ALONSO         [to Ferdinand and Miranda] Give me your hands.

Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart

That doth not wish you joy.

GONZALO                                                       Be it so; amen.

Enter ARIEL, with the Master and Boatswain amazedly following.

                        O look, sir, look, sir; here is more of us!

I prophesied, if a gallows were on land

This fellow could not drown. [to Boatswain] Now, blasphemy,

That swear’st grace o’erboard, not an oath on shore?

Hast thou no mouth by land? What is the news?

BOATSWAIN  The best news is that we have safely found

Our King and company. The next: our ship,

Which but three glasses since we gave out split,

Is tight and yare and bravely rigged as when

We first put out to sea.

ARIEL             [to Prospero]              Sir, all this service

Have I done since I went.

PROSPERO                                                     My tricksy spirit! (5.1.213-226)

 

And so the overjoyed father takes the hands of his son and daughter-in-law-elect and presumably joins their hands together, a formal sign of their betrothal and his endorsement of it, as well as a sign of his love. Anyone who does not wish them joy deserves to be miserable (is this a glance at Sebastian and Antonio?) And from this point onwards, the action speeds up, as the play enters its last hundred lines or so (eeeek) and the other strands of the plot are reintroduced and resolved. Here’s Ariel, with the Master and Boatswain – remember them? They spoke the play’s first lines, and their shouting and exasperation and fear created the storm as much as any noises off. Now they’re back, amazedly following Ariel, emerging blinking into the sunlight: all these people, whom they thought had perished, and more besides. (The Master and the Boatswain, and the Mariners, who don’t seem to appear here but could, have presumably been doubling at least some of the Spirits; they probably appeared in Prospero’s masque, most likely as Reapers.) Gonzalo, typically, remembers the jokes he made about the Boatswain, even at the height of the storm: that he was so villainous-looking that he could surely never drown, but rather would have to survive in order to be hanged on land. Your oaths were so constant on the ship that you swore grace o’erboard, as if grace itself fled to hear you – and now you are silent? What do you have to say; hast thou no mouth by land? What is the news? The Boatswain is canny in prioritising his expression of loyalty, but also perhaps genuinely moved: the best news is that we have safely found our King and company. And the ship, the ship is undamaged! Only three hours ago, but three glasses since, we thought it had split (and those were the last words heard, from within, from the ship’s crew in the storm scene: We split! We split!) – but it’s now completely tight, water-tight, sea-worthy, in perfect order, bravely rigged and ready to go.

I did all that, mutters Ariel to Prospero, just now. My tricksy spirit! (It is difficult not to hear this in a Gollum voice, but one must try.) Ariel is anxious that they get the credit here, that Prospero is aware of everything that they have done.

This might be the moment in the play where we, and the characters, begin to realise that the resolution of the play’s various plots will also mean a departure from the island – but who will go and who will stay? There are reminders that the ship was never meant to come to the island at all, that it was en route from Tunis to Naples, in the mention of Claribel earlier. There’s Gonzalo’s recapping of his jokes from the first scene, and of course the reintroduction of the ship’s crew. And the news that the ship is now returned to the same condition as it was when we first put out to sea. Departure, and partings, must be imminent. The end of the play – and the end of the island? What next for Prospero, and Ariel? And one strand of the plot is yet to be resolved…