The Tempest

William Hogarth (1697-1794), Prospero, Caliban, and Miranda from The Tempest, 1735.
Nostell Priory, National Trust (Oswald Collection).

My library was dukedom large enough.

(Prospero,  Act 1 Scene 2)

O, I have suffered

With those that I saw suffer.

(Miranda, Act 1 Scene 2)

“Full fathom five 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: Ding-dong

Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.”

(Ariel, Act 1, Scene 2)

 

“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open, and show riches

Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.”

“Our revels now are ended. 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-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe 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.”

(Prospero, Act 4 Scene 1)

O, wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't.

(Miranda, Act 5 Scene 1)

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:

In a cowslip's bell I lie:

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

(Ariel, Act 5 Scene 1)