PROSPERO                             But this rough magic

I here abjure; and when I have required

Some heavenly music (which even now I do)

To work mine end upon their senses that

This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I’ll drown my book.                           Solemn music. (5.1.50-57)

Do we see this coming? I don’t know; I can’t recover the condition of not knowing what Prospero does here. But it is an extraordinary moment; it can be played as a subito piano, a complete shift from the sound and fury – and terror – of what Prospero has just been describing. This is, apparently, the moment to which Prospero’s play and the events of the play so far have been leading: not to some spectacular staging of revenge, repentance, and reconciliation, or at least not just to that. At the height of his power – mid incantation, as it seems, the audience aurally assaulted and near-overcome in their imagining of the terrible things that Prospero describes and ascribes to himself – Prospero is giving it all up, formally, with an oath (I here abjure). The handling of the verse line and the syntax here is brilliant: the but after the medial caesura in the first line, marking the swerve, a kind of volta. Another projected dilation, when – when I have required some heavenly music (something will happen after that) but I require it now, at this very moment (another of the play’s nows; this is the moment). The music will be required now, but its ultimate purpose and significance is still partially delayed, syntactically: the music is to work mine end upon their senses that this airy charm is for, that is, it is to complete Prospero’s enchantment, fulfil his purpose, the spell that he is casting upon Antonio, Alonso the King, and the other Neapolitans, and perhaps Trinculo and Stephano, and Caliban too.

And when that is done, I’ll break my staff, I’ll drown my book. What? Those deliberate monosyllables, the parallel structure, the way in which they are both delayed until the end of the clause. So final, and so absolute; not simply giving his magic up, but putting its things beyond use. To break a staff is not simply to destroy a wand and therefore to render it unable to perform magic: it would have been recognised by many in the audience as the ritual destruction of a badge of office, a sign of identity. The officers of a great household (the steward, the heralds, chamberlains and so on in the royal household, for instance) carried wooden staves, which at the death of their master (the king, the queen, the prince) they would break and cast into the grave; it would have been done at the funeral of Prince Henry in December 1612). This is, in part, what Prospero imagines, the loss of a role, the dissolution of a household, the end of an era. The destruction of both staff and book attributes to them a kind of personhood or agency (these are things that Prospero has not only used, but loved, like children even): they will be buried and drowned. The salient quality here is depth. The pieces of the staff will be buried, not simply in a grave, six feet under, but certain fathoms in the earth (a fathom is six feet), and the book will be cast into the sea, deeper than did ever plummet sound. Plummet, the lead weight used to measure the depth of water, is a word, and a dimension, that’s been repeatedly invoked in the play, and here Prospero quite literally imagines plumbing new depths, not simply dropping a paperback by accident into the bath, or a library book in a puddle. He describes his charm as airy, but the fate that he plans for his beloved instruments, his staff and book, is chthonic (one of the best words ever). They will go below, under, to the lower world, the place of darkness and the chaotic, violent, elemental forces of earth. Back where they belong?

Rough magic. The rough magic that he is, at last, here and now, giving up. No words to fill the remainder of that final line, but the painful anticipation of imminent loss, and solemn music.