IN WEEKLY VOLUMES, price 3d.; or in Cloth, 6d. Edited by HENRY MORLEY, LL.D. I Warren Hastings 2. My Ten Years' Imprisonment 3. The Rivals, and the School for Scandal R. B. SHERIDAN, 4. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. 5. The Complete Angler 6. Childe Harold 7. The Man of Feeling 8. Sermons on the Card 9. Lives of Alexander and Cæsar 10. The Castle of Otranto 11. Voyages and Travels 12. Plays 13. The Lady of the Lake 14. Table Talk 15. The Wisdom of the Ancients 16. Francis Bacon 17. Lives of the Poets (Waller, Milton, Cowley) 18. Thoughts on the Present Discontents, &c. 19. The Battle of the Books, &c. 20. Poems 21. Egypt and Scythia 22. Hamlet 23. Voyagers' Tales 24. Nature and Art 25. Lives of Alcibiades, Coriolanus, &c. ISAAC WALTON. HENRY MACKENZIE. HORACE WALPOLE. SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE SAMUEL JOHNSON WM. SHAKESPEARE. 26 & 27. Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck. 2 Vols. 34. Earlier Poems 35. The North-West Passage 36. The Sorrows of Werter ABRAHAM COWLEY. WM. SHAKESPEARE. JOHN MILTON. 37. Lives of Poets (Butler, Denham, Dryden, &c. SAMUEL JOHNSON 38. Nathan the Wise .. 39. Grace Abounding .. 40. Macbeth 41. The Diary of Samuel Pepys.-1662-1663. 42. Earlier Poems 43. Early Australian Voyages 44. The Bravo of Venice 45. Lives of Demetrius, Mark Antony, &c. 49. Confessions of an Inquiring spirit, &c. I. A Journey to the Western Islands 52. A Christmas Carol, and The Chimes 54. Wanderings in South America of} 55. The Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury 56. The Hunchback, and The Love-Chase. 57. Crotchet Castle .. LESSING. ALEXANDER POPE. CHARLES DICKENS. CHARLES WATERTON. JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES 58. Lives of Pericles, Fabius Maximus, &c. PLUTARCH. LORD MACAULAY. WM. SHAKESPEARE. The next Volume will be 84229 THE TEMPEST. BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. WITH JACOB AYRER AND "THE FAIR SIDEA," etc. CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE. 1887. INTRODUCTION. THE TEMPEST was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. There is no record that shows when it was first acted. For various insufficient reasons it has sometimes been regarded as the last play written by Shakespeare; and it has even been supposed that Shakespeare figured his retirement from the theatre in Prospero's resolve to break his staff. It is certain that the play was not written before the year 1603, when Florio published his translation of Montaigne; for a passage in the first scene of the Second Act is evidently founded on a passage in one of Montaigne's essays as Florio translated it, and as the poet read it in his own copy, which is now in the British Museum, containing one of the few remaining autographs of Shakespeare. As to the date of the play, there is no other certainty. It is very possible that the publication in 1610 by Silvanus Jourdan of “A Discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise called the Isle of Divels by Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George |