PREFACE

By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A.

THE FIRST EDITION

The Tempest first appeared in the Folio of 1623, where it occupies pp. 1-19; no reference has been found to an earlier edition.

The position of the play in the First Folio may perhaps be regarded as evidence of its contemporary popularity; it may, however, have been merely due to "a happy, if perhaps unconscious, intuition" on the part of the editors.

"It is a mimic, magic tempest which we are to see; a tempest raised by Art, to work moral ends with actual men and women, and then to sink into a calm. And in such a storm and calm we have the very idea of a Play or Drama, the fitting specimen and frontispiece of the whole volume of plays before us" (Sir E. Strachey, Quarterly Review, July, 1890, p. 116).

With the exception of The Comedy of Errors, The Tempest is the shortest of Shakespeare's plays; certain critics have held that the text was abridged for acting purposes; others refer its brevity to the unusual amount of stagemachinery introduced, or to the necessities of Court representation.

The Epilogue to the play, as in the case of 2 Henry IV and Henry VIII, is evidently by some other hand than Shakespeare's.

Some scholars hold the same opinion concerning the Masque in Act IV. Shakespeare may well have introduced it in compliance with the fashion of the time; one must bear in mind the fondness for this species of composition which prevailed during the reign of James I.

DATE OF COMPOSITION

No positive evidence exists for the Date of Composition of The Tempest; the probabilities are in favor of 1610– 1611.

The superior limit may be fixed at 1603; the speech of Gonzalo, describing his ideal Commonwealth (II, i, 152, etc.), was certainly derived from a passage in Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays, first published in that year. Shakespeare's own copy of this work, with his autograph, is among the treasures of the British Museum. The passage in question occurs in Chapter xxx, Book I, "Of the Caniballes" (cp. Nutt's Reprint, Vol. I, p. 222). The play obviously connects itself with current stories of colonization and adventures of English seamen. may be direct allusion to a famous shipwreck in the year 1609; an interesting account, which Shakespeare may have read, was published in the following year, entitled A discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called the Ile of Divels: by Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Sommers, and Captayne Newport, and divers others (cp. Prospero's command to Ariel "to fetch dew from the still-vexed Bermoothes").

There

Ben Jonson seems to allude to The Tempest in the Introduction to his Bartholomew Fair (1612–1614):—“If there be never a Servant-monster i̇' the Fayre, who can help it, he sayes; nor a nest of Antiques? Hee is loth to make nature afraid in his Playes, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries!"

The Tempest, among other plays, was acted at Court in the beginning of the year 1613, before Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine Elector, whence some scholars have rashly inferred that it was specially composed for the marriage of the two latter royal personages, and have detected in Prospero a striking resemblance to King James.

Various futile attempts have been made to place The Tempest among Shakespeare's early plays, but, apart from the evidence adduced above, metrical tests make an early date impossible.

THE SOURCES

The Tempest was in all probability founded on some older play, but as yet its source has not been discovered.

An old German Comedy, called The Fair Sidea, by Jacob Ayrer, a notary of Nüremberg, who died in 1605, is perhaps a German version of Shakespeare's original; its plot bears a striking resemblance to that of The Tempest. Ayrer's productions were in many cases mere adaptations or translations of English plays brought to Germany at the beginning of the seventeenth century or previously by strolling players, "The English Comedians," as they called themselves (cp. Cohn's Shakespeare in Germany, Preface, and pp. 1-75).

The Discovery of the Bermudas has been already alluded to above.

In Eden's History of Travayle, 1577, (p. 252, Arber's Reprint), Shakespeare probably found "Setebos" (Act I, sc. ii, 1. 373); from the same work he possibly derived the names of Alonso, Ferdinand, Sebastian, Gonzalo (for Gonzales), and other details.

In dealing with the date of composition reference has been made to Shakespeare's indebtedness to Montaigne; similarly, Ovid's Metamorphoses, vii, 197-206, as translated by Golding, probably suggested Prospero's Invocation, Act V, i, 33, sq.

The name "Ariel," though glossed by Shakespeare as "an ayrie Spirit," is of Hebraistic origin, and was no doubt derived from some such treatise as Heywood's Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels':

"Caliban" is most probably a contemporary variant of "cannibal," which is itself merely another form of "Caribal," i. e. "Caribbean." There seems to be no particular

difficulty in this derivation of the name, yet several scholars have rejected it. "To me," observes Mr. Furness, "it is unsatisfactory. There should be, I think, something in the description of cannibals, either of their features or of their natures, to indicate some sort of fellowship with a monster like Caliban. No such description has been pointed out." This seems hardly enough to negative so plausible a theory as to the origin of the name.

A large number of critics have dealt with this creation of Shakespeare's; three studies call for special mention:(1) Caliban: The Missing Link: by Daniel Wilson; (2) Renan's philosophical drama, entitled Caliban; (3) Browning's Caliban upon Setebos; or Natural Theology in the Island.

THE SCENE OF ACTION

"The Scene, an uninhabited Island"; this indefinite location has not satisfied Shakespearean students, and learned attempts have been made to fix the latitude and longitude of the island; the Bermudas, Lampedusa, Pantalaria, Corcyra, have each in turn been made the scene of Prospero's magic. The old ballad of The Enchanted Island, founded perhaps on The Tempest, and certainly later in composition, gives the right answer to these needless questionings:

"From that daie forth the Isle has beene
By wandering sailors never seene:

Some say, 'tis buryed deepe

Beneath the sea, which breakes and rores
Above its savage rocky shores,

Nor e'er is known to sleepe."

DURATION OF ACTION

The "Time-Analysis" of The Tempest brings out very clearly the fact that in this play Shakespeare had adhered strictly to the unity of time; the whole action of the play lasts from three to four hours; cp. Act I, ii, 239–240; Act V, i, 5; ibid. i. 136-137, 186, 223.