THE TEMPEST

THE TEMPEST first appeared in print as the opening play in the First Folio. This fact bas, curiously enough, been taken as a reason for considering it Shakespeare's last drama; but more substantial evidence exists for placing it thus late. One limit is fixed by its presence in a list of plays performed during the marriage festivities of King James's daughter Elizabeth in the early spring of 1613. The other is less definite, but is approximately indicated by the author's use of details from various accounts of the wreck of Sir George Somers in 1609. Within these limits, 1610 to 1613, opinion varies. Metrical evidence associates The Tempest with Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, but does not decide their relative order. Those who place the play in 1612 regard it as having been specially written for the betrothal or the marriage of the Princess, adducing in support the large spectacular element and the nature of the masque in the fourth act. Further attempts to strengthen the argument by finding in Prospero a portrait of King James. and in the supposed drowning of Ferdinand references to the death of Prince Henry, are not convincing ; nor does the mere fact of performance at the wedding prove anything, since the numerous other plays then acted were revivals. The Revels accounts contain an entry stating that The Tempest was presented at Whitehall on Hallowmas night, 1611, and though this is now known to have been forged, it may have been well founded, since sixty years before the forgery Malone had stated, on evidence no longer accessible, that he knew the play existed in the autumn of 1611. On the whole, there is no evidence quite strong enough to counterbalance the standing presumption in favor of Malone's accuracy, so that 1611 remains the most probable date. There is thus nothing to hinder us from regarding the play as the last completed by Shakespeare alone.

For the main thread of the plot no source has been discovered. The resemblance to Die Schöne Sidea of Jakob Ayrer of Nuremberg, who died in 1605, is much less striking when the whole of Ayrer's play is read than when the points of likeness are extracted. In both plays we have a prince given to magic, and driven into exile with a daughter who marries the son of his enemy; an attendant spirit; and most striking of all — the imposition of log-carrying upon the captive prince, and the fixing of his sword in his scabbard. But there is absolutely no similarity in character, and Ayrer's devil has nothing in common with Ariel, save his function as a supernatural servant. The fixing of the sword is a commonplace of magic, and even the carrying or splitting of logg is found as a task imposed by a magician on a captive prince in folk-tales having no connection with the present plays. The most that can be said is that both dramas may go back to a common origin, which, however, may have been far from immediate. “A fellow-actor's description" of the German play is of course a possibility, especially since English comedians are known to have been in Nuremberg in 1604 and 1606; but a positive statement is not warranted by the evidence.

Of the origin of minor details we can speak with more assurance. Shakespeare was well read in the literature of travel of his time, and evidences of this abound in the present case. In his descriptions of the island and of the storm he drew especially from the narratives of Sylvester Jourdan and William Strachey, who wrote accounts of the wreck on the Bermudas of one of the ships belonging to the expedition to Virginia led by Somers and Gates in 1609. Information with regard to this and similar adventures may well have reached him from oral sources also. Gonzalo's commonwealth (11. i. 147 ff.) was suggested by two passages in Florio's translation of Montaigne (1603). Prospero's abjuration speech (v. i. 33 ff.) is influenced by a passage in Golding's Ovid. Setebos is taken from Eden's History of Travaile (1577), where the name occurs as that of the devil-god of the Patagonian giants. Ariel occurs in Isaiah, and is the name of a prince of spirits in cabalistic literature. Miranda is evidently a significant coinage, like Perdita and Marina ; and Caliban may be merely an anagram for “cannibal.” The island is clearly not meant to be identified with Bermuda or any other.

THE TEMPEST

[DRAMATIS PERSONÆ] Alonso, king of Naples.

Master of a Ship. SEBASTIAN, his brother.

Boatswain.
PROSPERO, the right duke of Milan.

Mariners.
ANTONIO, his brother, the usurping duke of Milan.
FERDINAND, son to the king of Naples.

MIRANDA, daughter to Prospero. GONZALO, an honest old Counsellor.

ARIEL, an airy Spirit.
ADRIAX,

IRIS,
Lords.
FRANCISCO

CERES,
CALIBAN, à savage and deformod Slave.

JUNO,

Spirits. TRINCULO, a Jester.

Nymphs,
STEPHANO, a drunken Butler.

Reapers,
[Other Spirits attending on Prospero.]
SCENE: (A ship at sea ;] an uninhabited island.

THE TEMPEST

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Though every drop of water swear against it
And gape at wid'st to glut him.

(A confused noise within.
Mercy on us !
We split, we split! Farewell, my wife and

children !
Farewell, brother! We split, we split, we split !

Ant. Let's all sink wi' the King.
Seb. Let's take leave of him. (Erit.

Gon. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above bé done! but I would fain die a dry death.

[Exeunt. SCENE II. (The island. Before Prospero's cell.]

Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA.
Mir. If by your art, my dearest father, you

have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking

pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's

cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dash'd all to pieces! O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they per-

ish'd.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow'd and
The fraughting souls within her.
Pros.

Be collected;
No more amazement. Tell your piteous heart
There's no harm done.

O, woe the day!
Pros.

No harm.
I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who
Art ignorant of what thou art, nought know-

ing
Of whence I am, nor that I am more better
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father,
Mir.

More to know
Did never meddle with my thoughts.
Pros.

'Tis time I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand, And pluck my magic garment from me. So,

(Lays down his mantle.] Lie there, my art. Wipe thou thine eyes ;

have comfort.
The direful spectacle of the wreck, which

touch'd
The very virtue of compassion in thee,
I have with such provision in mine art
So safely ordered that there is no soul
No, not so much perdition as an hair
Betid to any creature in the vessel
Which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st

sink. Sit down;
For thou must now know farther.
Mir.

You have often Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp'd

And left me to a bootless inquisition,
Concluding, “Stay, not yet.
Pros.

The hour 's now come;
The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.
Obey and be attentive. Canst thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell ?
I do not think thou canst, for then thou vast

not
Out three years old.
Mir.

Certainly, sir, I can.
Pros. By what? By any other house or per-
Of anything the image tell me, that
Hath kept with thy remembrance.
Mir.

'Tis far off
And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants. Had I not
Four or five women once that tended me ?
Pros. Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But

how is it
That this lives in thy mind? What seest thon

else
In the dark backward and abysm of time ?
If thou rememb'rest aught ere thou cam'st here,
How thou cam'st here thou may'st.
Mir.

But that I do not.
Pros. Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve

year since,
Thy father was the Duke of Milan and
A prince of power.
Mir.

Sir, are not you my father?
Pros. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and
She said thou wast my daughter; and thy fa-

ther
Was Duke of Milan, and his only heir
And princess no worse issued.
Mir.

O the heavens !
What foul play had we, that we came from

thence ?
Or blessed was 't we did ?
Pros.

Both, both, my girl.
By foul play, as thou say'st, were we hear'd

thence,
But blessedly holp hither.
Mir.

O, my heart bleeds
To think o' the teen that I have turn'd you to,
Which is from my remembrance ! Please you,

farther.
Pros. My brother and thy uncle, call'd An

tonio
I pray thee, mark me – - that a brother should
Be so perfidious !- he whom next thyself
Of all the world I lov'd, and to him put
The manage of my state ; as at that time
Through all the signories it was the first,
And Prospero the prime duke, being so repated
In dignity, and for the liberal arts
Without a parallel ; those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother
And to my state grew stranger, being trans-

ported
And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle-
Dost thou attend me?
Mir.

Sir, most heedfully.
Pros. Being once perfected how to grant

suits, How to deny them, who to advance and who *

Mir.

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