MIRANDA Do you love me?
FERDINAND O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,
And crown what I profess with kind event
If I speak true; if hollowly, invert
What best is boded me to mischief! I,
Beyond all limit of what else i’th’ world,
Do love, prize, honour you.
MIRANDA I am a fool
To weep at what I am glad of.
PROSPERO [aside] Fair encounter
Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace
On that which breeds between ’em. (3.1.67-76)
Miranda can deliver her line – wonderingly? joyfully, a moment of dawning realisation? And also questioningly, with the emphasis, a little uncertainly, on love, understood in these last few moments as something qualitatively different from the love she has known for and from her father. But mostly, she is cutting to the chase, being brilliantly direct and to the point: so, to summarise: Do you love me? And Ferdinand, perhaps charmingly exasperated, but still circumlocutory, over the top, exuberant: yes, yes, yes! (in effect) but just to reinforce: what I am saying, and about to say, must be witnessed by heaven and earth; it is a solemn vow. May it be greeted kindly, rewarded, crowned, with a happy outcome, so long as I’m telling the truth (and I am!) – if I speak hollowly, make promises or attestations that are false or flimsy or empty, then turn all that potential happy outcome, and any other good fortune that I might be due, or promised – turn it upside down, invert it, make everything good, bad. I love you more than anything. I value you more than anything. And I honour you. (There are echoes here, appropriately, of marriage vows – which is why Ferdinand calls for them to be witnessed.) On the half line – again – Miranda, overcome with joy, and smiling through her tears: I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of. She and Ferdinand clearly understand each other, ‘get’ each other, but she retains her distinctive speech patterns: straightforward syntax and, in her lines in this exchange in particular, monosyllables, wonderfully simple and guileless. Prospero might dab away a tear too: he has been listening intently, picking up Ferdinand’s invocation of the heavens and imagining Miranda’s happy tears being matched with grace rained from above. Prospero is vindicated, and seems to see this as a perfect match, a fair encounter of two most rare affections; these two lovers understand each other, have been made for each other. That which breeds between them is their growing love, now openly declared; it is also, given Prospero’s ambitions for the future, their potential child, who will rule both Naples and Milan. Everything is going according to plan for Prospero – and, fortunately, Ferdinand and Miranda appear to be genuinely, sweetly thrilled too.
