PROSPERO [aside] Poor worm, thou art infected!
This visitation shows it.
MIRANDA You look wearily.
FERDINAND No, noble mistress, ’tis fresh morning with me
When you are by at night. I do beseech you –
Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers –
What is your name?
MIRANDA Miranda. – O my father,
I have broke your hest to say so!
FERDINAND Admired Miranda!
Indeed the top of admiration, worth
What’s dearest to the world! (3.1.31-39)
Paternal smugness from Prospero, but also a little adult pity: poor worm, thou art infected! You’ve caught the bug, fallen in love with him; the fact that you’ve come to see him – presumably against explicit instructions not to – is proof of that. Prospero doesn’t seem to be invisible, or at least isn’t identified as such, but Miranda and Ferdinand have eyes only for each other, and Miranda is concerned solely for Ferdinand’s well-being: You look wearily; you seem exhausted. (He may well be. He was only ship-wrecked that same day and had a very long and tiring swim.) But he rallies: no no no, even if it were night (and therefore an appropriate time to be weary) your presence would make it morning, and I would be full of energy, fresh as a daisy. You’re keeping me going. (Apparently true, as well as gallant.) And now a big question, to which he has been building for some time, perhaps: what is your name? only – or at least chiefly – so that I may pray for you by name. (I am pious, and circumspect, and wish only good for you; I’m not being forward, really. This is why he’s been using careful, polite forms of impersonal address: dear mistress, precious creature, noble mistress.) She has no such decorous scruples: Miranda. (I’d love her to put out her hand here, then take it back on realising that his are full of firewood…) But a bigger realisation: oh, I promised my father I wouldn’t tell you my name! He told me not to. Ferdinand knows his Latin! Admired Miranda, the most admirable thing, the top of admiration– the most precious thing in all the world, in all my world…
