Enter ARIEL.

ARIEL             Thy thoughts I cleave to. What’s thy pleasure?

PROSPERO     Spirit, we must prepare to meet with Caliban.

ARIEL             Ay, my commander. When I presented Ceres,

I thought to have told thee of it, but I feared

Lest I might anger thee.

PROSPERO     Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets?

ARIEL             I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking,

So full of valour that they smote the air

For breathing in their faces, beat the ground

For kissing of their feet, yet always bending

Towards their project. (4.1.165-175)

Ariel is there, swift as thought; they have come at Prospero’s call and, even more, as soon as he has merely thought to call them. Cleave is about obedience, adherence, and also closeness; it’s a word used in the Bible to describe the relationship between marriage partners, an intimate word. But this is an unequal partnership: what’s thy pleasure? asks Ariel; what do you want me to do? No passive slave, though: yes, I know that the Caliban thing has become pressing, and I did try to tell you—my commander, the one who makes the decisions, gives the orders, I’m just the agent—but I didn’t, I didn’t want to make you cross. (Passive aggressive, Ariel? Oh yes.) But, moving on (this is how they relate to one another, perhaps, Ariel and Prospero, a bit needly, knowing each other inside out): where are these varlets? We make ourselves remember: ah yes, Caliban and—what are their names? The silly drunken ones? Trinculo and … Stephano. Them. Ariel’s description is wonderful and reminds us exactly of what they are like: red-hot with drinking, flushed and over-heated, their blood warmed, their choler up, full of bluster and bravado. (Yes. Yes, they were, even in their last appearance, a long two scenes ago.) Flailing around, smiting the air when it annoyed then by, well, being air, there; boxing at shadows, we might say; beating the ground for … kissing of their feet, for just being there—staggering and lurching, perhaps, or even stamping, jumping up and down irrationally, as one might flatten a clod. The sort of drunk who thinks that everyone is looking at them… (A reminder that, not being gentlemen, they don’t have weapons, thank goodness; they’re not waving swords around. ) Yet always bending towards their project: even, sodden drunk as they are, still intent on their plan, their conspiracy to murder. What Ariel describes here, interestingly, doesn’t sound like Caliban. It’s Trinculo and Stephano who are making all the noise, blundering around. Perhaps it’s Caliban who’s keeping them going, however erratically, in the right, deadly direction.