Apologies to regular readers: the combination of ill-health and the UCU industrial action means that I haven’t been posting. There may be the odd post over the next few weeks, but it’s more likely that #SlowShakespeare #Tempest #StormTossed will return, at full strength, in 2020…

Enter FERDINAND, and ARIEL, invisible, playing and singing.   ARIEL [Sings.]                        Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands; Curtsied when you have, and kissed The wild waves whist; Foot it featly here and there, And sweet sprites bear The burden. (burden dispersedly) SPIRITS                      Hark, hark! Bow-wow, The watch dogs bark, bow-wow. ARIEL                         Hark hark, […]

CALIBAN        You taught me language, and my profit on’t Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language. PROSPERO                                                     Hag-seed, hence: Fetch us in fuel, and be quick – thou’rt best – To answer other business. Shrug’st thou, malice? If thou neglect’st, or dost unwillingly What I command, […]

MIRANDA                              Abhorred slave, Which any print of goodness wilt not take, Being capable of all ill; I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes With […]

PROSPERO                             Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness; I have used thee (Filth as thou art) with humane care and lodged thee In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate The honour of my child. CALIBAN        O ho, O ho! Would’t had been done; Thou didst prevent me, I had […]

CALIBAN        This island’s mine by Sycorax, my mother, Which thou tak’st from me. When thou cam’st first Thou strok’st me and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in’t, and teach me how To name the bigger light and how the less That burn by day and night. And then I loved […]

Enter CALIBAN. CALIBAN        As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen Drop on you both. A southwest blow on ye And blister you all o’er. PROSPERO     For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps, Side-stitches, that shall pen thy breath up; urchins Shall forth at vast of night that […]

PROSPERO                             What ho, slave! Caliban, Thou earth, thou: speak! CALIBAN        [within]                       There’s wood enough within. PROSPERO     Come forth I say, there’s other business for thee. Come, thou tortoise, when? Enter ARIEL, like a water nymph.                         Fine apparition, my quaint Ariel, Hark in thine ear. ARIEL                                     My lord, it shall be done.                  Exit. PROSPERO     Thou poisonous […]

PROSPERO     [to Miranda] Awake, dear heart, awake; thou has slept well. Awake. MIRANDA                  The strangeness of your story put Heaviness in me. PROSPERO                             Shake it off. Come on, We’ll visit Caliban, my slave, who never Yields us kind answer. MIRANDA                                          ’Tis a villain, sir, I do not love to look on. PROSPERO                                         But as ’tis, […]

PROSPERO     If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak And peg thee in his knotty entails till Thou hast howled away twelve winters. ARIEL                                                                         Pardon, master, I will be correspondent to command And do my spriting gently. PROSPERO     Do so, and after two days I will discharge thee. ARIEL                                                 That’s my noble master. What […]