Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 2 of 2] / Including the Biography of the Poet; criticisms on his genius and writings; a new chronology of his plays; a disquisition on the on the object of his sonnets; and a history of the manners, customs, and amusements, superstitions, poetry, and elegant literature of his age

by Nathan Drake

For every trifle are they set upon me:

Sometime like apes, that moe and chatter at me,

And after bite me; then like hedg-hogs, which

Lie tumbling in my bare-foot way, and mount

Their pricks at my foot-fall: sometime am I

All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues,

Do hiss me into madness."[524:A]

They are afterwards commissioned, in the shape of hounds, to hunt this hag-born monster, and his friends Trinculo and Stephano, Prospero telling Ariel,—

"Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints

With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews