Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child,
And here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave,
As thou report’s thyself, was then her servant;
And, for thou was't a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers
And in her most unmitigated rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprison’d, thou dids’t painfully remain
A dozen years; within which space she died,
And left thee there; where thou first bent thy groans
As fast at mill-wheels strike. Then was this island--
Save for the son that she did litter here,
A freckled whelp hag-born-- not honour’d with
A human shape.

 

Prospero

The Tempest            Act I, Scene ii, Line 274

 

Hest is the only word in there I am completely unfamiliar with (and I’ve read this play many times). MW has it though: Command, Precept. It’s listed as archaic; so I’ll give you that.
Nonetheless, it is all in all a quite understandable passage. Wouldn’t you agree?

Just in case you didn’t know, this is Prospero talking to Ariel and recounting to him (her? them?) what Ariel had told Prospero at an earlier date. It’s the story of how when Prospero first came to the island, he found Ariel trapped inside a tree where the hag witch Sycorax had left him.

I’m not sure why I decided to type out the whole passage. Today’s Totally Random Line was Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee. Now that’s in the middle of a long sentence that takes up a good deal of the passage, so I decided to just give you the whole thing.

And there you go.

And here you go with a pic of Prospero and Ariel having this conversation.