Act 3, Scene 1

Before PROSPERO'S cell

[Enter FERDINAND, bearing a log.]
Ferdinand
1209 There be some sports are painful, and their labour
1210 Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness
1211 Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
1212 Point to rich ends. This my mean task
1213 Would be as heavy to me as odious; but
1214 The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead,
1215 And makes my labours pleasures: O! she is
1216 Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed,
1217 And he's compos'd of harshness. I must remove
1218 Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up,
1219 Upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress
1220 Weeps when she sees me work, and says such baseness
1221 Had never like executor. I forget:
1222 But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
1223 Most busy, least when I do it.
[Enter MIRANDA: and PROSPERO behind.]
Miranda
1224 Alas! now pray you,
1225 Work not so hard: I would the lightning had
1226 Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin'd to pile!
1227 Pray, set it down and rest you: when this burns,
1228 'Twill weep for having wearied you. My father
1229 Is hard at study; pray, now, rest yourself:
1230 He's safe for these three hours.
Ferdinand
1231 O most dear mistress,
1232 The sun will set, before I shall discharge
1233 What I must strive to do.
Miranda
1234 If you'll sit down,
1235 I'll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that;
1236 I'll carry it to the pile.
Ferdinand
1237 No, precious creature:
1238 I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,
1239 Than you should such dishonour undergo,
1240 While I sit lazy by.
Miranda
1241 It would become me
1242 As well as it does you: and I should do it
1243 With much more ease; for my good will is to it,
1244 And yours it is against.
[Aside]
Prospero
1245 Poor worm! thou art infected:
1246 This visitation shows it.
Miranda
1247 You look wearily.
Ferdinand
1248 No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me
1249 When you are by at night. I do beseech you—
1250 Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers—
1251 What is your name?
Miranda
1252 Miranda—O my father!
1253 I have broke your hest to say so.
Ferdinand
1254 Admir'd Miranda!
1255 Indeed, the top of admiration; worth
1256 What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady
1257 I have ey'd with best regard, and many a time
1258 The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
1259 Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
1260 Have I lik'd several women; never any
1261 With so full soul but some defect in her
1262 Did quarrel with the noblest grace she ow'd,
1263 And put it to the foil: but you, O you!
1264 So perfect and so peerless, are created
1265 Of every creature's best.
Miranda
1266 I do not know
1267 One of my sex; no woman's face remember,
1268 Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
1269 More that I may call men than you, good friend,
1270 And my dear father: how features are abroad,
1271 I am skill-less of; but, by my modesty,—
1272 The jewel in my dower,—I would not wish
1273 Any companion in the world but you;
1274 Nor can imagination form a shape,
1275 Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle
1276 Something too wildly, and my father's precepts
1277 I therein do forget.
Ferdinand
1278 I am, in my condition,
1279 A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king;—
1280 I would not so!—and would no more endure
1281 This wooden slavery than to suffer
1282 The flesh-fly blow my mouth.—Hear my soul speak:—
1283 The very instant that I saw you, did
1284 My heart fly to your service; there resides,
1285 To make me slave to it; and for your sake
1286 Am I this patient log-man.
Miranda
1287 Do you love me?
Ferdinand
1288 O heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound,
1289 And crown what I profess with kind event,
1290 If I speak true: if hollowly, invert
1291 What best is boded me to mischief! I,
1292 Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
1293 Do love, prize, honour you.
Miranda
1294 I am a fool
1295 To weep at what I am glad of.
[Aside]
Prospero
1296 Fair encounter
1297 Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace
1298 On that which breeds between them!
Ferdinand
1299 Wherefore weep you?
Miranda
1300 At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
1301 What I desire to give; and much less take
1302 What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;
1303 And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
1304 The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!
1305 And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
1306 I am your wife, if you will marry me;
1307 If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow
1308 You may deny me; but I'll be your servant,
1309 Whether you will or no.
Ferdinand
1310 My mistress, dearest;
1311 And I thus humble ever.
Miranda
1312 My husband, then?
Ferdinand
1313 Ay, with a heart as willing
1314 As bondage e'er of freedom: here's my hand.
Miranda
1315 And mine, with my heart in't: and now farewell
1316 Till half an hour hence.
Ferdinand
1317 A thousand thousand!
[Exeunt FERDINAND and MIRANDA severally.]
Prospero
1318 So glad of this as they, I cannot be,
1319 Who are surpris'd withal; but my rejoicing
1320 At nothing can be more. I'll to my book;
1321 For yet, ere supper time, must I perform
1322 Much business appertaining.
[Exit]

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Notes

TLN 1209rhetorical device
“sports are painful, and their labour / Delight in them sets off”
Ferdinand opens with a compressed paradox: some sports (games, pastimes) are painful to perform, and the pleasure one takes in them 'sets off' the pain — that is, makes it look better by contrast, as a jewel is shown off against a dark background. His whole log-bearing labor is redeemed by its purpose.
TLN 1219archaic vocab
“upon a sore injunction”
'Injunction' means a command or order (not only a legal term); 'sore' means severe, harsh, or grievous. Ferdinand is under a strict, painful command — Prospero has ordered him to pile thousands of logs on pain of his continued imprisonment.
TLN 1220archaic vocab
“such baseness / Had never like executor”
'Executor' here means one who performs or carries out a task, not the legal officer who administers a will. Ferdinand (reporting Miranda's own words) is saying that such a lowly, demeaning job has never before had so noble a person doing it. The word keeps its Latin root (exsequi, to carry out) rather than its modern legal narrowing.
TLN 1245archaic vocab
“Poor worm! thou art infected: / This visitation shows it”
In this aside Prospero calls Miranda 'worm' — not an insult but an Elizabethan term of affectionate pity for a helpless, defenseless creature, as in 'poor thing.' 'Infected' means struck by love (love was regularly figured as a disease or contagion). 'Visitation' means the visit itself, which reveals the infection — that is, Miranda's obvious distress at Ferdinand's labor shows she has fallen in love.
TLN 1253archaic vocab
“I have broke your hest to say so”
'Hest' is an archaic word for command or bidding, derived from Old English haes. Miranda has broken Prospero's command not to tell Ferdinand her name — a prohibition that makes sense as part of the trial he is running, and which Miranda now guiltily acknowledges.
TLN 1254wordplay
“Admir'd Miranda! / Indeed, the top of admiration”
Ferdinand plays on the Latin meaning of Miranda's name: from the Latin gerundive miranda, 'she who must be wondered at' or 'admirable one.' By calling her 'Admir'd Miranda' and then 'the top of admiration' Ferdinand is unpacking her name as if it were a definition. Prospero, who named her, almost certainly chose the name for this meaning.
TLN 1262archaic vocab
“Did quarrel with the noblest grace she ow'd, / And put it to the foil”
'Put it to the foil' means to defeat it, overthrow it, or render it worthless. A 'foil' in fencing was a defeat or repulse; to 'put to the foil' was to overcome. Ferdinand means that in every woman he has admired, some flaw eventually defeated — cancelled out — her best quality. Miranda alone has no such flaw.
TLN 1270archaic vocab
“how features are abroad, / I am skill-less of”
'Skill-less of' means ignorant of or without knowledge of. Miranda has no idea what human faces look like in the wider world — 'abroad' means 'out in the world, elsewhere' — because she has grown up in total isolation with only her father for company. She cannot know whether her preference for Ferdinand is sound by any worldly standard.
TLN 1281archaic vocab
“wooden slavery than to suffer / The flesh-fly blow my mouth”
A 'flesh-fly' (Musca carnaria) is a blowfly that lays its eggs in rotting meat or open wounds; to let one 'blow' (deposit its eggs in) your mouth is the most degrading image of helpless filth Ferdinand can conjure. 'Wooden slavery' is his phrase for the log-bearing labor Prospero imposed: ignoble, mechanical work fit for a slave, not a prince.
TLN 1303rhetorical device
“all the more it seeks to hide itself, / The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning! / And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!”
Miranda coins a compressed paradox: the more her love tries to conceal itself (the 'trifling' of modesty), the more conspicuous it becomes — 'the bigger bulk it shows.' She then literally banishes that strategy with an apostrophe: 'Hence, bashful cunning!' — addressing her own disguising impulse as a thing to be sent away — and calls instead on 'plain and holy innocence' to speak for her. The rhetorical move enacts what it describes: she stops hiding and proposes marriage directly.
TLN 1313rhetorical device
“with a heart as willing / As bondage e'er of freedom”
Ferdinand accepts marriage with a simile: his heart is 'as willing' to be Miranda's husband as any slave or prisoner has ever been willing to be free. The comparison is apt: Prospero has literally had Ferdinand in bondage, and he is now simultaneously being freed from that labor-slavery by the love it was designed to test. The simile folds the play's enslavement plot back into the love story.