SEBASTIAN What stuff is this? How say you?
’Tis true my brother’s daughter’s Queen of Tunis,
So is she heir of Naples, ’twixt which regions
There is some space.
ANTONIO A space whose every cubit
Seems to cry out, ‘How shall that Claribel
Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis,
And let Sebastian wake’. Say this were death
That now hath seized them; why, they were no worse
Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples
As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate
As amply and unnecessarily
As this Gonzalo. I myself could make
A chough of as deep chat. O that you bore
The mind that I do! What a sleep were this
For your advancement! Do you understand me?
SEBASTIAN Methinks I do. (2.1.255-270)
What are you on about? says Sebastian. Is he really unable to catch Antonio’s drift, or is he being calculatedly obtuse, waiting for Antonio to spell it out so that he can claim that he’d never thought of this possibility at all until he was led astray by Antonio? And so he repeats it back to Antonio: yes, my brother’s daughter’s Queen of Tunis – I think that this is the first occasion on which it’s made explicit that Sebastian is the brother of Alonso the king, and hence Claribel’s uncle – and Ferdinand’s, too. (So the same relationship to Alonso and Claribel as Antonio has to Prospero and Miranda. But although Ferdinand stated that the Duke of Milan, Prospero’s brother, was on the ship, it’s not been made explicit that this, Sebastian’s side-kick, is Antonio; he has not yet been addressed by name.) Sebastian indirectly sneers at Antonio’s elaborate conceit exaggerating the distance between Tunis and Naples, by conceding that there is some space between them, although certainly not the vast and dangerous distance so colourfully described by Antonio. But it’s enough encouragement for Antonio to press on, and to become far more explicit. He’s not really arguing from a sense of the pragmatics of government and diplomacy, although he does imagine, mockingly, the question being asked: how can Claribel return to Naples? How can Claribel govern Naples from Tunis? No – let her keep in Tunis, unseen, unregarded, and let Sebastian wake. And then a pivot to the much more dangerous, more immediate suggestion: imagine that all these sleeping men here were not asleep, but dead. That’d be fine; they were no worse than now they are. He’s partly making cynical use of the familiar conceit that sleep is an image of death, and that therefore death is not to be feared; he’s also suggesting that their situation, wrecked on this island, is so desperate that they might as well be dead. Neither of these is a particularly good argument, but it allows him to move – finally! – to his point. There be that can rule Naples as well as he that sleeps. There’s someone else – someone else right here, is understood – that could be king of Naples as well as this slumbering Alonso. And lords that can go on and on every bit as pointlessly as Gonzalo – a moment of cynical self-awareness? or just getting another dig in at Gonzalo? Probably the latter: I could teach a chough, a jackdaw to chatter with as much profundity. O that you bore the mind that I do! Do you get what I’m saying? Do you feel the same way, have the same intention? What a sleep were this for your advancement! This is your opportunity, this sleep, to advance yourself – by killing your brother and his counsellors. By converting their sleep into death – so easy, such a small difference. Do you understand me? Methinks I do. (He’s understood from the beginning, I reckon, although it would still be an option to play him as catastrophically stupid, a Cloten. He’s cannier than Antonio, though; he doesn’t want to be the first to put such treasonous, fratricidal, usurping desire into words. And it’s only just starting to emerge into words.)
