Caliban plots; "the isle is full of noises"

Another part of the island. The three of them are drunk and getting drunker. Caliban — clearer-eyed than either of his companions despite being more drunk than usual — lays out the murder plan with surprising precision. At about noon Prospero will be asleep. Stephano can drive a nail into his skull or paunch him with a stake or cut his throat. But — Caliban insists — first seize his books. The books are everything. Without them Prospero has no spirits to command, no charms to throw; he is, Caliban says, "but a sot, as I am." With the master dead, Stephano will be king of the island and may have Miranda as his bride; she is a "nonpareil," a beauty without equal. Stephano, drunk and flattered, agrees.

Ariel enters invisibly. As Caliban speaks, Ariel mimics Trinculo's voice — calling Caliban a liar, contradicting him in his own ally's tone. Trinculo protests his innocence; Stephano grows angry; the plot dissolves into a small drunken brawl about who said what. Ariel watches and steers, planting confusion exactly where needed. The murder plan is not stopped, exactly, but it is made stupid; the conspirators cannot agree among themselves long enough to organize anything.

Then, in the middle of the squabble, the spirit-music begins again, this time clearly audible to all three. Stephano panics — what is that sound? Caliban answers, in the play's most surprising and beautiful speech: "be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices that, if I then had waked after long sleep, will make me sleep again." The same Caliban who has been plotting murder reveals an inner life of remembered dreams and waking-into-music. The speech is the play's deepest insistence that whatever else Caliban is, he is also a person who has loved this island. The drunkards, untouched by it, follow the music off-stage, hoping it leads to more wine.