The Tempest Gonzalo Quotes

GONZALO: Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.
BOATSWAIN: None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor; if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority: if you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. [To mariners] Cheerly, good hearts! [To the courtiers] Out of our way, I say.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 1. When the Duke of Milan’s advisor Gonazlo cautions the Boatswain to remember the importance of one of his passangers, King Alonso, the Boatswain is unmoved. Busy tring to save the ship, he tells the royal party to get out of his way.

I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage. If he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 1. During the violent storm, the Duke of Milan’s advisor Gonzalo expresses confidence in the ship’s Boatstain, a crude and blasphemous fellow. Gonzalo says that his complexion marks him out as more of a candidate for hanging than drowning.

Some food we had and some fresh water that
A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,
Out of his charity, being then appointed
Master of this design, did give us, with
Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries,
Which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness,
Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2. Prospero voices his love for and gratitude towards the "noble" Gonzalo, for all the help and necessities he provided for Prospero and Miranda in their move from Milan to the island. He furnished them with food, fine clothing and prized books from Prospero’s library, he tells her. The books would have included Prospero’s all-important magic books.

ANTONIO: What impossible matter will he make easy next?
SEBASTIAN: I think he will carry this island home in his pocket and give it his son for an apple.
ANTONIO: And sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth more islands.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1. After washing up on the island from a shipwreck, Gonzalo is being the eternal optimist and sees everything green and advantageous to life there. But Antonio and Sebastian continue to be mean spirited and make fun of him.

You cram these words into mine ears against
The stomach of my sense.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1. Alonso tells Gonzalo that he keeps pushing words into his ears that he doesn’t want to hear. Gonzalo is upbeat about how they have come out of the shipwreck alive with their garments as fresh as the day of the Alonso’s daughter’s marriage. But Alonso regrets that he took a ship to marry off his daughter in Tunis because his son Ferdinand is now dead as a result, he believes.

I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1. The theme of colonialism and the relationship between the European colonizer and native colonized people are explored throughout The Tempest, especially in Prospero’s control of the island and Caliban. But it’s also not far under the surface of the kind and noble Gonzalo. Here he delivers a speech about his idyllic plantation, a new colony of commonwealth, where lack of social rank, labor, riches and poverty would deliver a utopia. Work would be abolished and people would live a life of leisure. Gonzalo imagines creating this perfect state on an island like the one they are on. There would be no kingship, he pledges. Yet he would be ruler and "execute all things." Spoken like a true colonizer! The irony here in Gonzalo’s commonwealth speech is clear.

SEBASTIAN: Yet he would be king on’t.
ANTONIO: The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1. As Gonzalo describes how he would colonize the island and build a perfect state without laws and social hierarchy, Sebastian and Antonio continue to ridicule him with sarcastic comments. But they do highlight inconsistencies in Gonzalo’s imagined paradise and the irony in his speech. For example, Alonso says he would have no sovereignty, yet at the same time he would be king. These are important observations in a play which deals with the themes of freedom, power and servitude.

All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour. Treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth
Of it own kind, all foison, all abundance
To feed my innocent people.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1. Gonzalo is describing the perfect world that he would create in his plantation on the island ruled by him. He personifies nature as he dreams of the bounty it would produce to feed everyone. There would be no treason, crime or weapons on his fantasy island.

A space whose every cubit
Seems to cry out, "How shall that Claribel
Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis,
And let Sebastian wake." Say, this were death
That now hath seized them; why, they were no worse
Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples
As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate
As amply and unnecessarily
As this Gonzalo; I myself could make
A chough of as deep chat. O, that you bore
The mind that I do! what a sleep were this
For your advancement! Do you understand me?

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1. Antonio really is as bad as Prospero painted him earlier in his story of betrayal recounted to Miranda. Here Antonio reveals that he is willing to kill and attempts to talk Sebastian into murdering his brother Alonso the King and his counsellor Gonzalo.

Here lies your brother,
No better than the earth he lies upon,
If he were that which now he’s like, that’s dead;
Whom I, with this obedient steel, three inches of it,
Can lay to bed for ever; whiles you, doing thus,
To the perpetual wink for aye might put
This ancient morsel.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1. There are three metaphors in Antonio’s temptation speech in which he talks of murdering his brother Alonso with his sword and Sebastian killing Gonzalo. He speaks of the "obedient steel" of his sword, death as a "perpetual wink" and Gonzalo as an "ancient morsel."

All three of them are desperate: their great guilt,
Like poison given to work a great time after,
Now ‘gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you
That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly
And hinder them from what this ecstasy
May now provoke them to.

– William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 3. Gonzalo uses a simile when he compares the guilt of Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio to poison, which given time to work now begins to bite at their consciences. He asks the others to follow them to ensure that they do no harm.
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