BOATS. I pray now, keep below.

ANT. Where is the mafter, Boatswain?

BOATS. Do you not hear him? You mar our labour; Keep your cabins: you do affift the storm.5 GON. Nay, good, be patient.

BOATS. When the fea is.

Hence!

What care

thefe roarers for the name of king? To cabin: filence: trouble us not.

GON. Good; yet remember whom thou haft aboard.

BOATS. None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor; if you can command these elements to filence, and work the peace of the prefent, we will not hand a rope more; ufe your authority. If you cannot, give thanks you have lived fo long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mifchance of the hour, if it fo hap.Cheerly, good hearts.-Out of our way, I fay.

[Exit.

GON. I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks, he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand faft, good fate, to his hanging! make the rope of his destiny

Again, in fcripture, 2 Sam. x. 12: "Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people." MALONE.

S

6

affift the form.] So, in Pericles:

Patience, good fir; do not affift the ftorm." STEEVENS.

- of

of the prefent,] i. e. of the prefent inftant. So, in the 15th chapter of the 1ft Epiftle to the Corinthians: whom the greater part remain unto this prefent." STEEVENS.

? Gonzalo.] It may be obferved of Gonzalo, that, being the only good man that appears with the king, he is the only man that preferves his cheerfulness in the wreck, and his hope on the ifland. JOHNSON.

our cable, for our own doth little advantage! If he be not born to be hanged, our cafe is miferable. [Exeunt.

Re-enter Boatswain.

BOATS. Down with the top-maft; yare; lower, lower; bring her to try with main-course.8 [A cry within.] A plague upon this howling! they are louder than the weather, or our office.—

Re-enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, and GONZALO,

Yet again? what do you here? Shall we give o'er, and drown? Have you a mind to fink?

SEB. A pox o' your throat! you bawling, blafphemous, incharitable dog!

BOATS. Work you, then.

ANT. Hang, cur, hang! you whorefon, infolent noife-maker, we are lefs afraid to be drowned than thou art.

GON. I'll warrant him from drowning; though the fhip were no ftronger than a nut-fhell, and as leaky as an unftanched wench.9

sbring her to try with main-courfe.] Probably from Hackluyt's Voyages, 1598: "And when the barke had way, we cut the haufer, and fo gate the fea to our friend, and tried out all that day with our maine courfe." MALONE.

This phrafe occurs alfo in Smith's Sea Grammar, 1627, 4to. under the article How to handle a Ship in a Storme: "Let us lie at Trie with our maine course; that is, to hale the tacke aboord, the fheat close aft, the boling fet up, and the helme tied close aboord." P. 40. STEEVENS.

9- an unftanched wench.] Unftanched, I am willing to believe, means incontinent.

STEEVENS.

BOATS. Lay her a-hold, a-hold; fet her two courses; off to fea again, lay her off.

Enter Mariners wet.

MAR. All loft! to prayers, to prayers! all loft!

BOATS. What, muft our mouths be cold?

Exeunt.

GON. The king and prince at prayers! let us affift them,

For our cafe is as theirs.

SEB. I am out of patience.

ANT. We are merely 3 cheated of our lives by drunkards.

This wide-chapped rafcal;-'Would, thou might'st lie drowning,

The washing of ten tides!

GON.

He'll be hanged yet ;

▾ Lay her a-hold, a-hold;] To lay a fhip a-hold, is to bring her to lie as near the wind as the can, in order to keep clear of the land, and get her out to fea. STEEVENS.

2

fet her two courfes; off to fea again,] The courfes are the main fail and fore fail. This term is ufed by Raleigh, in his Difcourfe on Shipping. JOHNSON.

The paffage, as Mr. Holt has obferved, fhould be pointed, Set her two courfes; off, &c.

Such another expreffion occurs in Decker's If this be not a good Play, the Devil is in it, 1612:

off with your Drablers

and your Banners; out with your courfes." STEEVENS.

3-merely-] In this place, fignifies abfolutely; in which fense it is used in Hamlet, A&t I. fc. iii:

-Things rank and grofs in nature

"Poffefs it merely."

Again, in Ben Jonfon's Poetafter:

•at request

"Of fome mere friends, fome honourable Romans."

STEEVENS.

Though every drop of water fwear against it,
And gape at wid'ft to glut him.3

[A confufed noife within] Mercy on us!-We split, we fplit!-Farewell, my wife and children!-Farewell, brother !4-We split, we split, we split !— ANT. Let's all fink with the king.

SEB. Let's take leave of him.

[Exit.

[Exit.

GON. Now would I give a thoufand furlongs of fea for an acre of barren ground; long heath, brown furze, any thing: The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death. [Exit.

3to glut him.] Shakspeare probably wrote, t'englut him, to fwallow him; for which I know not that glut is ever ufed by him. In this fignification englut, from engloutir, Fr. occurs frequently, as in Henry VI:

Thou art fo near the gulf

"Thou needs must be englutted."

And again, in Timon and Othello. Yet Milton writes glutted offal for fwallowed, and therefore perhaps the present text may ftand. JOHNSON.

Thus, in Sir A. Gorges's tranflation of Lucan, B, VI: oylie fragments scarcely burn'd,

"Together the doth fcrape and glut."

i. e. fwallow. STEEVENS.

4 Mercy on us! &c.· -Farewell, brother! &c.] All these lines have been hitherto given to Gonzalo, who has no brother in the thip. It is probable that the lines fucceeding the confufed noife within fhould be confidered as fpoken by no determinate characters. JOHNSON.

The hint for this stage direction, &c. might have been received from a paffage in the fecond book of Sidney's Arcadia, where the thipwreck of Pyrocles is defcribed, with this concluding circumftance: "But a monftrous cry, begotten of many roaring voyces, was able to infect with feare," &c. STEEVENS.

an acre of barren ground; long heath, brown furze, &c.] Sir T. Hanmer reads-ling, heath, broom, furze.-Perhaps rightly, though he has been charged with tautology. I find in Harrifon's defcription of Britain, prefixed to our author's good

SCENE II.

The island: before the cell of Profpero.

Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA.

MIRA. If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them:
The fky, it feems, would pour down ftinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dathes the fire out. O, I have fuffer'd

With those that I faw fuffer! a brave vessel,
Who had no doubt fome noble creatures in her,7
Dafh'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor fouls! they perifh'd.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have funk the fea within the earth, or e'er 8

friend Holinfhed, p. 91: "Brome, heth, firze, brakes, whinnes, ling," &c. FARMER.

Mr. Tollet has fufficiently vindicated Sir Thomas Hanmer from the charge of tautology. by favouring me with specimens of three different kinds of heath which grow in his own neighbourhood. I would gladly have inferted his obfervations at length; but, to fay the truth, our author, like one of Cato's foldiers who was bit by a ferpent,

Ipfe latet penitus congefto corpore merfus. STEEVENS. But that the fea, &c.] So, in King Lear:

"The fea in such a storm as his bare head

"In hell-black night endur'd, would have buoy'd up, "And quench'd the ftelled fires." MALONE.

Thus, in Chapman's verfion of the 21ft Iliad:

7

as if his waves would drowne the fkie,

"And put out all the sphere of fire." STEEVENS.

—creatures in her,] The old copy reads-creature; but the preceding as well as fubfequent words of Miranda feem to demand the emendation which I have received from Theobald. STEEVENS.

8

or e'er-] i. e. before. So, in Ecclefiaftes, xii. 6: