STEPHANO    Be you quiet, monster. Mistress Line, is not this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line! Now jerkin you are like to lose your hair and prove a bald jerkin.

TRINCULO      Do, do. We steal by line and level, an’t like your grace.

STEPHANO    I thank thee for that jest; here’s a garment for’t. Wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country. ‘Steal by line and level’ is an excellent pass of pate. There’s another garment for’t.

TRINCULO      Monster, come put some lime upon your fingers and away with the rest.

CALIBAN        I will have none on’t. We shall lose our time,

And all be turned to barnacles, or to apes,

With foreheads villainous low.

STEPHANO    Monster, lay to your fingers. Help to bear this away where my hogshead of wine is, or I’ll turn you out of my kingdom! Go to; carry this.

TRINCULO      And this.

STEPHANO    Ay, and this. (4.1.236-254)

Well, this is an easy cut… Long, inconclusive and vaguely unsatisfactory commentary notes abound, attempting to explain this laboured, obscure punning on line. How can this be staged? The easiest way, I think, is for a line, a rope, with the garments already pegged to it, to be hung between pillars (at the Globe) or across the back of the stage, attached to the rear wall (at the Blackfriars); this could be done very quickly. This could suggest that the jerkin is hanging down from the line (Mistress Line, as Stephano addresses it) – although garments such as these wouldn’t ever be laundered as shirts or sheets would, they might be hung outside to be brushed or aired. There are various explanations possible of the jerkin, the jacket (perhaps sleeveless; a gilet!) proving a bald jerkin. It perhaps has fur trim and the line is now being imagined as the equator: the shaving of the head was common for the treatment of fevers, and sailors crossing the equator for the first time (and hence in the tropics) might have had their heads shaved to mark this. If the jerkin is leather then there might be something leathery going on here too, reflecting the near homophone line/lime (which comes back later in the exchange): lime is used in the tanning or tawing process, to enable hair to be scraped from hides. And there could, given the bald allusion – which often connotes the hair-loss associated with syphilis – be an obscene joke, now incomprehensible, but perhaps involving some physical comedy with the clothesline, Mistress Line. Trinculo, as ever, eggs Stephano on, sycophantically: we steal by line and level, a proverbial expression meaning, we’re good at this, we’re skilled thieves (like craftsmen, using a plumb line and a carpenter’s level). (Stealing washing hung out to dry was certainly common, and it can be assumed that one of the actors here plays Autolycus in Winter’s Tale, who proclaims that ‘The white sheet bleaching on the hedge … doth set my pugging [thieving] tooth on edge’ and describes himself as a ‘snapper up of unconsidered trifles’, 4.3.)

This little episode also allows Stephano to do two other things associated with being a king or noble lord. One is to have a fool or jester: Trinculo is described as such in the dramatis personae, and Stephano is now praising and rewarding him for his wit, as if he were the lord and Trinculo the servant. Ithank thee for that jest; here’s a garment for’t. Wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country. And household servants, including fools, were paid in part in clothes, livery, so the giving of clothes in particular is the prerogative of an employer, especially a royal one. I would love for one of the garments being given to Trinculo to be a fool’s coat like the ones given to Archibald Armstrong, known as Archy, James I’s fool: for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in early 1613 he was given red velvet and gold lace, and he had been granted a court pension in 1611, with correspondence referring to ‘Archy’s coat’ surviving from the same time.

That the garments are attached to a line, in a line (or lime) grove, suggests a collocation with birds and trees, hence Trinculo suggesting to Caliban that he put some lime upon his fingers, as if he were catching birds, the garments. (To have fingers made of lime-twigs was already current proverbially, meaning to be light-fingered, sticky-fingered, to be a thief.) But Caliban will have none of it: we shall lose our time, our chance and be turned to barnacles, or to apes, transformed (by Prospero) into lowly creatures. Stephano isn’t listening, though: give us a hand, monster; we need to carry all this stuff to where my hogshead of wine is. And Caliban is, presumably, loaded with whatever the clowns are not already wearing, with this, and this, and this.

I’d still cut most of it, though…