GONZALO       But the rarity of it is, which is indeed almost beyond credit—

SEBASTIAN    As many vouched rarities are.

GONZALO       That our garments being, as they were, drenched in the sea, hold notwithstanding their freshness and gloss, being rather new-dyed than stained with salt water.

ANTONIO       If but one of his pockets could speak, would it not say he lies?

SEBASTIAN    Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report.

GONZALO       Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Africa, at the marriage of the King’s fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis.

SEBASTIAN    ’Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in our return. (2.1.60-69)

And the most amazing, almost unbelievable thing, says Gonzalo (most things claimed as such are too good to be true, comments Sebastian) is that our clothes aren’t damaged at all. We were all soaked, drenched in the sea, but everything’s fine – in fact better than fine – our clothes look brand new. (Salt water would discolour fabric, and leave deposits of salt once it dried; it would ruin velvet in particular.) Ariel in fact announced this in the previous scene, when they said of the travellers that not a hair perished; on their sustaining garments not a blemish, but fresher than before. And this is also another theatrical in-joke. While the mariners could enter wet in 1.1, at the height of the storm, it would be unthinkable for the courtiers’ costumes to be risked. The mariners would have been wearing – most likely – canvas breeches and shirts, a quick splash of water enough for the brief effect. But the courtiers would be wearing rich velvets and satins and silks, some of the best that the not-inconsiderable wardrobe stocks and resources of the King’s Men could afford. (A company’s wardrobe was pretty much its most valuable asset, because – unlike a stock of playbooks, or even the theatre building – it could be liquidated, in whole or in part, pawned, or sold on the very active London market in second-hand clothes. It was a central part of the spectacle of theatre. Huge sums were spent on costumes.) Such garments couldn’t be splashed with water, or even look as if they had been. (That they retain their freshness and gloss suggests that even their starched ruffs or collars and cuffs are still pristine – impossible if they had been even slightly dampened. Starch collapses with moisture.) So this is magic, uncanny magic, as well as being another knowing nod at how theatre works. The reference to garments allows a not very good joke about pockets, which might be the suggestion that the clothes are grubbier on the inside than they might appear to be on the outside, or it could look back to credit in the financial sense, perhaps: if the pocket is empty then it cannot be credited, it has no credit, and as it is empty, it can pocket up, conceal the truth. But Gonzalo has more to say about this miracle: that their clothes are as fresh as they were when they put them on, presumably new, in Africa, at the wedding of the King’s daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis. So this is where they’ve come from, and what they were doing there – and this is the first mention of Claribel, another of the play’s invoked but unseen women. (The question of the marriage of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James, was becoming a live one at the time of The Tempest’s composition and first performances in 1610-11; her marriage contract to Frederick the Elector Palatine was signed in May 1612 and the marriage took place in February 1613.) Sebastian tries to have the sarcastic last word – yes, it was a sweet marriage, a lovely ceremony, everyone looked very happy – and we prosper well in our return – and hasn’t our trip home gone smoothly?! Prosper, of course, is ironic, because all of this, the storm, the wreck, and the undamaged clothes, is Prospero’s doing.