"Ariel's song" is a verse passage in Scene ii of Act I of William Shakespeare's ''
The Tempest''. It consists of two stanzas to be delivered by the spirit
Ariel
Ariel may refer to:
Film and television
*Ariel Award, a Mexican Academy of Film award
* ''Ariel'' (film), a 1988 Finnish film by Aki Kaurismäki
* ''ARIEL Visual'' and ''ARIEL Deluxe'', 1989 and 1991 anime video series based on the novel series ...
, in the hearing of
Ferdinand
Ferdinand is a Germanic name composed of the elements "protection", "peace" (PIE "to love, to make peace") or alternatively "journey, travel", Proto-Germanic , abstract noun from root "to fare, travel" (PIE , "to lead, pass over"), and "co ...
. In performance it is sometimes sung and sometimes spoken. There is an extant musical setting of the second stanza by Shakespeare's contemporary
Robert Johnson
Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generati ...
, which may have been used in the original production around 1611
It is the origin of the phrase
full fathom five, after which there are many cultural references, and is an early written record of the phrase
sea change.
Through its use of
rhyme,
rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...
,
assonance
Assonance is a resemblance in the sounds of words/syllables either between their vowels (e.g., ''meat, bean'') or between their consonants (e.g., ''keep, cape''). However, assonance between consonants is generally called ''consonance'' in America ...
, and
alliteration
Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...
, the poem sounds like a
spell.
"Full fathom five"
"Full fathom five" is the beginning of the second stanza of "Ariel's song",
"Poem of the Week" site
/ref> better known than the first stanza, and often presented alone. It implicitly addresses Ferdinand who, with his father, has just gone through a shipwreck in which the father supposedly drowned.
Selected cultural references
* Parts or all of it have been set to music by Arthur Sullivan ('' The Tempest''), Ralph Vaughan Williams (Three Shakespeare Songs
''Three Shakespeare Songs'' is a piece of classical choral music written for an a cappella SATB choir. It was written in 1951 by the British classical composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The work comprises three short pieces which are setting ...
), Pete Seeger
Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ...
(''Two from Shakespeare''), and Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull (born 29 December 1946) is an English singer and actress. She achieved popularity in the 1960s with the release of her hit single " As Tears Go By" and became one of the lead female artists during the British I ...
.
* On the gravestone of Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome the lines “Nothing of him that doth fade, / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.” are engraved. His schooner, on which he sailed the day he drowned, was called ‘Ariel’.
* Rich and Strange
''Rich and Strange'', released in the United States as ''East of Shanghai'', is a 1931 romance film directed by Alfred Hitchcock during his time in the British film industry. The film was adapted by Hitchcock, his wife Alma Reville, and Val V ...
, a 1931 film by Alfred Hitchcock
See also
* List of titles of works based on Shakespearean phrases
References
{{Authority control
The Tempest