PROSPERO Ariel, thy charge
Exactly is performed; but there’s more work.
What is the time o’th’ day?
ARIEL Past the mid-season.
PROSPERO At least two glasses. The time ’twixt six and now
Must by us both be spent most preciously.
ARIEL Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,
Let me remember thee what thou has promised,
Which is not yet performed me.
PROSPERO How now? Moody?
What is’t thou canst demand?
ARIEL My liberty.
PROSPERO Before the time be out? No more! (1.2.237-246)
This is a pivotal exchange: the rapid-fire dialogue between Ariel and Prospero, conveying both a huge amount of information essential for the plot, and beginning to establish the relationship between them (apparently that of master-servant, but also one of trust and intimacy) is followed by a darker turn. Ariel has done exactly what they’ve been told to do, but there’s more work. A brief hiatus: what time is it? Shakespeare here is – ostentatiously – signalling his obedience (unique, among all his plays) to the so-called classical unities of time, as well as place. The play’s action will be confined to the island, Ariel’s report has implicitly confirmed; it will also unfold in something approximating real time. (Compare Winter’s Tale, written at the same time, shifting impossibly between Sicilia and Bohemia, and jumping over 16 years in the middle.) It is now, apparently, around two in the afternoon (at least two glasses … past the mid-season, that is, noon) – and everything must be concluded by six. After the first part of the scene’s deep dive into the dark backward and abysm of time, when the passage of time has been about the treachery of a brother, the fall of a duke and the growth of a small child, Miranda, into adulthood, the clock is now ticking, and every minute will count.
Prospero presents this as a shared enterprise – he and Ariel must both spend that time most preciously – but Ariel has a different take: Is there more toil? You want me to do yet more implicitly dangerous and arduous things? And now the nature of their relationship becomes clearer: it is not straightforwardly that between master and servant, but one of bondage. Ariel has been promised that Prospero will – apparently soon – give them their liberty. But Prospero says that he will not, before the time be out. (As in his revelations to Miranda, it seems to be entirely up to Prospero what happens when. Time is his to define and control.) Ariel is, at the least, an indentured servant, bound for a specific period of time, with far fewer rights than an ordinary servant might expect to have. They might also be legitimately described as a slave, for while an enslaved person might ordinarily expect to live and die in bondage, it was not unusual for enslaved people in the classical world to be promised, and given, their liberty after a certain period, or when particular events (above all their master’s death) had taken place. Whatever the analogues, the point here is clear: Ariel has been promised that their servitude is time-limited and that its end is near. Prospero seems minded to alter the terms of their bargain, and he is dismissive and abrupt when Ariel challenges him: moody? You don’t have any right to object (like a sulky teenager), or perhaps even to have feelings at all. No more! Be quiet.
