Prospero and Miranda sit by a glowing brazier. Miranda asks her Father what trouble she was to him during their expulsion from Milan aboard what her father calls a "rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged, nor tackle, sail nor mast - the very rats instinctively [had] quit it."

"O, a cherubin thou wast," he tells her, "that did preserve me."

"Is there more toil?" Ariel asks Prospero. "Since thou dost give me pains, let me remember thee what thou hast promised, which is not yet performed me."

"How now? Moody?" says Prospero, "What is't thou canst demand?"

Ariel, who was the slave of the witch Sycorax and freed by Prospero from confinement in a 'cloven pine' by her, longs for his freedom. "My liberty," he cries.

"A strenuous black calligraphy loops and curls round the volume of green; mottled and patchy areas of white interact with these, while the green is 'seasoned' with amounts of other colors."

Nicolas Pioch, description of Jackson Pollock's Full Fathom Five 1947, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Gonzalo, Adrian and Francisco are overcome with drowsiness and drop into an enchanted sleep. Alonso becomes similarly afflicted. "I wish mine eyes would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts. I find they are inclined to do so."

Antonio and Sebastian offer to guard the sleepers. "Thank you," answers Alonso. "Wondrous heavy."

When the four slumber by an upturned boat, Antonio and Sebastian begin to plot the murder of Alonso and Gonzalo.

"Say this were death that now hath seized them," says Antonio to Sebastian as they look at the sleeping Alonso, Gonzalo, Francisco and Adrian. "What a sleep were this for your advancement!"

Sebastian begins to understand Antonio's meaning: assassinating Alonso will allow Sebastian to become King of Naples. "I remember you did supplant your brother Prospero," he states.

Antonio adopts a regal posture. "True: And look how well my garments sit upon me, much feater than before ..."

Alonso's butler Stephano and chef (folio: fool) Trinculo encounter the wild foundling Caliban. Stephano has a stash of wine and is liberal in using it to entice Caliban into servitude. Brutish Caliban is regarded as a monster by Trinculo. After Stephano persuades Caliban that he is "the man in the moon" the three begin drunkenly revelling. Caliban promises to show Stephano the riches of the isle. "O brave monster!" Stephano cries triumphantly. "Lead the way."

Ferdinand, incapable of resisting Prospero's powers, is forced to move logs. Miranda appears. Within minutes Prospero's plan seems to be working. Miranda and Ferdinand are bantering flirtatiously. "The very instant that I saw you did my heart fly to your service," says Ferdinand, "there resides to make me slave to it, and for your sake am I this patient log man."

Miranda responds: "Do you love me?"

Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban are rich in drink. Caliban persuades Stephano that he should kill Prospero. About to exit to carry out the plot, strange music drifts forth. Stephano and Trinculo fall prostrate, believing the music heralds the arrival of demons. "Are you afeard?" asks Caliban.

Stephano feigns bravery: "No, monster, not I."

Caliban looks up to the sky that is all he has ever known. "Be not afeard," he implores them.

The king's party stop to rest during their fruitless search for the king's lost son. "By'r lakin," Gonzalo sighs, "I can go no further." Just then "strange shapes" appear, bearing a sumptuous feast.

"What harmony is this?" asks Alonso, reacting to the "solemn and strange music" he can hear.

Sebastian is sarcastic: "A living drollery!" he declares, "now I will believe there are unicorns ..."

Ariel addresses the three conspirators who supplanted Prospero: "you 'mongst men being most unfit to live - I have made you mad; and even with such-like valour, men hang and drown their proper selves."

"These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air ..."

Ferdinand and Miranda will soon be instructed to sit on chairs by Prospero, to watch a masque performed by spirits. They are anticipating wedlock.

Prospero asks Ariel about Alonso's party. Ariel reports they are caught in enchanted limbo, imprisoned until released by Prospero's command. "Your charm so strongly works 'em that, if you now beheld them, your affections would become tender."

Ariel's humanlike show of feeling causes Prospero to reflect on his own drive for vengeance. "Not a frown further," he commands, "go release them ..."

Left alone he resolves to abandon his powers: "... this rough magic," he soliloquizes, "I here abjure ..."

Ariel enters bringing with him Alonso and the others. They become suspended like statues. Prospero looks at his usurpers. "A solemn air, and the best comforter to an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains, now useless, boiled within thy skull" he says eyeing them, "there stand, for you are spell-stopped."

"Now my charms are all o'erthrown," says Prospero at the beginning of his final speech. The actors have now gone. He is alone on the stage; Ariel has been set free. "My ending is despair, unless I be relieved by prayer ..." he continues, pleading for audience applause to release him from his actorly obligations. "As you from crimes would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free."