Journeys Through Bookland Volume Viii Part 53

[444-41] _For breathing_ means _because it breathed_. In the next line, _for kissing_ means _because it kissed_.

[444-42] _Unback'd_ means _unridden_.

[444-43] _Advanced_ means _raised_.

[445-44] The pool was mantled, or covered over, with filth.

[445-45] For _that_ read _so that_ or _insomuch that_.

[445-46] _Stale_ means _bait_. It was a term used by hunters for a bait that would lure birds.

[445-47] Caliban.

[445-48] _Nurture_ can never stick on his _nature_: that is, he can never be improved by culture or education.

[445-49] _Cankers_ means _rusts_, or here, _eats into itself_.

[445-50] It is not known whether _line_ refers to a clothesline or to a line tree. Only Shakespeare himself could tell us to a certainty.

[446-51] _Play'd the Jack with us._ "Led us astray as a Jack-o'-lantern might."

[446-52] _To hoodwink this mischance_ means _to make it forgotten_ or _overlooked_.

[446-53] In Hudson's Shakespeare this is explained as an allusion to the old ballad ent.i.tled "Take thy old Cloak about thee." The following stanza is quoted:

"_King Stephen_ was a worthy _peer_, His breeches cost him but a crown: He held them sixpence all too dear.

Therefore he called the tailor lown."

[447-54] A _frippery_ was a shop where old clothes were sold. Trinculo has found the clothing Ariel hung upon the line.

[447-55] _Under the line._ We can imagine that Stephano has pulled the leather jerkin or coat from the line. When he says _under the line_, he thinks of that as an expression sailors use when they are near the equinoctial line or equator, where the heat is intense, so strong as to take the hair or fur off the coat and make it a _bald jerkin_.

[447-56] _By line and level_, that is, as architects build, by plumb line and level. Trinculo picks up the word _line_ and makes a new pun on it.

[448-57] A _pa.s.s_ is a _thrust_; _pate_ is _head_. _Pa.s.s of pate_ is a _thrust_ or _sally of wit_.

[448-58] _Lime_ is a sticky substance used to catch birds.

[448-59] _Barnacles_ here means _barnacle-geese,_ a kind of geese supposed by the superst.i.tious to be produced when certain barnacles or sh.e.l.l-fish fell into the sea water.

[449-60] _Pard_ is a contraction for _leopard_; _cat-o'-mountain_ may be another name for wild-cat, though wild-cats are not spotted. Probably the term is loosely used to mean any spotted animal of the cat tribes.

[450-1] _Goes upright with his carriage_ means, _goes erectly under his burden_, that is, there is time enough to accomplish what Prospero wishes to do.

[450-2] That is, "In the grove of line-trees which protects your cell from the weather."

[450-3] _Till your release_ means _till you release them_.

[451-4] In this place _all_ has the sense of _quite_; _relish_ means _feel_; _pa.s.sion_ has the sense of _suffering_. The meaning of the clause is, that feel suffering quite as sharply as they.

[451-5] _Neptune_, the name of the G.o.d of the seas, is used for _sea_ or _ocean_.

[451-6] "Fairy rings" are green circles in the gra.s.s. They were supposed to be caused by fairies dancing in a circle, but are now known to be caused by mushrooms which grow in circles and which enrich the ground as they decay. Because it contained some peculiar quality which Shakespeare calls sourness, the sheep would not eat the gra.s.s of the rings.

[452-7] Because mushrooms and toadstools spring up so quickly in the night, they were supposed to be the work of fairies.

[452-8] The curfew rings at night, and the fairies rejoice to hear it, for it is the signal for them to begin their frolics.

[452-9] The fairies are weak masters, that is, they can accomplish little if left to themselves, but under the direction of a human mind like Prospero's they could work such wonders as he describes.

[452-10] The oak was sacred to Jove (Jupiter), and lightning and thunder-bolts were his chief weapons.

[452-11] The spurs are the long _roots_ of the pines and cedars.

[453-12] _Boil'd_ is used for _boiling_ or _seething_.

[453-13] _Sociable to_ means _sympathizing with_.

[453-14] _Fall fellowly drops_ means _shed tears in sympathy_.

[453-15] _Rising senses_ means _clearing mental faculties_.

[453-16] _Ignorant fumes that mantle_ alludes to the confusion that the charm has caused in their ideas. The whole pa.s.sage means simply that they are recovering their senses.

[453-17] This sentence means, _I will reward thee to the utmost_.

[453-18] _Remorse_ here means _pity_.

[453-19] _Nature_ here means _brotherly love_.

[454-20] _The reasonable sh.o.r.e_ means _the sh.o.r.e of reason_. As the tide rises to the sh.o.r.e of the sea, so their clearing thoughts fill their minds.

[454-21] _Discase me_ means _remove my disguise_.

[454-22] _As I was sometime Milan_ means _as I was once, the Duke of Milan_.

[454-23] The meaning of the three lines preceding has been much disputed. No one knows exactly what the poet meant. Perhaps Ariel sings with this meaning: "When the owls cry and foretell the approach of winter, I fly on the back of a bat in a merry search for summer."

[456-24] Ariel uses this fanciful way of saying that he will go as fast as human thought.

[456-25] _Wher_ is a contraction of _whether_.

[456-26] _Trifle_ here means _phantom_ or _spirit_.

[456-27] This clause means, _if this be at all true_.

[456-28] _My wrongs_ means _the wrongs I have done_.

[456-29] He speaks to Gonzalo.