Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO and TRINCULO.

STEPHANO    Tell not me. When the butt is out, we will drink water; not a drop before. Therefore bear up and board ’em. Servant monster, drink to me.

TRINCULO      Servant monster? The folly of this island! They say there’s but five upon this isle; we are three of them. If th’other two be brained like us, the state totters.

STEPHANO    Drink, servant monster, when I bid thee. Thy eyes are almost set in thy head.

TRINCULO      Where should they be set else? He were a brave monster, indeed, if they were set in his tail.

STEPHANO    My man-monster hath drowned his tongue in sack. For my part, the sea cannot drown me. I swam, ere I could recover the shore, five and thirty leagues off and on. By this light, thou shalt be my lieutenant, monster, or my standard.

TRINCULO      Your lieutenant, if you list; he’s no standard.

STEPHANO    We’ll not run, Monsieur Monster.

TRINCULO      Nor go, neither; but you’ll lie like dogs and yet say nothing, neither. (3.2.1-19)

Ah, back to the drunkards, now considerably drunker than before. Stephano is expansive: no, tell not me (to slow down and make the supplies last longer): when the butt is out, when we’ve drained the barrel – that’s when we’ll drink water, not a drop before. Pull yourself together, stand up straight, and board ’em – get that down you, have another drink. Caliban is now servant monster, and he too must drink, drink to Stephano, his master. Servant monster? Trinculo is scornful, perhaps because Caliban is already too far gone to be any practical use as a servant. The folly of this island – what a stupid place this is! They say – they presumably being Caliban, the only inhabitant of the island that Trinculo and Stephano have met – there’s but five upon this isle. Stephano, Caliban, and Trinculo himself – that’s three. And Prospero and Miranda make five. (Caliban apparently doesn’t count Ariel.) And in vino veritas, Trinculo speaks the truth: if the other two islanders be brained like us, are as incapable as we currently are, then there’s no hope for any kind of order or government; the state totters. Stephano doesn’t care; he just wants to get Caliban drunker and drunker, although the latter is apparently already pretty far gone, his eyes almost set in his head, an idiom used elsewhere for extreme drunkenness. It could be set in the sense of, is almost comatose, asleep, set like the sun (possibly the case for Dick Surgeon, not worth summoning in Twelfth Night, as his eyes were set at eight i’th’ morning). Or it could mean set as in staring fixedly and yet without focus. Whatever, Trinculo takes it in the sense of located: where else should his eyes be set, other than in his head? He’d be an even stranger monster if he had eyes in his tail. (Caliban most probably does not have an actual tail.) Caliban is, they think, already incapable of speech; the man-monster (man here meaning servant, more than human?) hath drowned his tongue in sack. But – Stephano free-associates – I didn’t drown! I am invincible! I swam – off and on – five and thirty leagues, to the shore. (This is around 100 miles. And Stephano has already said that he floated ashore on the wine barrel.) More bragging grandiosity: Caliban shall be Stephano’s lieutenant, or his standard, his ensign (like Iago), his flag-bearer. Trinculo suggests that the former would be more appropriate, as Caliban can barely stand. But Stephano is undaunted in his military imaginings: we’ll not run, Monsieur Monster, that is from battle; you can barely go, walk, as it is, retorts Trinculo. All you’re rapidly becoming capable of is lying there like dogs (and lying, telling lies) and making no sense at all.