FERDINAND   This is a most majestic vision, and

Harmonious charmingly. May I be bold

To think these spirits?

PROSPERO                                         Spirits, which by mine art

I have from their confines called to enact

My present fancies.

FERDINAND                                       Let me live here ever!

So rare a wondered father and a wise

Makes this place paradise.

Juno and Ceres whisper, and send Iris on employment.

PROSPERO                                         Sweet now, silence!

Juno and Ceres whisper seriously.

There’s something else to do. Hush and be mute,

Or else our spell is marred. (4.1.118-127)

 

Ferdinand, the ideal audience member: impressed, appreciative, polite, interested: the spectacle is majestic and charmingly harmonious (presumably, although not exclusively, an allusion to the music; he’s also picked up Iris’s contorted syntax). (Ceres and Juno’s song is almost certainly much more extended than it appears on the page; there are likely to be repetitions and instrumental passages. This is potentially the most spectacular moment in the play, and a significant amount of money will have been spent on costuming the goddesses; their frocks need to be shown off for as long as possible, as well as their skills in music.) Ferdinand has a question: are these spirits? And is it OK to ask that? Prospero is entirely candid: yes, they are spirits, controlled by my magic; they’ve come from their confines (and it’s left unclear as to whether they are confined willingly, or by Prospero) at my bidding to perform this device, this show of mine, my present fancies. Let me live here ever! raves Ferdinand. Prospero is a wondered father, a father (and father-in-law; father could be used to mean this) who can perform wonders and, of course, who is the father of a wonder, Miranda. There is a notorious textual crux here – well, sort of – in that much fuss has been made over whether the word is wise or wife. In the Folio, it’s almost certainly a long s (as in the following line), which looks very like an f – but it’s been plausibly suggested that it’s in fact a broken f.

Some critics, most famously Stephen Orgel, have argued for wife on the basis that (among other things) this refers to Miranda, expectable and desirable in her fiancé’s praise of their wedding masque to his future father-in-law. Surely it would need both Prospero and Miranda for Ferdinand to term the island Paradise. Against this: the rhyme with Paradise (it’s not generally in rhyming couplets, but it would make sense here, although the lines are of unequal length). High-powered magnification also suggests that, rather than a vestigial cross-bar of a broken f, there are some tiny ink blots. Either is possible. I tend to wise, I think, because the scene in general makes clear that Ferdinand and Miranda are both utterly besotted with each other and committed to their marriage (and this can be further emphasised in wordless action); to say wife here might have the opposite effect, and sound forced; all this and a wife too. Fortunately – this could go on for ever – there’s more to come in the masque. The goddesses confer, and send Iris off to do something… Shhh, says Prospero, probably to Miranda (but not impossibly to Ferdinand); Sweet now, silence. Hush and be mute, you need to be quiet, or else you’ll break the spell. A good cue to the off-stage audience too: more is coming, pay attention, you’ll have to wait just a little longer. And what is going to happen next?