Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (29 page)

MIRANDA

’Tis far off

And rather like a dream than an assurance

That my remembrance warrants. Had I not

Four or five women once that tended me?

PROSPERO

Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it

That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

If thou remember’st aught ere thou camest here,

How thou camest here thou mayst.

MIRANDA

But that I do not.

PROSPERO

Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since,

Thy father was the Duke of Milan and

A prince of power.

MIRANDA

Sir, are not you my father?

PROSPERO

Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and

She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father

Was Duke of Milan; and thou his only heir

And princess no worse issued.

MIRANDA

O the heavens!

What foul play had we, that we came from thence?

Or blessed was’t we did?

PROSPERO

Both, both, my girl:

By foul play, as thou say’st, were we heaved thence,

But blessedly holp hither.

MIRANDA

O, my heart bleeds

To think o’ the teen that I have turn’d you to,

Which is from my remembrance! Please you, farther.

PROSPERO

My brother and thy uncle, call’d Antonio—

I pray thee, mark me—that a brother should

Be so perfidious!—he whom next thyself

Of all the world I loved and to him put

The manage of my state; as at that time

Through all the signories it was the first

And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed

In dignity, and for the liberal arts

Without a parallel; those being all my study,

The government I cast upon my brother

And to my state grew stranger, being transported

And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle—

Dost thou attend me?

MIRANDA

Sir, most heedfully.

PROSPERO

Being once perfected how to grant suits,

How to deny them, who to advance and who

To trash for over-topping, new created

The creatures that were mine, I say, or changed ’em,

Or else new form’d ’em; having both the key

Of officer and office, set all hearts i’ the state

To what tune pleased his ear; that now he was

The ivy which had hid my princely trunk,

And suck’d my verdure out on’t. Thou attend’st not.

MIRANDA

O, good sir, I do.

PROSPERO

I pray thee, mark me.

I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated

To closeness and the bettering of my mind

With that which, but by being so retired,

O’er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother

Awaked an evil nature; and my trust,

Like a good parent, did beget of him

A falsehood in its contrary as great

As my trust was; which had indeed no limit,

A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,

Not only with what my revenue yielded,

But what my power might else exact, like one

Who having into truth, by telling of it,

Made such a sinner of his memory,

To credit his own lie, he did believe

He was indeed the duke; out o’ the substitution

And executing the outward face of royalty,

With all prerogative: hence his ambition growing—

Dost thou hear?

MIRANDA

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.