When I woke in to my life, a sobbing dwarf
Whom giants served only as they pleased, I was not what I seemed;
Beyond their busy backs I made a magic
To ride away from a father’s imperfect justice,
Take vengeance on the Romans for their grammar,
(Auden, W.H. The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. 1944.)
Usurp the popular earth and blot out for ever
The gross insult of being a mere one among many…
… I am that I am, your late and lonely master;
Who knows now what magic is; — the power to enchant
That comes from disillusion.
(Ibid.)
All that we are not stares back at what we are.
(Ibid.)
The speaker is Prospero, addressing Ariel.
