TRINCULO If these be true spies which I wear in my head, here’s a goodly sight.

CALIBAN

O Setebos, these be brave spirits indeed!

How fine my master is! I am afraid

He will chastise me.

SEBASTIAN

Ha, ha! What things are these, my lord Antonio?

Will money buy ’em?

ANTONIO

Very like; one of them

Is a plain fish, and no doubt marketable.

PROSPERO

Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,

Then say if they be true. This misshapen knave,

His mother was a witch, and one so strong

That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,

And deal in her command without her power.

These three have robbed me, and this demi-devil,

For he’s a bastard one, had plotted with them

To take my life. Two of these fellows you

Must know and own. This thing of darkness I

Acknowledge mine.

CALIBAN

I shall be pinched to death.

ALONSO

Is not this Stefano, my drunken butler?

SEBASTIAN

He is drunk now. Where had he wine?

ALONSO

And Trinculo is reeling ripe. Where should they

Find this grand liquor that hath gilded ’em?

(To Trinculo) How cam’st thou in this pickle?

TRINCULO I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of my bones. I shall not fear fly-blowing.

SEBASTIAN Why, how now, Stefano?

STEFANO O, touch me not! I am not Stefano, but a cramp.

PROSPERO You’d be king o’the isle, sirrah?

STEFANO I should have been a sore one, then.

ALONSO (pointing to Caliban) This is a strange thing as e’er I looked on.

PROSPERO

He is as disproportioned in his manners

As in his shape. (To Caliban) Go, sirrah, to my cell.

Take with you your companions. As you look

To have my pardon, trim it handsomely.

CALIBAN

Ay, that I will; and I’ll be wise hereafter,

And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass

Was I to take this drunkard for a god,

And worship this dull fooll

PROSPERO

Go to, away!

Exit Caliban

ALONSO (to Stefano and Trinculo)

Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.

SEBASTIAN Or stole it, rather.

Exeunt Stefano and Trinculo

PROSPERO (to Alonso)

Sir, I invite your highness and your train

To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest

For this one night; which part of it I’ll waste

With such discourse as I not doubt shall make it

Go quick away: the story of my life,

And the particular accidents gone by

Since I came to this isle. And in the morn

I’ll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,

Where I have hope to see the nuptial

Of these our dear-belovèd solemnized;

And thence retire me to my Milan, where

Every third thought shall be my grave.

ALONSO I long

To hear the story of your life, which must

Take the ear strangely.

PROSPERO

I’ll deliver all,

And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,

And sail so expeditious that shall catch

Your royal fleet far off. (Aside to Ariel) My Ariel, chick,

That is thy charge. Then to the elements

Be free, and fare thou well.

Exit Ariel

Please you, draw near.

Exeunt ⌈all but Prospero⌉

Epilogue

PROSPERO

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,

And what strength I have’s mine own,

Which is most faint. Now ’tis true

I must be here confined by you

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got,

And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands.

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;

And my ending is despair

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so, that it assaults

Mercy itself, and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

He awaits applause, then exit

CARDENIO

A BRIEF ACCOUNT

MANY plays acted in Shakespeare’s time have failed to survive; they may easily include some that he wrote. The mystery of Love’s Labour’s Won is discussed elsewhere (pp. xxxvii, 337). Certain manuscript records of the seventeenth century suggest that at least one other play in which he had a hand may have disappeared. On 9 September 1653 the London publisher Humphrey Moseley entered in the Stationers’ Register a batch of plays including ‘The History of Cardenio, by Mr Fletcher and Shakespeare’. Cardenio is a character in Part One of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, published in English translation in 1612. Two earlier allusions suggest that the King’s Men owned a play on this subject at the time that Shakespeare was collaborating with John Fletcher (1579-1625). On 20 May 1613 the Privy Council authorized payment of £20 to John Heminges, as leader of the King’s Men, for the presentation at court of six plays, one listed as ‘Cardenno’. On 9 July of the same year Heminges received £6 13s. 4d. for his company’s performance of a play ‘called Cardenna’ before the ambassador of the Duke of Savoy.

No more information about this play survives from the seventeenth century, but in 1728 Lewis Theobald published a play based on the story of Cardenio and called Double Falsehood, or The Distrest Lovers, which he claimed to have ‘revised and adapted’ from one ‘written originally by W. Shakespeare’. It had been successfully produced at Drury Lane on 13 December 1727, and was given thirteen times up to 1 May 1728. Other performances are recorded in 1740, 1741, 1767 (when it was reprinted), 1770, and 1847. In 1770 a newspaper stated that ‘the original manuscript’ was ‘treasured up in the Museum of Covent Garden Playhouse’; fire destroyed the theatre, including its library, in 1808.