Music.

of inspiration. Thirteen of its passages have been used as the libretto for songs. Two of the settings, to "Full fadom five”, i. 2. 396–404, and “Where the bee sucks", v. 1. 88-94, were, there is reason to believe, used in Shakespeare's own time. They are given in Wilson's Cheerful Ayres or Ballads, 1660, with the name of the composer, R. Johnson. This Johnson, after being in the service of Sir T. Kytson, came to London and composed music for plays, including Middleton's Witch and Shakespeare's Tempest.

III. THE SOURCE OF THE INCIDENTS

§13. The source of The Tempest, like the date, cannot be definitely ascertained. But in both cases an investigation of the subject is amply repaid by the interesting and suggestive issues raised. Mention has been made above (§ 8) of Jourdan's pamphlet, A Discovery of the Barmudas. He relates that the crew of The Sea-Venture, weary with pumping, had 'given up all for lost, and begun to take leave of each other, intending to commit themselves to the mercy of the sea", when Sir George Somers at length descried land and encouraged them-many from weariness having fallen asleep -to continue at the pumps. They complied, and fortunately "the ship was driven and jammed between two rocks, fast lodged and locked for further budging". One hundred and fifty persons got ashore, and as Jourdan continues, our provision was beyond our hopes... most admirable; for this Islands of the Bermudas . . . were never inhabited by any Christian or heathen people, but ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, storms, and foul weather. Yet did we find there the ayre. temperate and the country abundantly fruitfull.” The italicised phrases, if compared with i. 1. 58; i. 2. 232; V. I. 230; ii. 2. 54; ii. 1. 34-50, show a similarity that Strachey's can scarcely be accidental. Even more remarkable are some of the expressions used in Strachey's narrative of the same shipwreck.

Narrative.

...

66

Upon the (M 344)

...

Thursday night Sir George Summers being upon the watch had an apparition of a little round light, like a faint star, trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half the height upon the main-mast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, tempting to settle as it were upon any of the four shrouds. We threw overboard much luggage ... and stowed many a butt of beer, hogsheads of oil, cider, wine, and vinegar." . . . On the island" some dangerous and discontents nourished amongst us had like to have been the parents of bloody issues and mischiefs". Do we not seem to have here the suggestions for Ariel's apparition on the topmast, in the form of flame, for Stephano's escape upon a butt of sack which the sailors heaved o'erboard, and for the conspiracy of Antonio and Sebastian against Alonso?1

Hunter's iden

§14. But it is a misconception into which some critics have fallen, to think that Shakespeare actually lays the scene of the play in the Bermudas. On the contrary, The Bermudas Ariel (i. 2. 229) speaks of fetching dew from not the scene of the play. "the still-vext Bermoothes", though the allusion proves that the locality was prominently in Shakespeare's thoughts at the time. Hunter ingeniously seeks to identify Prospero's island with Lampedusa, off the north coast of Africa. His main argument is that the island's geographical position would meet all the exigen- tification of the cies of the story; sailors from Algiers would island with Lampedusa. conveniently and naturally land Sycorax on its shores; Prospero, if committed to the sea off an Italian coast, and tossed by winds and waves, would most likely drift to Lampedusa; and Alonso, sailing from Tunis and steering for Naples, would be caught in the storm raised by Prospero and landed there. Moreover, Lampedusa was noted as stormy, it had the reputation of being haunted, and contained caves and a hermit's cell. Elze has made out an equally detailed case in favour of another Mediterranean islet, Pantalaria; and a third critic states dogmatically that

1 In any case no weight can be attached to Hunter's theory that the description of the storm (i. 1) was borrowed from Canto 41 of Harrington's translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.

(M 344)

B

it could only have been Corcyra which was intended. But they who thus seek to bring the enchanted island within the sphere of workaday geography imagine a vain thing: it is not to be found on charts or maps, but floats, "east of the sun, west of the moon", washed by

"the foam

Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn".

§ 15. If geography is thus silent as to the whereabouts of the mysterious island, history enlightens us almost equally little about the Italian potentates who are drifted to its shores. But it is noteworthy that some of the names and

Slender historical framework.

incidents introduced into The Tempest occur in Thomas' Historye of Italye, 1561. We there read that Prospero Adorno was established as the Duke of Millain's lieutenant in Genoa, 1477; "but he continued scarcely one year, till by mean of new practices that he held with Ferdinando, King of Naples, he was had in suspicion to the Milanese". He was deposed, and Antony Adorno was made governor of the city instead. Thomas further relates that there was an Alonzo, King of Naples, whose son, Ferdinand, succeeded him in 1495. This Alonzo united the houses of Naples and Milan by marrying a princess of the latter city. In the play this incident is transferred to his son.

§16. But the sources hitherto spoken of can, in any case, have only supplied the dramatist with the framework of his plot, and do not account for the central incidents of the story. Collins, the poet, told Warton that they were derived from a romance, Aurelio and Isabella, printed in Italian, Spanish, French, and English in 1588, but there is really no connection between this novel and the play. More fruitful was Tieck's discovery in 1817 of some remarkable points of resemblance between The Tempest and Die Schöne Sidea (The Fair Sidea), by Jacob Ayrer, a notary in Nürnberg. Ayrer, who rose from humble circumstances to an official position, died in 1605, and in 1618 a folio edition of his dramas was published with the title, Opus Theatricum.

Ayrer's Die
Schöne Sidea.

Die Schöne Sidea,1 one of the pieces in this volume, tells the story of a Duke Ludolff of Lithuania and his daughter Sidea. Ludolff is dethroned, and expelled from his kingdom with Sidea, by Prince Leudegast of Wiltau. He takes refuge in a wood, and by his magic arts, and the aid of a devil, Runcifal, gets into his possession Leudegast's son, Engelbrecht, who has lost his way while hunting. Engelbrecht and his squire try to draw their swords to defend themselves, but find that their weapons are charmed from moving. Engelbrecht is then taken prisoner, and set to bear logs for Sidea, who at first treats him as harshly as her father. But his noble birth and beauty win her heart, and they fly together. After sundry adventures, in which for a time they are separated, they reach Leudegast's court, and the piece ends with their marriage, and the reconciliation of the two princes. Intermingled with this main plot are episodes of low comedy which have no relation to the humorous scenes in The Tempest, and throughout the German and the English plays the names of persons and localities are entirely different. But this does not affect the striking parallelism between the central situations in the two dramas. In both there is a deposed ruler, expelled with his daughter as sole companion, and practising in banishment the magic art; in both he gets into his power his enemy's son, whose sword he has enchanted, and whom he condemns to the task of log-bearing; in both the heroine and the captive prince fall in love, and the story closes with their marriage, and the reconcilation of their parents. There can be no reasonable doubt that either Shakespeare and Ayrer borrowed from a common source, or that the Englishman had a version of the Nürnberg play before him. The latter is far from unlikely, for we know that English actors were in Nürnberg in 1604 and 1606, and that in June, 1613, the Elector of Brandenburg's servants and the English comedians acted several "beautiful comedies and tragedies" including a "Sedea", which can scarcely have been any other

1 A full prose translation of Ayrer's play is given by Furness in his Variorum edition of The Tempest, 326–341. A verse translation is given by Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany.

than Ayrer's play. When English companies were so frequently visiting Nürnberg, what more likely than that they should bring home versions of some of Ayrer's favourite pieces, and that one of these should fall into Shakespeare's hands?

§ 17. Other works to which The Tempest is indebted in a minor degree, e.g. Florio's Montaigne, Golding's Ovid, and Eden's History of Travayle, are referred to in the notes. But there is another probable source, different in kind from those Prospero and spoken of, which claims a word. Does The Shakespeare. Tempest reflect symbolically the circumstances of Shakespeare's own career at the period of its composition? To this question a strongly affirmative answer has been given by writers like Emile Montégut, who asserts1 that it is 1 66 clearly the last of Shakespeare's dramas, and, under the form of an allegory, is the dramatic last will and testament of the great poet". The statement made in this unqualified form overshoots the mark, for The Tempest is very probably not Shakespeare's last complete play, and certainly not the last in which he had a share. Yet the world is assuredly right in its instinct that the voice of Prospero is, in peculiar measure, the voice of Shakespeare, and that when the great enchanter, at whose command " graves have waked their sleepers", abjures his magic, the great dramatist is in some sort bidding a farewell, though scarcely formal and final, to the theatre, where his " potent art" had resummoned the mighty dead to new and imperishable life.2

IV.-CRITICAL APPRECIATION

§ 18. The popularity enjoyed by The Tempest from the time of its production is the more remarkable because the play lacks some of the customary elements of dramatic interest. The plot is comparatively slight, and, as we know from the

1 Revue des Deux Mondes, 1865.

2 See further the passage in Dowden's Shakespeare's Mind and Art, referred to in Appendix B.