GONZALO       I’th’ name of something holy, sir, why stand you

In this strange stare?

ALONSO                                             O, it is monstrous, monstrous!

Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;

The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder—

That deep and dreadful organpipe—pronounced

The name of Prosper. It did bass my trespass.

Therefore my son i’th’ ooze is bedded, and

I’ll seek him deeper than e’er plummet sounded,

And with him there lie mudded.                 Exit.

SEBASTIAN    But one fiend at a time,

I’ll fight their legions o’er.

ANTONIO                                           I’ll be thy second.      Exeunt [Sebastian and Antonio].

GONZALO       All three of them are desperate: their great guilt,

Like poison given to work a great time after,

Now ’gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you

That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly,

And hinder them from what this ecstasy

May now provoke them to.

ADRIAN                                              Follow, I pray you.     Exeunt omnes. (3.3.94-110)

Alonso at least is frozen, rooted to the spot, wide-eyed with fear and remorse: why stand you in this strange stare? asks Gonzalo, redundantly. It is monstrous, monstrous! It’s tempting sometimes to think of The Tempest as the wonder play, all wide-eyed Miranda – but it’s also the monstrous monster play – the words come back again and again. The harpy has been monstrous, a proper monster, but so has been what they had to say – and also the version of himself that Alonso now must confront, his past misdeeds, his enduring guilt. (I’m reminded here of Gertrude confronted by Hamlet, her ‘very eyes turned into my soul, and there I see such black and grievèd spots as will leave there their tinct’, 3.4.) And then a striking evocation both of the spectacle that’s just ended, and the magnitude of Alonso’s guilt, as he experiences Ariel’s accusation and admonition as a kind of pathetic fallacy. It was as if the waves, the billows spoke of my crime. The wind sang of my sin. And the thunder, like a deep, booming organ, fearsomely loud, said Prosper. Bass here is a brilliantly odd usage, suggesting the depth of the sound, as if it were coming from under the earth, thunder shaking the whole world: it did bass my trespass, boom out my transgression. I know now that my son is drowned, bedded in the ooze – a tender, yet unsettling formulation, as if Ferdinand is simply asleep, snugly, in the mud on the sea-bed. (Sea-bed. Of course.) And I’m going to go and join him, at the bottom of the sea, deeper than e’er plummet sounded. A plummet is a lead weight, used to measure depth: to modern ears, sounded suggests the sonic and plummet – now detached from its origin – suggests a catastrophic, high-speed fall. There’s a cluster of impressions here, therefore, of the overwhelming noise of the harpy, waves, wind, thunder, hurtling downwards to rest, in silence. Bedded, plummet, mudded: the double consonants shudder to a halt in a silty grave (dust to dust, in water, on the half-line), as Alonso gives up all hope, and exits, apparently, to drown himself.

Sebastian, of course, lashes out, with hubris: I’ll fight these devils. And Antonio, the same (but just a little bit behind). Gonzalo rightly judges that all three are desperate, as if their great guilt (which has been, at least partly, common knowledge, and certainly well known to him) has been like a slow-acting poison, now activated, biting the spirits, making them lose the will to live, sending them mad. And then again a cut-able bit, at the end of the scene, depending on whether there are others (i.e. the almost entirely silent Francisco and Adrian) present: Gonzalo saying he’s too old to rush after these desperate men, but will others that are of suppler joints do so, and prevent them from doing whatever this ecstasy, this madness, might lead them to attempt.

And that’s the end of the scene, and of Act 3.