The Tempest: Act 1, Scene 2 – Analysis
Scene Profile – At a Glance
- Location: The island, outside Prospero’s cell, in the hours after the wreck.
- What Happens: Prospero tells Miranda their history, hears Ariel’s report of the storm, quarrels with Ariel and Caliban, and watches Ferdinand meet Miranda and fall in love, then makes him a prisoner.
- Key Characters: Prospero and Miranda; Ariel; Caliban; Ferdinand.
- Dramatic Function: The play’s exposition and its casting call: every relationship on the island is established in one scene, and the plot Prospero will run for the next four acts is set in motion.
- Famous Quote:
"You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse."
(Caliban, Act 1, Scene 2) - Why It Matters: The longest scene in the play sets up everything – the usurpation, the bargain with Ariel, the quarrel over the island, and the love story – and shows Prospero as storyteller, master and stage manager at once.
Scene Summary
Miranda has watched the ship go down and begs her father to calm the sea if it was his magic that raised it. Prospero tells her that no harm has been done, takes off his magic cloak, and says the time has come to tell her who she is. Twelve years ago he was Duke of Milan. Devoted to his books, he left the government to his brother Antonio, who used the power to make himself duke in fact, then did a deal with Alonso, King of Naples, to make it official in return for tribute. One night Antonio opened the gates of Milan to a Neapolitan force, and Prospero and the three-year-old Miranda were hurried out to sea and set adrift in a rotten boat.
They survived because the Neapolitan lord Gonzalo, put in charge of the business, secretly stocked the boat with food, water, clothes and Prospero’s most valued books. They came ashore on this island, where Prospero has been Miranda’s only teacher. Now, he says, fortune has brought his enemies to the shore, and his whole future depends on what he does in the next few hours. He puts Miranda to sleep with a charm and calls Ariel.
Ariel reports that the tempest was performed to the letter: it boarded the king’s ship as fire, terrified everyone aboard, and saw all but the sailors leap into the sea. Nobody was hurt; the survivors have been landed in separate groups, the king’s son alone; the ship is hidden in a cove with the crew asleep below, and the rest of the fleet is sailing home believing the king drowned. It is now past two in the afternoon. Ariel asks for the freedom Prospero promised, and Prospero turns on the spirit in a rage, reminding it how the witch Sycorax, banished from Algiers, imprisoned it in a cloven pine for twelve years, and how his own art set it free. Ariel apologises, Prospero promises freedom in two days, and sends it off disguised as a sea-nymph.
Prospero wakes Miranda and calls Caliban, Sycorax’s son, who curses them both. Prospero promises him cramps for it. Caliban says the island was his by his mother, that Prospero was kind to him at first and taught him the names of the sun and moon, that he showed Prospero every spring and pit on the island, and that he is now kept in a rock and denied the rest. Prospero answers that he treated Caliban humanely until Caliban tried to rape Miranda; Caliban says he wishes he had succeeded. He is reminded that he could only gabble before he was taught to speak, and replies that his only profit from language is that he knows how to curse. Threatened with more torments, he goes for wood.
Ariel returns, invisible, singing, with Ferdinand following the music. Ferdinand believes his father drowned. A second song tells him that his father lies full fathom five, changed into coral and pearl. Prospero directs Miranda’s eyes to the stranger; she thinks him a spirit, then a thing divine; Ferdinand takes her for the goddess of the island and asks whether she is a maid. The two fall in love at once, as Prospero intended. But to make the prize worth winning he turns harsh, accuses Ferdinand of being a spy who has come to steal the island, and threatens him with chains, sea-water and husks. Ferdinand draws his sword and is frozen by a charm. Miranda pleads for him and is silenced. Ferdinand says that a prison is space enough if he can see this maid once a day, and Prospero, noting that it works, leads him away, promising Ariel its freedom.
The Storm Called Off
The scene opens by undoing the one before it. Miranda’s first speech is a plea on behalf of strangers, and her father’s answer is the play’s first reversal: the wreck she watched was a show, and nobody in it was hurt.
Original
The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touched
The very virtue of compassion in thee,
I have with such provision in mine art
So safely ordered that there is no soul –
No, not so much perdition as an hair
Betid to any creature in the vessel
Which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink.
(Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The painful shipwreck sight, which truly moved
The generous compassion in your heart,
I ordered with instructions in my magic
That everyone onboard would end up safe –
No, not even a strand of hair was lost
By any living creature on the ship
Who you heard scream and you saw sink.
Prospero’s language tells the audience how to read the whole play. The wreck was a spectacle, ordered with provision, and the word he reaches for is art. What looked like weather was direction, and Miranda’s compassion, the very virtue the spectacle touched, was part of the effect. This is the first of many moments in which illusion and reality are the same thing seen from two sides: from the beach the ship was lost, from the cell it was arranged. It also shows the price of Prospero’s method. To tell his daughter the truth he must first put her through the lie, and the pattern will repeat with Ferdinand, Alonso and the drunkards. Every visitor to this island is frightened for their own good.
Twelve Years Ago: The Story of Milan
Most of the scene’s first half is a story told by a man who keeps checking that his listener is awake. Prospero’s account of his fall is the play’s back-story, but the way he tells it is character.
Original
I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness and the bettering of my mind
With that which, but by being so retired,
O'er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother
Awaked an evil nature...
(Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
So I – neglecting ordinary life, and
In isolation, focused on my mind
With subjects which, aside from being alone,
Were worth more than assumed – made my fraud brother
Unearth his evil nature...
Notice who Prospero blames. His brother is false, an ivy that sucked out his verdure, a man who told the lie of dukedom so often that he came to believe it; and yet the sentence that describes the crime begins with I. Prospero neglected worldly ends; Prospero’s trust, like a good parent, begot the falsehood; Prospero’s retirement awoke the evil nature. The admission is grudging and half-buried in syntax, but it is there, and it is the reason the play can end in forgiveness rather than execution. A duke who knows he handed his brother the keys cannot play the innocent victim, and the theme of power and control in this play begins with a ruler who did not want to rule. The interruptions – dost thou attend me, thou attend’st not, dost thou hear – are usually played for comedy, and they are funny, but they also show a man who has told this story to nobody for twelve years and cannot quite believe he is telling it now.
Ariel and the Price of Freedom
With Miranda asleep, the scene changes register. Ariel’s entrance is all speed and willingness; within fifty lines the same spirit is asking for its liberty and being called a liar.
Original
ARIEL: Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,
Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,
Which is not yet performed me.
PROSPERO: How now? Moody?
What is't thou canst demand?
ARIEL: My liberty.
(Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
ARIEL: Is there more work? As you’re giving me jobs,
Let me remind you what you promised me,
Which I’ve not yet received.
PROSPERO: What? Are you moody?
What is it that you want?
ARIEL: I want my freedom.
The exchange sets the terms of the play’s central relationship. Ariel has served without a lie or a grumble and has been promised a year off its sentence; Prospero, asked to honour the promise, answers with a story about Sycorax that ends in a threat to peg the spirit in an oak for another twelve winters. It is the master’s classic move – you owe me your freedom, so you cannot ask for it – and the scene lets the audience see it as a move. But it also lets Ariel win. By the end of the scene Prospero has twice promised freedom within two days, and the play will hold him to it. The argument about imprisonment and freedom begins here, with a servant who is already half free and a master who needs three more hours of service before he can let go.
Caliban’s Island
Caliban enters cursing, and the scene’s temperature rises. Prospero’s account of him is a monster’s; his own account is a landlord’s.
Original
This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,
Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me
Water with berries in't, and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee
And showed thee all the qualities o' the isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:
Cursed be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o' the island.
(Caliban, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
My mother, Sycorax, left me this island
Which you have taken from me. When you first came,
You petted and fussed over me; you’d give me
Water with berries in it, and you’d teach me
The sun’s name, and by night, you’d name the moon:
They shine by day and night. And then I loved you
And showed you all the best parts of the island:
Fresh water springs, saltwater pits, the best spots.
I curse myself for doing that! The spells
Of Sycorax – toads, beetles, bats – be on you!
For I’m the only person that you rule,
Where I ruled first; you lock me in a pigsty,
In this hard rock, preventing me from going
Around the island.
The speech is a title deed. The island came to Caliban from his mother; Prospero arrived, was kind, taught him the names of things, and was shown the island’s resources in return; then the kindness stopped and Caliban was penned in a rock. Nothing Prospero says afterwards disputes the sequence; he disputes only the ending, and the reason he gives, the attempted rape of Miranda, is one Caliban does not deny but relishes. The play leaves the two accounts side by side, which is why the scene has become the founding text for readings of the play as a study of colonialism and empire. But the exchange is also about nature and nurture: Prospero’s claim that no print of goodness would take on Caliban is a theory of nature, and Caliban’s reply, that language only taught him to curse, is a theory of nurture. The audience has a whole play to decide between them.
The Lovers and the Stage Manager
Ariel’s songs bring Ferdinand up the beach and the scene turns into a courtship – the fastest in Shakespeare – watched over by a father who has planned every step of it.
Original
They are both in either's powers; but this swift business
I must uneasy make, lest too light winning
Make the prize light.
(Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
They’re both enraptured; but their smitten swiftness
I must disrupt, or else this easy victory
Will undermine the prize.
Ferdinand and Miranda change eyes at first sight, and Prospero says so in an aside, thanking Ariel and promising it freedom. Then he does something odd: he turns on the boy he has just chosen for his daughter, calls him a spy and a traitor, and threatens him with manacles and sea-water. The aside explains it. Too easy a winning would make the prize light; the love must be tested, or it will not be valued. It is the logic of the whole play – suffering as the price of joy – applied to a wedding, and Prospero applies it with the same relish he brings to tormenting Caliban. Miranda’s protest, her first act of disobedience, is silenced; Ferdinand’s resistance is charmed away with a stick. And Ferdinand, told he is a prisoner, says that a prison with Miranda in view is space enough. He is the first of the play’s captives to find that captivity on this island is the beginning of something rather than the end.
Language and Technique
- Interrupted narrative: Prospero’s story of Milan keeps stopping to ask whether Miranda is listening: the interruptions make the exposition dramatic and show a man unused to telling it.
- Plant imagery: Antonio is “The ivy which had hid my princely trunk” – the usurper as a parasite on a tree, an image the play returns to when Caliban is called earth and Ariel is freed from a pine.
- Songs as stage directions: Ariel’s two songs do plot work: the first leads Ferdinand up the beach, the second tells him his father is dead. Music is how this island moves people about.
- Sea-change: “Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change” – a phrase Shakespeare seems to have coined here, describing loss as transformation, which is the play’s whole promise.
- Two accounts of one history: Caliban’s speech and Prospero’s reply tell the same story of the island in opposite directions, and the scene refuses to referee between them.
- Asides: Prospero speaks over the heads of the lovers – “It goes on, I see, / As my soul prompts it” – so the audience watches the courtship as a plan being executed.
Key Quotes from Act 1, Scene 2
Quote 1
Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since,
Thy father was the Duke of Milan and
A prince of power.
(Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
It’s been twelve years, Miranda, twelve years since
Your father was the Duke of Milan and
A prince with power.
Quote Analysis: The first hard fact of the back-story. Prospero states his title twice over, duke and prince of power, to a daughter who does not know he had one; the modern verse keeps the doubled twelve years, which sound like a man counting.
Me, poor man, my library
Was dukedom large enough...
(Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
But my library
Was all the dukedom I required...
Quote Analysis: The original sin of the play, admitted in passing. Prospero wanted a library, not a dukedom, and got the island instead. The modern verse keeps the exchange rate: all the dukedom he required.
All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curled clouds, to thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality.
(Ariel, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Greetings, great master! Sir, greetings! I’ve come
To do what you desire; be it to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On floating clouds, to do whatever task
You give to me and my skills.
Quote Analysis: Ariel’s first words, a list of impossible errands offered as a job description. Fly, swim, dive into fire, ride the clouds: the modern verse keeps the eagerness and the strangeness. Within fifty lines the same spirit will be asking for its liberty.
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years...
(Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Refusing her commands, she locked you up –
With help from her most powerful assistants
And in her most almighty, angry rage –
Within a fractured pine tree. In that gap
You then remained imprisoned painfully
For twelve years...
Quote Analysis: Prospero’s account of Ariel’s imprisonment by Sycorax. He tells it as a reminder of debt, but the audience hears the parallel: twelve years in a pine, twelve years on an island. Master and servant have served the same sentence.
Thou most lying slave,
Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee,
Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee
In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
The honour of my child.
(Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
You’re a lying slave,
Who acts when whipped, not cared for! I have treated
You kindly, even though you’re filth, and kept you
In my own home, until you tried to rape
My honourable daughter.
Quote Analysis: Prospero’s answer to Caliban’s title deed. He does not deny the sequence Caliban has described; he supplies the ending, the attempted rape. The modern verse makes the accusation plain. Whether it justifies everything that followed is the question the play leaves open.
My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.
My father's loss, the weakness which I feel,
The wreck of all my friends, nor this man's threats,
To whom I am subdued, are but light to me,
Might I but through my prison once a day
Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth
Let liberty make use of; space enough
Have I in such a prison.
(Ferdinand, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
My powers, like in a dream, no longer work.
My father’s death, the weakness that I feel,
The death of all my friends, nor this man’s threats,
Who’s cast a spell on me, are nothing to me
If I can look out of my prison daily
And see this girl. All other spots on earth
Are free to use; for I’ll have all the space
I need in prison.
Quote Analysis: Ferdinand, charmed and captive, discovers that captivity does not matter. The speech turns the play’s images of imprisonment inside out: a prison with Miranda in view is space enough, and the modern verse keeps the paradox to the last line.
Key Takeaways
- Everything is set up here: The usurpation, the bargain with Ariel, the quarrel with Caliban and the love story all begin in one scene, and Prospero controls every one of them.
- Prospero half-blames himself: The story of Milan admits that a duke who preferred his library invited his own fall, which is why the play can end in forgiveness.
- Two masters, two servants: Ariel serves willingly and asks for freedom; Caliban serves under threat and claims the island. Both are answered with the same threat of torment.
- Love as a plan: Ferdinand and Miranda fall in love in seconds because Prospero arranged it; his harshness to Ferdinand is part of the design, not a change of heart.
- Three hours to go: Prospero checks the time with Ariel: the play runs in something like real time from here, and every plot on the island has a deadline.
Study Questions and Analysis
Why does Prospero tell Miranda their history now, after twelve years?
Because the enemies who put them on the island have just been wrecked on it, and he has, as he tells her, one afternoon in which to act. Fortune has brought Antonio and Alonso within reach, and his prescience tells him that his whole future depends on seizing the moment. Miranda needs to know who she is because she is about to meet the King of Naples’s son and, if the plan works, marry him; a princess of Milan is a different match from a magician’s daughter.
By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,
Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore; and by my prescience
I find my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star, whose influence
If now I court not but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop.
(Prospero, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
By strange mishap, the kind goddess of luck,
Who now I serve, had got my enemies
And brought them to this shore; and through my foresight
I find my greatest strength arises when
The stars align, whose strength and influence,
If left unused, will make my own good fortune
Wither away forever.
The timing also reveals something about Prospero. He has kept the story to himself for twelve years and tells it now only because the plot requires it; even then he tells it in fits, checking again and again that she is listening. The astrological language – a zenith, an auspicious star – places him in the tradition of the Renaissance magus who reads his moment in the heavens, and it tells the audience that the play’s three hours are not chosen at random. Prospero is working against a deadline set by the stars, and the sense of hurry that runs through the scene comes from that.
Is Prospero to blame for losing his dukedom?
Partly, and he says so, though not in so many words. His own account is that he was rapt in secret studies, cast the government on his brother, and grew a stranger to his state; his trust, he says, awoke an evil nature in Antonio and begot a falsehood as great as the trust itself. The chain of cause runs from Prospero’s neglect to Antonio’s ambition, and Prospero is the one who lays it out.
Critics have divided over how much weight to give this. Frank Kermode’s Arden edition (1954) presented Prospero as the play’s figure of Art and reason, whose fall was a crime committed against him; Jan Kott, in Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1964), read the story as an experiment in power that had failed once already in Milan and would fail again on the island. The scene supports both. Antonio’s treachery is real, and so is the fact that Prospero handed him the means. What the admission makes possible is the ending: a man who knows his own part in the wrong can forgive it in others, and Prospero’s grudging I at the start of the sentence is the seed of the rarer action in Act 5.
What is the relationship between Prospero and Ariel?
Master and servant, bound by a debt and a promise. Prospero freed Ariel from the cloven pine in which Sycorax had imprisoned it for twelve years, and in return Ariel serves him for a fixed term, which Prospero has promised to shorten by a year. In this scene the term is nearly up, Ariel asks for its liberty, and Prospero answers by retelling the story of the pine and threatening an oak. The threat works, and Ariel promises to do its spiriting gently.
The relationship is warm and coercive at once, and the scene shows both sides within a few lines: my brave spirit, why that’s my spirit, then thou liest, malignant thing. William Hazlitt, in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (1817), called Ariel imaginary power, the swiftness of thought personified, and the scene bears that out – Ariel is the instrument through which everything Prospero wants gets done. But an instrument that asks for its freedom is more than an instrument, and the play keeps the question of masters and servants open by making Ariel’s release the condition of the whole plot. Prospero promises it here, twice; the last words of Act 5 keep the promise.
Who was Sycorax, and why does she matter?
Caliban’s mother, a witch banished from Algiers for sorceries too terrible to describe, spared execution because she was pregnant, and left on the island by sailors. She ruled it by magic, imprisoned Ariel in a pine for refusing her commands, gave birth to Caliban, and died before Prospero arrived. She never appears in the play; everything the audience knows about her comes from Prospero, who uses her story to remind Ariel what it owes him and to insult Caliban.
She matters because she is Prospero’s shadow. Both were exiles who came to the island with a child and ruled it by magic; both imprisoned Ariel in a tree, or threatened to; and Prospero’s insistence that her magic was damnable and his is art is the play’s way of raising a question it never quite answers. Stephen Orgel, in “Prospero’s Wife” (1984), pointed out that the play’s mothers are all absent – Miranda’s dismissed in a line, Sycorax dead before the action – and that Prospero fills the space with surrogates he can control. The scene’s account of Sycorax is the fullest portrait the play gives of a woman with power, and it is delivered entirely by the man who took her place.
Who is right about the island, Caliban or Prospero?
Both accounts are true as far as they go, and the scene is built so that neither cancels the other. Caliban says the island was his by inheritance, that Prospero was kind at first, that he showed the newcomer everything, and that he is now confined to a rock. Prospero says he treated Caliban with human care and lodged him in his own cell until the attempted rape of Miranda, and that the confinement is punishment. Caliban does not deny the attempt; he says he wishes it had worked.
You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
(Caliban, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
You taught me how to speak; I’ve benefitted
By knowing how to curse. May plague destroy you
For teaching me your language!
For most of the play’s history Prospero’s version won, and Caliban was a monster who got what he deserved. Since the mid-twentieth century the balance has shifted. Stephen Greenblatt’s essay “Learning to Curse” (1976) read Caliban’s retort as a bitter moral victory: the coloniser’s gift of language turned back on the giver. Samuel Johnson (1765) had already noted that Caliban had no names for the sun and moon before Prospero arrived, which is exactly Caliban’s complaint. A student does not have to choose. The scene dramatises the dispute about colonialism and empire and leaves it unresolved, and the ending, where Prospero acknowledges the thing of darkness as his own, is the play’s own last word on it.
Why does Prospero pretend to be angry with Ferdinand?
He says why, in an aside: the two have fallen in love at first sight, exactly as he planned, but a love that comes too easily will be valued too lightly, so he must make the swift business uneasy. The accusation that Ferdinand is a spy come to steal the island, the threats of manacles and sea-water, the charm that freezes his sword-arm, and the log-carrying that follows in Act 3 are all a test staged by the man who wants the match to succeed.
There is more in it than method, though. Prospero has just told the story of a brother who usurped him, and the language he uses to Ferdinand – thou dost here usurp the name thou owest not – is the language of that story. Giving away a daughter is a loss of power, and the harshness is partly a father’s reluctance dressed up as strategy. Lorie Jerrell Leininger, in “The Miranda Trap” (1980), argued that the play needs Miranda as the bait in Prospero’s plot and then needs to protect her from the consequences; the scene shows both needs at once, with Prospero arranging the courtship and then punishing the suitor. Ferdinand’s answer, that a prison with Miranda in view is space enough, tells Prospero the test is already passed.
What do Ariel’s two songs mean?
They are the machinery by which Ferdinand is brought to Miranda, and they work on his grief. The first, “Come unto these yellow sands”, is a dance-song that draws him along the beach; he cannot tell whether the music is in the air or the earth, and notes that it has calmed both the sea’s fury and his own. The second, “Full fathom five”, tells him plainly that his father is drowned, and describes the body turned to coral and pearl by the sea.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.
(Ariel, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Your father lies at thirty feet;
His bones are coral now;
His eyes have turned to pearls, complete;
He’s just the same somehow,
But the sea has made him change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his death-bell.
The second song is a lie, since Alonso is alive on another part of the island, and the play does not apologise for it: Ferdinand must believe himself an orphan and a king so that his love for Miranda has nothing else to compete with. But the lie is also the play’s most beautiful statement of its own method. Nothing fades; everything suffers a sea-change into something rich and strange. That is what will happen to Alonso’s guilt, to Prospero’s anger and to Caliban’s rebellion, and the song announces it before the transformations begin. Samuel Johnson admired the songs as the best expression of Ariel’s frolic control of nature; the modern verse keeps the rhymes so that the spell still works.
Who speaks the “Abhorred slave” speech, Prospero or Miranda?
In the First Folio the speech that begins “Abhorred slave” – the reminder that Caliban could only gabble like a brute until he was taught to speak – is given to Miranda. Editors from Dryden and Davenant in 1667 through Theobald in 1733 reassigned it to Prospero, on the grounds that its harshness and its knowledge were unsuitable for a girl of fifteen, and that assignment held for two centuries. Frank Kermode’s Arden edition of 1954 restored it to Miranda, and most modern editions follow him.
The Shakespeare Retold text gives the speech to Prospero, and this page follows the book. The choice changes the scene’s shape. Given to Miranda, the speech makes her Caliban’s teacher and the object of his attempted rape in the same breath, and gives her the play’s harshest lines about him; given to Prospero, it keeps the quarrel between the two men and leaves Miranda’s one line of the exchange, that Caliban is a villain she does not love to look on. Either way, Caliban’s reply about language answers whoever taught him, and the argument about nature and nurture it raises does not depend on the speaker.
