Shakespeare on a wooden stage beside a branch of coral and pearls used as props.

Coral and pearls in Ariel’s song

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright and actor. In The Tempest, a shipwrecked young man listens for a singer he cannot see. Ferdinand thinks his father has drowned. Ariel sings to him of what the sea has supposedly made of his body.[1]

What the sea keeps

Branching coral retains something of the shape of a skeleton, and a pearl something of the sheen of an eye. In two lines familiar parts of a body become strange treasures. The verb “suffer” gives the change a cost, while “rich and strange” gives Ferdinand an image beautiful enough to follow.[1]

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:
Burthen: Ding-dong.
Ari. Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.[1]

A bell just out of sight

To Ferdinand the sound is as real as a human voice beside him. He hears a bell and thinks of his father. The audience can hear two things at once: the knell in which Ferdinand believes and the carefully performed music that draws him across the island. His father is alive. The distance between the song and the facts makes its power audible.[1]