Full Fathom Five

"Full fathom five" are the opening words of a famous song sung by the spirit Ariel in William Shakespeare's The Tempest (I, ii), and the source of the phrase. The phrase "sea change", meaning a transmutation, also originates from this song.

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:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.

People using the name Full Fathom Five

• Full Fathom Five is a six-piece band from Brisbane, Australia.
• Full Fathom Five is the name of a content production company started and owned by novelist James Frey.

Works with the title Full Fathom Five

• Full Fathom Five is a 2008 currency collage by Mark Wagner (80 x 36 in. / 203 x 91 cm).
• Full Fathom Five is the title of a live CD/DVD release by the band Clutch.
• "Full Fathom Five" is an audio drama based on the Doctor Who television series.
• Full Fathom Five is a song by The Stone Roses.
• Full Fathom Five is a song by Miranda Sex Garden.
• Full Fathom Five is a song by Greenhorse.
• Full Fathom Five is a 1947 painting by Jackson Pollock.
• Full Fathom Five is a 1948 novel by American writer Ahmad Kamal.
• Full Fathom Five is the first of the songs in Three Shakespeare Songs, a choral piece written in 1951 by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
• Full Fathom Five is one of the songs in Songs for Ariel, written by Benjamin Britten.
• Full Fathom Five is a 1958 poem by Sylvia Plath.
• Full Fathom Five is sung by Marianne Fathfull on her 1965 album "Come My Way"
• Full fathom five is the second of Three Songs from William Shakespeare by Igor Stravinsky.
• "Full Fathom Five" is the title of episode #21 which deals with submarine warfare, of the "Victory at Sea" television series.
• Full Fathom Five is a book by Mary Lee Coe Fowler about her search for the facts about the loss of her submarine captain father during World War II and the insights that search has brought.
• "Full Fathom Five" is the title of an episode of the television series Hawaii Five-O. It premiered in 1968 as the first one hour episode of season 1, a few weeks after the 2-hour premiere was shown on CBS.
• Full Fathom Five (film) is a 1990 film.
• Full Fathom Five is a 1994 album by Sub Sub.
• Five Fathoms is a 1999 song by Everything but the Girl.
• "Full Fathom Five" is a novel by Australian author Kate Forsyth under the pen-name Kate Humphrey.

Works using the phrase Full Fathom Five

• Full fathom five is the opening line to the song "Anchor Me" by The Mutton Birds.
• Much of the poem itself, including Full fathom five is used in the song "Blue Lagoon" by Laurie Anderson
• Sting's song "Pirate's Bride" uses the phrase in the line, "Full fathom five my true love lies."
• Full Fathom Five is the title of the 1965 book by John Stewart Carter which won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award
• James Joyce's Ulysses contains the phrase "Full fathom five thy father lies"
• May Sinclair's Mary Olivier contains the first sixth verse of the song (Book Three "Adolescence", chapter viii)
• Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible refers to the poem following the news of the patriarchal character Nathan Price's death.
• The five-episode case in Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, "The Fathom Five Matter" uses the poem in full in the first episode, and the boat at the center of the case is named the Fathom Five.
• Ariel's song (complete) is one of many Shakespeare references in the Martin Amis novel The Pregnant Widow.
• Edgar Freemantle's psychologist in Stephen King's "Duma Key" sinks "full fathom five" into his sofa.

Other uses

• Fathom Five National Marine Park is a largely underwater national park in Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada.

See also

• Sea Change
• Rich and Strange
• List of titles of works based on Shakespearean phrases