Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Shakespeare's The Tempest

Lately, I've been re-reading The Tempest in a book of four Shakespeare plays.*  Recently, I read Act III, Scene I and noticed some significance in the structure of Ferdinand's reply when Miranda asks him if he loves her:
O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,
And crown what I profess with kind event,
If I speak true! if hollowly, invert
What best is boded me to mischief!  I,
Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
Do love, prize, honor you.
Part of his response features a chiasm (apodosis | protasis || protasis | apodosis):
Bear witness to this sound, and crown what I profess with kind event,
If I speak true!
If hollowly,
Invert what best is boded me to mischief!
This structure highlights the opposite nature of "true" and "hollowly" and, in a way, even matches Ferdinand's "invert."

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*Four Comedies (A Midsummer Night's DreamAs You Like ItTwelfth Night, and The Tempest), published by Washington Square Press, Inc., 1948.  I have a copy of the 26th printing from January 1965, which I got from my grandfather's basement many years ago.