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Hazlitt, William, 1778-1830

"Characters of Shakespeare's Plays"

]
Hark, hark! bowgh-wowgh: the watch-dogs bark,
Bowgh-wowgh.
Ariel. Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry cock-a-doodle-doo.
Ferdinand. Where should this music be? in air or earth?
It sounds no more: and sure it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank
Weeping against the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air; thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather:--but 'tis gone.--
No, it begins again.
Ariel's Song
Full fathom Eve thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change,
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell--
Hark! I now I hear them, ding-dong bell.
[Burden ding-dong.]
Ferdinand. The ditty does remember my drown'd father.
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owns: I hear it now above me.
The courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda is one of the chief
beauties of this play. It is the very purity of love. The pretended
interference of Prospero with it heightens its interest, and is in
character with the magician, whose sense of preternatural power
makes him arbitrary, tetchy, and impatient of opposition.


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