William Shakespeare's The Tempest

William Shakespeare's The Tempest

If by your art, my dearest father, you have(1)

Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.(2)

The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,(3)

But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,(4)

Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered(5)

With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,(6)

Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,(7)

Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock (8)

Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish'd.(9)

Had I been any god of power, I would(10)

Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere(11)

It should the good ship so have swallow'd and(12)

The fraughting souls within her.(13)

This is from Act 1, Scene 2 in Shakespeare's comedy The Tempest that

is set in the island before Prospero's cell. It is the first time two

of the main characters in this play, Prospero and Miranda, are

introduced to the audience.

In this speech by Miranda, she expresses her strong piteous concern

for the people suffered from the sea storm created by her father and

her affliction caused by this, which gives us a general idea of this

girl's personality. Meanwhile, it indirectly puts forward the

information that the storm is terribly shocking. As the first speech

of this scene, besides expressing the speaker's feelings, it also acts

as a connecting link between the preceding and the following.

There are totally 13 lines in this speech. Seven lines, line 3, 6, 7,

8, 9, 11, and 12, are iambic pentameter, while the rest are not. In

one way, it implies though Miranda lives in the island for 12 years,

she is still well-educated and entertains the ability to speak

properly and ...

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further descriptions of the tempest; on the other hand, it raises some

important questions which are very pivotal to the development of the

play, such as what kind of people the speaker's father is, how they

both got to this island, why her father create the tempest, what kind

of relationship the people in the ship and them are and so on. These

problems arouse the curiosity of audience and make the plot more

compact and gripping.

In a word, undoubtedly Shakespeare is a great play writer and a master

of language, even though this is a ordinary passage in his play, not

as famous as "TO BE OR NOT TO BE" or other classical pieces in his

play, from it, we can still be amazed and gasped in admiration by his

ability of making good use of every kind of language skills and

excellence in putting a wonderful play on stage.