Summary of Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies

William Shakespeare

Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies, a poem taken from William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” is a song sing by the spirit Ariel to Ferdinand, the prince of Naples, who mistakenly thinks his father died by drowning in the sea in Act 1 Scene 2. The poem makes death as a valuable and meaningful element as death transforms the temporary and mortal human body into something valuable, permanent and precious element.

As Ariel sings to Ferdinand n his sad, gloomy mood to console him, he mentions that his father is lying (sleeping) dead under thirty feet below in the sea. His bones have been changed into coral. His eyes have been changed into pearl. No parts of his body has been spared and gone in vain. Receiving these precious elements, the sea has also become rich and strange. All the sea nymphs have done all the formalities required like ringing the knell ding dong.

Summing up, the main theme of this poem is that death, considered as a meaningful element, is regarded as an art that converts the temporary mortal body into something eternal, immortal, valuable, and precious. So, death is not the end of life but it is just a transformation of life from one form to another.

In the poem, the figurative tools are used esp. Alliteration, Assonance and onomatopoeia.

 Alliteration: The repetition of the same consonant sound in the initial position of several words, marking the stressed syllables in a line of poetry or prose. A simple example is the phrase “through thick and thin.” The device is used to emphasize meaning and thus can be effectively employed in oratory. So alliteration is the echoing of consonance e.g.

He healed him over the heel on the hill.

Tell me a tale of tail.

Assonance: The repetition of the same stressed vowel sounds with different consonants is called assonance: Assonance is used in poetry and prose as a phonetic device in which writers repeat similar vowel sounds without a corresponding repetition of consonants. Assonance helps to provide rhythmic structure in informal metrical schemes. The assonant a sounds in these lines from the Shakespeare’s poem “Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies” function as vowel rhymes. The excerpt is recited by a character, Arial.

Onomatopoeia: Onomatopoeia is an imitation of natural sounds by words. Examples in English are the italicized words in the phrases “the humming bee,” the cackling hen,” the whizzing arrow,” and “the buzzing saw.” So the use of sounds that supposedly echo or suggest the meaning is called onomatopoeia: It’s a literary device in which the sounds of words suggest a sense of the subject. In this poem, the phrase ‘Ding Dong Knell’ is exemplified as an onomatopoeic words.