MIRANDA                                          O, I have suffered

With those that I saw suffer – a brave vessel

(Who had no doubt some noble creature in her)

Dashed all to pieces. O, the cry did knock

Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.

Had I been any god of power, I would

Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere

It should the good ship so have swallowed and

The fraughting souls within her. (1.2.5-13)

I have suffered with those that I saw suffer: Miranda (of whom it will soon be revealed that she has never seen a human being other than her father) is instinctively empathetic. Even more, she seems to have some sense how spectacle, theatre, tragedy might work, through a process of emotional mirroring and identification. The cry did knock against my very heart – that cry refers back, surely, to the howls of the sailors, the shouts of, we split, we split, but also those rushed, poignant, desperate farewells to family and friends. But until she knows if the storm is Prospero’s work, made, conjured by his art, Miranda doesn’t quite know how to frame her response: if she were any god of power – if she were as powerful, as godlike, as Prospero appears to be – she would not have done such a thing and, moreover, she would have calmed the seas, emptied them, dried them up, even, before acting in such a destructive way. It’s a striking, strongly principled response, but it’s also necessarily speculative: if you did this; if I were any god of power, if I had the power that you have. Miranda, it seems, is accustomed to a world and a life where things may not be as they first appear; she loves her father, but doesn’t want to believe that he did this, or allowed it to happen, so many souls to perish. And, parenthetically buried in the middle: it was a brave vessel, a magnificent ship, which looked as if it surely had some noble creature in her. Yes, a king, and a duke, but also a prince: Ferdinand. Who was present, and named, but didn’t speak a word in the previous scene…