him, in his defiance and arrogance and his blind, coarse sensuality, the demoniacal meets the brutal.

ULRICI: Shakspeare's Dramatic Art.

Caliban has become a by-word as the strange creation of a poetical imagination. A mixture of gnome and savage, half dæmon, half brute, in his behaviour we perceive at once the traces of his native disposition, and the influence of Prospero's education. The latter could only unfold his understanding, without, in the slightest degree, taming his rooted malignity: it is as if the use of reason and human speech were communicated to an awkward apc. In inclination Caliban is malicious, cowardly, false, and base; and yet he is essentially different from the vulgar knaves of a civilized world, as portrayed occasionally by Shakspeare. He is rude, but not vulgar; he never falls into the prosaic and low familiarity of his drunken associates, for he is, in his way, a poetical being; he always speaks in verse. He has picked up everything dissonant and thorny in language to compose out of it a vocabulary of his own; and of the whole variety of nature, the hateful, repulsive, and pettily deformed have alone been impressed on his imagination. The magical world of spirits, which the staff of Prospero has assembled on the island, casts merely a faint reflection into his mind, as a ray of light which falls into a dark cave, incapable of communicating to it either heat or illumination, serves merely to set in motion the poisonous vapors. The delineation of this monster is throughout inconceivably consistent and profound, and, notwithstanding its hatefulness, by no means hurtful to our feelings, as the honour of human nature is left untouched.

SCHLEGEL: Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature.

VI.

Ariel.

Shakespeare has made Ariel an Elemental Being of the higher order, identified with the upward-tending elements of Air and Fire, and with the higher nature of man; and he has made Caliban an Elemental Being of the lower order, identified with the downward-tending elements of Earth and Water, and the lower nature of

man.

The identification is too detailed to be fanciful. The very name of Ariel is borrowed from air, and he is directly addressed: Thou, which art but air.' The identification with fire is not less complete: when describing the lightning Ariel does not say that he set the ship a-fire, but that the ship was all a-fire with me':

Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,

I flamed amazement: sometime I'ld divide
And burn in many places.

We can see in him just the qualities of air and fire. He is invisible, but, like the lightning, can take shape as he Like air and fire he can penetrate everywhere, treading the ooze of the salt deep, running upon the sharp wings of the north, doing business in the veins of earth when it is baked with frost. His natural speech is music, or waves of air. His ideas are the ideas associated with the atmosphere-liberty and omnipresence: to be free as mountain winds,' to fly on the bat's back merrily, couch in the cowslip's bell, live under the blossom that hangs on the bough. Like the atmosphere he reflects human emotions without feeling them.

Ariel. If you now behold them, your affections

Would become tender.

Prospero.
Ariel.

Dost thou think so, spirit?

Mine would, sir, were I human.

The analogy extends to character. Even a character can be found for the atmosphere: in place of our motive and passion it substitutes caprice- the wind bloweth where it listeth.' So Ariel is moody,' or full of moods: and one of the most difficult incidents of the play—the quarrel between Prospero and Ariel-takes coherency, if we see in it Prospero governing this incarnation of caprice by outcapricing him; there is an absence of moral seriousness throughout, and a curious irony, by which Prospero, under the guise of invective, is bringing out Ariel's brave endurance and delicate refinement, and in the form of threats gives his rebellious subject more than he had asked for. Finally, a single passage is sufficient to connect Ariel with the upward tendencies of human nature. We hear the reason of his cruel sufferings at the hands of Sycorax.

For thou wast a spirit too delicate

To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine.

odtension vi power

Nothing could more clearly paint the instincts of light oppressed by the power of darkness until the deliverer

comes.

MOULTON: Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist.

VII.

Sebastian and Antonio.

In the delineation of Antonio and Sebastian, short as it is, there is a volume of wise science. Nor is there less of sagacity in the means whereby Prospero seeks to make them better, provoking in them the purpose and taking away the performance of crime,

that so he may bring them to a knowledge of themselves, and awe or shame down their evil by his demonstrations of good. For such is the proper effect of bad designs thus thwarted, showing the authors at once the wickedness of their hearts and the weakness of their hands; whereas, if successful in their plans, pride of power would forestall and prevent the natural shame and remorse of guilt. And we little know what evil it lieth and lurketh in our hearts to will or to do, until occasion permits or invites; and Prospero's art here stands in presenting the occasion until the wicked purpose is formed, and then removing it as soon as the hand is raised. It is noticeable that in the case of Antonio and Sebastian the workings of magic are so mixed up with those of nature that we cannot distinguish them: or rather, Prospero here causes the supernatural to pursue the methods of nature; thus, like the Poet himself, so concealing his art while using it that the result seems to spring from their own minds.

HUDSON: The Works of Shakespeare.

VIII.

Interpretations.

In power of pervading local realization, The Tempest is equal to any of Shakespeare's dramas-MidsummerNight's Dream, As You Like It, that are most admirable for this poetic achievement. The storm, in the first scene on ship board, and the news from the ship tight and yare in the harbour, and the glimpse of the becalmed fleet, in the last, make the intermediate scenes to be rounded by circled waves; and throughout we seem, as we read, from time to time to hear them beating on the shingly beach, and to catch glimpses of the tranquil sea line in the offing. The air takes its character from the visitants and their doings-it lulls or excites with floating airs; it is drowsy,

or breathes balm and refreshment; and murky with lightning, and heavy with dropping storm, around the ways of monster and fuddled mariner; while constant sunshine is round the path of Miranda and over the cell of Prospero. The masque of Ceres and Juno, with scenery and airy population of tilth and harvest, most beautifully relieves the scene of the bare and desert isle.

The Tempest may be studied with advantage, in comparison with two plays, united by extensively involving a fantastic mythology, but otherwise of most absolute antithesis, Midsummer-Night's Dream and Macbeth. The Tempest, despite the greater proximity of Ariel to Oberon than to Hecate, is quite as widely separated from the Midsummer-Night's Dream by the gravity of tone with which it is so largely pervaded, as it is from Macbeth by the specific distinctions of Tragedy and Comedy; while, as the story of a throne lost and regained, of traitorous kindred, abused confidence, requited usurpation, The Tempest is so replete with " arguments of state," and leads thought so deep and wide into the theory and responsibilities of government, and the conditions of civil society, that it seems in this aspect more cognate to Macbeth than to the Midsummer-Night's Dream. The supernatural scheme, with its lyrical expression, in each of the three plays, has an individuality and consistency that are themes of critical exposition inexhaustible-but, in truth, no less unnecessary, when to read the plays is to feel the spirit of their characteristics with a vividness no criticisin within present reach is likely to enhance.

The Tempest takes its place among the finished plays of the poet, and, therefore, like its peers, is characterized by complete and harmonious proportion of parts, by every scene and every character being organically complete, animated with appropriate and sustained spirit and wrought to the same degree of correctness, and that the highest and by the general result of realizing the perception, that the original germ, vigorous and healthy in its nature and excellent in power, has expanded without let