PROSPERO [aside] Their understanding
Begins to swell, and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore
That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them
That yet looks on me or would know me.—Ariel,
Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell.
[Exit Ariel and returns immediately.]
I will discase me and myself present
As I was sometime Milan. Quickly, spirit,
Thou shalt ere long be free. (5.1.79-87)
A short, transitional, but still key moment here. First, that brilliant metaphor for the recovery of the Neapolitans. Their understanding, their reason, their sanity is now returning, swelling and growing like the waves as the tide comes in. The shore of their reason has been like a beach when the tide is out, foul and muddy, at a low ebb, empty – but it will soon be covered by the waters of reason once more. And yet – has Prospero only just grasped this? – how will they recognise him? It’s been twelve years; he’s aged and, most crucially, he is no longer dressed like a duke. In order to reclaim this status and his title, he will need to look the part. (Trinculo and Stephano anticipated and perhaps even enabled this moment with their gleeful seizing of the glistering apparel so as to be dressed like the king of the island and his attendant lord. Clothes confer status, authority, power; they make identity.) And so Ariel is, once again, dispatched to Prospero’s cell – adjacent, as it seems; presumably the inner stage – to fetch the hat and rapier which will apparently enable Prospero to appear as the Duke of Milan once more. Why hat and rapier? Gentleman’s apparel, certainly, especially the rapier. Pragmatically (although it implies a kind of realism that might be alien to the play) the hat and the rapier could not have been worn out, altered, or reused as other garments might have been, during the time that Prospero and Miranda have been on the island. They can also be worn immediately over whatever Prospero is already wearing. But Prospero must also discase himself, take off at least his outer garment, presumably his magic garment (and he might in fact be wearing court dress under this, or under a gown; again, it depends on the realism of the production) to present himself as he was sometime Milan, that is, as its duke, just as he was before, once upon a time. Ariel helps him to change, and once again Prospero makes his promise: thou shalt ere long be free. But when, when will Ariel be free?
