Full fathom five

Posted by Brian from Shawnee on April 25, 2003

I just ran across the phrase "full fathom five", meaning something like "completely sunk into despair". I like the sound of it.

I took a look in the archives here but all I could find were two discussions about "sea-change". Apparently the phrases "full fathom five" and "sea-change" were spoken by Ariel in The Tempest.

But does anyone know the origina of "full fathom five"? Is it from The Tempest originally?