One face cries nothing, Prospero,
My conscience is my own; Pallid Sebastian does not know j
The dream in which Antonio Fights the white bull alone. j
I
I
TRINCULO
Mechanic, merchant, king, Are warmed by the cold clown Whose head is in the clouds And never can get down.
Into a solitude Undreamed of by their fat Quick dreams have lifted me; The north wind steals my hat.
On clear days I can see Green acres far below, And the red roof where I Was Little Trinculo.
There lies that solid world These hands can never reach; My history, my love, Is but a choice of speech.
A terror shakes my tree, A flock of words fly out, Whereat a laughter shakes The busy and devout.
Wild images, come down Out of your freezing sky, That I, like shorter men, May get my joke and die.
One note is jarring, Prospera,
My humour is my own; Tense Trinculo will never know The paradox Antonio
Laughs at, in woods, alone.
MIRANDA
My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely, As the poor and sad are real to the good king, And the high green hill sits always by the sea.
Up jumped the Black Man behind the elder tree, Turned a somersault and ran away waving; My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.
The Witch gave a squawk; her venomous body Melted into light as water leaves a spring And the high green hill sits always by the sea.
At his crossroads, too, the Ancient prayed for me; Down his wasted cheeks tears of joy were running: My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.
He kissed me awake, and no one was sorry; The sun shone on sails, eyes, pebbles, anything, And the high green hill sits always by the sea.
So, to remember our changing garden, we Are linked as children in a circle dancing: My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely, And the high green hill sits always by the sea.
One link is missing, Prospera,
My magic is my own; Happy Miranda does not know The figure that Antonio, The Only One, Creation's O Dances for Death alone.
III Caliban to the Audience
If now, having dismissed your hired impersonators with verdicts ranging from the laudatory orchid to the disgusted and disgusting egg, you ask and, of course, notwithstanding the conscious fact of his irrevocable absence, you instinctively do ask for our so good, so great, so dead author to stand before the finally lowered curtain and take his shyly responsible bow for this, his latest, ripest production, it is I—my reluctance is, I can assure you, co-equal with your dismay— who will always loom thus wretchedly into your confused picture, for, in default of the all-wise, all-explaining master you would speak to, who else at least can, who else indeed
must respond to your bewildered cry, but its very echo, the
begged question you would speak to him about.
* * *
We must own [for the present I speak your echo] to a nervous perplexity not unmixed, frankly, with downright resentment. How can we grant the indulgence for which in his epilogue your personified type of the creative so lamely, tamely pleaded? Imprisoned, by you, in the mood doubtful, loaded, by you, with distressing embarrassments, we are, we submit, in no position to set anyone free.
Our native Muse, heaven knows and heaven be praised, is not exclusive. Whether out of the innocence of a childlike heart to whom all things are pure, or with the serenity of a status so majestic that the mere keeping up of tones and appearances, the suburban wonder as to what the strait-laced Unities might possibly think, or sad sour Probability possibly say, are questions for which she doesn't because she needn't, she hasn't in her lofty maturity any longer to care a rap, she invites, dear generous-hearted creature that she is, just tout Ie monde to drop in at any time so that her famous, memorable, sought-after evenings present to the speculative eye an ever-shining, never-tarnished proof of her amazing unheard-of power to combine and happily contrast, to make every shade of the social and moral palette contribute to the general richness, of the skill, unapproached and unattempted by Grecian aunt or Gallic sister, with which she can skate full tilt toward the forbidden incoherence and then, in the last split second, on the shuddering edge of the bohemian standardless abyss effect her breathtaking triumphant turn.
No timid segregation by rank or taste for her, no prudent listing into those who will, who might, who certainly would not get on, no nicely graded scale of invitations to heroic formal Tuesdays, young comic Thursdays, al fresco farcical Saturdays. No, the real, the only test of the theatrical as of the gastronomic, her practice confidently wagers, is the mixed perfected brew.
As he looks in on her, so marvellously at home with all her cosy swarm about her, what accents will not assault the new arrival's ear, the magnificent tropes of tragic defiance and despair, the repartee of the high humour, the pun of the very low, cultured drawl and manly illiterate bellow, yet all I
of them gratefully doing their huge or tiny best to make the |
party go?
And if, assured by her smiling wave that of course he may, he should presently set out to explore her vast and rambling |
mansion, to do honour to its dear odd geniuses of local convenience and proportion, its multiplied deities of mysterious stair and interesting alcove, not one of the laughing groups j
and engrossed warmed couples that he keeps "surprising"— I
the never-ending surprise for him is that he doesn't seem '
to—but affords some sharper instance of relations he would |
have been the last to guess at, choleric prince at his ease |
with lymphatic butler, moist hand taking so to dry, youth .
getting on quite famously with stingy cold old age, some I
stranger vision of the large loud liberty violently rocking yet never, he is persuaded, finally upsetting the jolly crowded boat. I
What, he may well ask, has the gracious goddess done to |
all these people that, at her most casual hint, they should so 1
trustingly, so immediately take off those heavy habits one I
thinks of them as having for their health and happiness day and night to wear, without in this unfamiliar unbuttoned state—the notable absence of the slightest shiver or not- quite-inhibited sneeze is indication positive—for a second feeling the draught? Is there, could there be, any miraculous suspension of the wearily historic, the dingily geographic, the dully drearily sensible beyond her faith, her charm, her love, to command? Yes, there could be, yes, alas, indeed yes, O there is, right here, right now before us, the situation present.
How could you, you who are one of the oldest habitues j
at these delightful functions, one, possibly the closest, of her (
trusted inner circle, how could you be guilty of the incredible unpardonable treachery of bringing along the one creature, as I
you above all men must have known, whom she cannot and
will not under any circumstances stand, the solitary exception she is not at any hour of the day or night at home to, the unique case that her attendant spirits have absolute instructions never, neither at the front door nor at the back, to admit?
At Him and at Him only does she draw the line, not because there are any limits to her sympathy but precisely because there are none. Just because of all she is and all she means to be, she cannot conceivably tolerate in her presence the represented principle of not sympathising, not associating, not amusing, the only child of her Awful Enemy, the rival whose real name she will never sully her lips with—"that envious witch" is sign sufficient—who does not rule but defiantly is the unrectored chaos.