“th' welkin's cheek”
Welkin means the sky or vault of heaven. Miranda is describing the sea leaping up to strike the sky itself — 'welkin's cheek' personifies the sky as a face being slapped by the waves.
“e'er / It should the good ship”
'Or e'er' is a double archaic conjunction meaning 'before ever' — Miranda is saying she would have sunk the sea before it could swallow the ship. 'Or e'er' is redundant emphasis; both words mean 'before.'
“fraughting souls”
'Fraughting' means forming the freight or cargo of a ship — the souls are the ship's human cargo. Miranda is grieving for the people carried inside the vessel.
“bootless inquisition”
'Bootless' means unprofitable, useless, without result — not anything to do with shoes. Miranda is saying Prospero kept stopping her questions and leaving her to a useless inquiry.
“dark backward and abysm of time”
'Backward' here is used as a noun, meaning the past — the direction you look toward to see history. 'Abysm' is an archaic form of 'abyss,' a bottomless pit. Together they make time itself an unfathomable depth behind Prospero, stretching away into darkness.
“blessedly holp hither”
'Holp' is an archaic past tense of 'help' — Prospero means they were helped, or brought by blessing, to this island.
“teen that I have turn'd you to”
'Teen' here means grief, sorrow, or trouble — not adolescence. Miranda grieves at the trouble she has caused Prospero by being so young during the exile that she cannot remember it.
- TLN 150historical topical
“all the signories it was the first”
'Signories' (also 'seigniories') are lordships or city-states — the independent principalities of northern Italy. Milan is said to be the foremost among them in dignity and power.
“the liberal arts, / Without a parallel”
The 'liberal arts' were the seven classical disciplines of higher education: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Prospero's claim to be unrivalled in them signals a scholar-ruler whose learning — the source of his magic — is also the thing that distracted him from politics.
“trash for over-topping”
To 'trash' a dog was to tie a weight or check to it to slow it down and prevent it outrunning the pack. Prospero is saying Antonio learned to hold back anyone who was getting ahead — 'over-topping' means growing too tall, too ambitious.
“ivy which had hid my princely trunk, / And suck'd my verdure out on't”
Prospero compares Antonio to ivy that clings to a tree, hiding it from sight and draining its vitality — 'verdure' means green living energy. This metaphor of a parasitic plant captures how Antonio used Prospero's authority while draining him of real power.
“O'er-priz'd all popular rate”
Prospero means that his private studies, prized only because he had withdrawn from public life, came to be valued far beyond their worth in the eyes of ordinary people ('popular rate' = common estimation).
“A confidence sans bound”
'Sans' is the French word for 'without,' used in English as an affectation of learned elegance. Prospero means his trust in Antonio was completely boundless.
“confederates,— / So dry he was for sway,—wi' th' King of Naples”
'Confederates' here is a verb, not a noun: Antonio made himself an ally with ('confederated with') the King of Naples. 'Dry' for 'sway' means thirsty for political power — 'sway' is the authority to rule.
“in lieu o' the premises”
'In lieu of' means 'in exchange for' or 'in return for.' 'The premises' is a legal term for the conditions or terms stated above in an agreement — the things just mentioned. The King of Naples would extirpate Prospero in return for Antonio's homage.
“presently extirpate me and mine”
'Presently' means immediately, right now — not 'in a little while' as it means today. 'Extirpate' means to uproot, destroy completely, eradicate — from Latin extirpare (to pull up by the roots).
“colours fairer painted their foul ends”
To 'paint with fairer colours' means to disguise evil actions with a good-looking surface. The enemies cloaked their foul purpose ('foul ends') with a prettier story — 'colours' here means pretexts or appearances. The metaphor comes from cosmetics and painting.
“hurried us aboard a bark”
A 'bark' (also 'barque') is a small sailing vessel, specifically a three-masted ship with the foremast and mainmast square-rigged and the mizzen fore-and-aft rigged. Here it simply means a small sea-going boat — smaller and less seaworthy than a ship.
“a cherubin / Thou wast that did preserve me”
A cherubin (cherub) was understood in Renaissance iconography as an infant angel with a sweet, shining face — pure, innocent, and closer to heaven than ordinary souls. Prospero says the infant Miranda's smile was a divine gift, a cherub's grace that gave him courage to bear his exile.
“undergoing stomach, to bear up”
'Stomach' here means fortitude, resolution, courage — the willingness to endure hardship. 'Undergoing' means the capacity to sustain and carry a burden. Prospero is saying Miranda's smile raised in him the courage to keep going.
“bountiful Fortune, / Now my dear lady”
Fortune — the Roman goddess Fortuna — was traditionally female and described as 'bountiful' or 'gracious' when her wheel turned in your favour. Calling her 'my dear lady' personifies luck as a capricious noblewoman whom Prospero must court at the right moment.
- TLN 275historical topical
“by my prescience / I find my zenith”
'Prescience' means foreknowledge — Prospero's magical art includes the ability to foresee events. 'Zenith' is an astronomical term for the highest point of a star's arc. Prospero says his power is at its peak right now and he must act.
- TLN 277historical topical
“auspicious star, whose influence / If now I court not but omit”
Prospero is speaking the language of Elizabethan astrology: a star's 'influence' was believed to flow down from the heavens and shape human destiny. An 'auspicious' star (Latin auspicium, omen) is one that favours your enterprise. To 'omit' it means to let the moment pass.
“Ariel and all his quality”
'Quality' here means Ariel's kind, nature, or the company of spirits like him — a collective noun for fellow beings of the same type. Ariel is offering not just his own service but everything he is and all his kindred spirits.
- TLN 294historical topical
“I flam'd amazement; sometime I'd divide, / And burn in many places”
Ariel is describing St Elmo's fire: an electrical discharge that appears as ghostly flames on the masts and rigging of ships during storms. Sailors saw it as a supernatural omen. This detail corresponds precisely to eyewitness accounts of the 1609 Bermuda wreck that are the play's main historical source.
historical The Bermuda wreck of the Sea Venture (1609) “The yards, and boresprit”
A 'boresprit' (more commonly 'bowsprit') is the large spar that projects forward from the bow (front) of a ship, to which the foremost sails and rigging are attached. 'Yards' are the horizontal spars on the masts from which sails hang.
- TLN 297classical allusion
“Jove's lightning, the precursors / O' th' dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary / And sight-outrunning were not: the fire and cracks / Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune”
Jove (Jupiter) was the king of the Roman gods and the wielder of the thunderbolt; Neptune was the Roman god of the sea. Ariel is saying that Prospero's magical fire on the ship was faster than Jove's own lightning and so fierce that even Neptune — lord of the waters surrounding them — seemed to be under siege.
“this coil / Would not infect his reason”
'Coil' means a noisy turmoil or fuss — the disorder and confusion of the storm. The sense is vivid: the coil of panic that could infect ('contaminate, madden') a person's reason like a disease.
“hair up-staring—then like reeds, not hair”
Ariel describes Ferdinand's hair standing straight up from terror — 'up-staring' means bristling and erect. Then Ariel corrects the simile: not just standing up but stiff as reeds growing out of a marsh, thick and rigid with fear.
- TLN 332historical topical
“still-vex'd Bermoothes”
'Bermoothes' is Shakespeare's spelling of Bermuda, the Atlantic island group notorious for violent, unpredictable storms. 'Still-vex'd' means perpetually storm-troubled. This is the play's direct reference to the 1609 Bermuda shipwreck that was one of its main real-world inspirations.
historical The Bermuda wreck of the Sea Venture (1609) “At least two glasses”
A 'glass' (short for 'hour-glass') was the standard time-measuring device aboard ships — a sealed glass vessel with sand flowing from one chamber to another to mark an hour. 'Two glasses' means roughly two o'clock in the afternoon.
“To bate me a full year”
To 'bate' means to abate, reduce, or deduct — Ariel is saying Prospero promised to cut a full year off his remaining service. It is a word from financial and legal language: 'to bate' a sum means to subtract it from what is owed.
“foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy / Was grown into a hoop”
Sycorax is the dead witch whose son Caliban was left on the island. 'Grown into a hoop' is a striking image: she had bent herself into a curve like a barrel-hoop, her body twisted with extreme old age. 'Envy' here means malice or spite, not merely jealousy.
- TLN 374historical topical
“Sir, in Argier”
Argier is the Elizabethan name for Algiers, the North African city that was the capital of the Barbary Coast piracy and a feared centre of sorcery in English popular imagination.
“Refusing her grand hests”
'Hests' (singular 'hest') means commands or behests. Sycorax's 'grand hests' are her mighty or terrible orders — Ariel refused to carry out her worst commands because they were too brutal for a spirit of his delicate nature.
“as mill-wheels strike”
Prospero compares the speed and regularity of Ariel's groans inside the pine to the repeated striking of a mill-wheel's paddles against the water. The simile makes pain mechanical and relentless — not sporadic cries but a continuous, rhythmic punishment.
“son that she did litter here, / A freckl'd whelp, hag-born”
Prospero describes Caliban's birth using animal-breeding terms: Sycorax 'littered' (gave birth to a litter, as an animal does) him here on the island. A 'whelp' is a puppy or cub. 'Hag-born' means born of a hag or witch. The language deliberately dehumanizes Caliban.
“Thou earth, thou”
Prospero addresses Caliban as 'earth' itself — raw, unformed, inert matter. The epithet contrasts with Ariel, called 'my spirit' and 'my Ariel,' and places Caliban at the base of the classical hierarchy: spirit above, earth below.
“my mother brush'd / With raven's feather from unwholesome fen”
Caliban invokes a curse using items from the witch's arsenal: a raven's feather used to collect 'wicked dew' from a fen (marsh). Ravens were associated with witchcraft and bad omens; fens were considered the source of disease and pestilential miasmas in Elizabethan medicine.
“urchins / Shall forth at vast of night”
'Urchins' here are not sea-urchins but hedgehogs, which in Elizabethan folklore were believed to be demons or fairies in disguise who came out at night and could pinch or harm sleepers. 'Vast of night' means the wide, empty wasteland of the night — a poetic phrase for the dead of night.
- TLN 457historical topical
“This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, / Which thou tak'st from me”
Caliban claims title to the island through inheritance from his mother — a claim that introduces the play's colonial theme. His complaint that Prospero has dispossessed him mirrors the arguments made by indigenous peoples of the Americas when European settlers claimed their land by right of discovery and 'civilising' power.
historical Montaigne, 'Of the Cannibals' “here you sty me / In this hard rock”
To 'sty' is to keep in a sty — to penpen in a pigsty. Caliban says Prospero keeps him confined like a pig in a rock enclosure. The verb returns the animal imagery of Prospero's 'litter' and 'whelp' back at Prospero himself: Caliban adopts the language of his oppressor.
“Would it had been done! / Thou didst prevent me; I had peopl'd else / This isle with Calibans”
Caliban openly wishes he had been able to rape Miranda and father children on her to populate the island with his own kind. This is the direct accusation Prospero alludes to at line 474. It is the most explicit statement of the play's unresolved tension between Caliban's sexuality and Prospero's control over his daughter.
- TLN 480historical topical
“any print of goodness wilt not take, / Being capable of all ill”
Prospero's argument is the classic nature-versus-nurture claim in its extreme form: Caliban is incapable of receiving the impression ('print') of goodness because his nature is wholly evil. The image of 'print' comes from the wax-impression metaphor for how education shapes the mind.
- TLN 486historical topical
“thy vile race, / Though thou didst learn”
'Race' here means innate nature, inherent quality — the inborn character of a stock or kind, not a modern ethnic category. Prospero argues that Caliban's inherent nature ('vile race') defeats education: however much he learned, his nature could not be changed.
“You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse”
Caliban's most famous speech: the only benefit language has brought him is the ability to curse the person who taught it. The irony is exact — the tool of civilization has been turned against the civiliser. This is the clearest statement of the play's colonialism theme.
“the red plague rid you”
The 'red plague' is likely erysipelas or possibly smallpox — a disease that caused vivid red inflammation of the skin. 'Rid' here means to destroy or kill (to 'be rid of' someone in the active, deadly sense).
- TLN 503historical topical
“my dam's god, Setebos”
Setebos was recorded as the god of the Patagonian peoples of South America by a survivor of Magellan's circumnavigation, and printed in English in 1577. Shakespeare borrowed the name for Sycorax's deity, connecting Caliban's witchcraft ancestry to New World voyage literature.
historical Setebos, Caliban's god “strain of strutting Chanticleer”
Chanticleer is the traditional name for a rooster — the cock whose crowing marks the dawn — from the medieval beast-fable tradition, where Chanticleer is the name of the rooster in Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale.
“Full fathom five thy father lies: / Of his bones are coral made”
Ariel's dirge for the supposedly drowned Alonso is one of the most celebrated lyrics in Shakespeare. It describes the king's body being transformed at the sea-floor into rich materials — bones become coral, eyes become pearls — a metamorphosis from mortality into beauty. A 'fathom' is six feet; five fathoms is thirty feet of water.
“fringed curtains of thine eye advance”
Prospero tells Miranda to open her eyes by describing her eyelids as 'fringed curtains' — the eyelashes are the fringe, the lids the curtains of a stage. It is a theatrical metaphor: life is a theatre, the eyes are windows whose curtains open on the world's stage.
“A single thing, as I am now, that wonders / To hear thee speak of Naples. He does hear me; / And, that he does, I weep: myself am Naples”
Ferdinand makes a complex, compressed statement: 'single' means both alone and feeble; 'myself am Naples' means he is now the King of Naples, because he believes his father has drowned. The pun on 'He does hear me' — the King of Naples hears him, i.e. Ferdinand himself hears the title spoken — forces him to acknowledge that he is king.
“The Duke of Milan, / And his more braver daughter could control thee”
'Braver' here means more excellent, finer, more admirable — not physically braver in the sense of courage. Prospero says (aside) that his daughter, the Duke of Milan's daughter, surpasses Ferdinand in worth and could rebut his arrogance. 'Control' means to refute or disprove.
“this swift / business I must uneasy make, lest too light winning / Make the prize light”
Prospero's aside explains his strategy of making Ferdinand work for Miranda: if Ferdinand wins her too easily, she will seem cheaply come by. 'Light winning' (easy winning) will make the 'prize light' (the prize seem trivial). The pun on 'light' — easy and of little weight — drives the logic.
“nothing ill can dwell in such a temple: / If the ill spirit have so fair a house”
Miranda argues that Ferdinand's beautiful body proves he cannot be evil — drawing on the Renaissance doctrine that physical beauty is a sign of moral goodness. The body is called a 'temple' and a 'house,' images that treat the body as a dwelling for the soul.
“come from thy ward”
A 'ward' is a defensive posture in fencing — the position of guard with a drawn sword. Prospero tells Ferdinand to lower his weapon, to come out of his defensive stance.
“Thy nerves are in their infancy again, / And have no vigour in them”
'Nerves' in Elizabethan medical usage meant sinews or tendons — the fibers that gave the body strength and connected muscle to bone — not the nervous system in the modern sense. Prospero has made Ferdinand's limbs as weak as a newborn's.
“this is unwonted, / Which now came from him”
'Unwonted' means unusual, not customary, not what one is accustomed to — Miranda assures Ferdinand that Prospero's harsh treatment is out of character. 'Wonted' means customary or habitual.