism and probably suggested Caliban’s name. Virgil’s Aeneid is a further influence, while Prospero’s renunciation of magic, 5.1.33–57, is closely modelled on Medea’s invocation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 7.179–219.
The Tempest, in which Shakespeare observed the unities of place and time for the first time since The Comedy of Errors, is a work of synthesis and retrospection. The controlling role of Prospero may recall the Duke in Measure for Measure, who also prefers forgiveness to vindictive justice at the end. His magic harks back to Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, just as Ariel’s role recalls that of Puck. Its presentation of the pursuit of political power is equally reminiscent of the English histories and political tragedies. Stephano is the last, and most sinister, of Shakespeare’s comic drunkards.
The Tempest was among the first of Shakespeare’s plays to be adapted for the changed theatrical conditions of the Restoration. The version of it by Dryden and Davenant (1667) supplied it with a busier action, which introduced sisters for Miranda and Caliban, a female counterpart for Ariel, and Hippolyto, a man who has never seen a woman (a travesty role for an actress). The dreamlike quality of its action and the mythic symmetries of its cast have led to a wide and increasingly various array of interpretations of The Tempest. Nineteenth-century interest found its focus in Prospero, who was increasingly identified with Shakespeare; in the late twentieth century, attention shifted towards Caliban and colonialism, or towards Miranda and the oppressions of patriarchy. The play has inspired many later literary and musical compositions, among them Hector Berlioz’s symphonic fantasy Lélio (1832), Robert Browning’s ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ (1864), Jean Sibelius’s incidental music for the play, W. H. Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror (1944) and Sir Michael Tippett’s opera The Knot Garden (1969).
The 1999 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.
LIST OF ROLES
ALONSO
King of Naples
SEBASTIAN
his brother
PROSPERO
the right Duke of Milan
ANTONIO
his brother, the usurping Duke of Milan
FERDINAND
son to the King of Naples
GONZALO
an honest old councillor
ADRIAN and FRANCISCO
lords
CALIBAN
a savage and deformed slave
TRINCULO
a jester
STEPHANO
a drunken butler
MASTER
of a ship
BOATSWAIN
MARINERS
MIRANDA
daughter to Prospero
ARIEL
an airy spirit
The Tempest
1.1 A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard; enter a Shipmaster and a Boatswain.
MASTER Boatswain!
BOATSWAIN Here master. What cheer?
MASTER Good, speak to th’ mariners. Fall to’t yarely
or we run ourselves aground. Bestir, bestir! Exit.
Enter Mariners.
BOATSWAIN Heigh, my hearts; cheerly, cheerly, my
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hearts! Yare! Yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the
master’s whistle! [to the storm] Blow till thou burst thy
wind, if room enough.
Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND, GONZALO and others.
ALONSO Good boatswain, have care. Where’s the
master? Play the men!
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BOATSWAIN I pray now, keep below!
ANTONIO Where is the master, boatswain?
BOATSWAIN Do you not hear him? You mar our labour.
Keep your cabins! You do assist the storm.
GONZALO Nay, good, be patient.
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BOATSWAIN When the sea is! Hence. What cares these
roarers for the name of king? To cabin! Silence!
Trouble us not.
GONZALO Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.
BOATSWAIN None that I more love than myself. You are
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a councillor; if you can command these elements to
silence and work the peace of the present, we will not
hand a rope more. Use your authority! If you cannot,
give thanks you have lived so long and make yourself
ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it
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so hap. – Cheerly, good hearts. – Out of our way, I say! Exit.
GONZALO I have great comfort from this fellow.
Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him – his
complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good fate, to
his hanging; make the rope of his destiny our cable, for
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our own doth little advantage. If he be not born to be
hanged, our case is miserable. Exit.
Enter Boatswain.