Caliban shape, but dowered at the same time with the Ariel attributes of supernatural intelligence and control, and furnished further with the element of 'humanity' which Ariel did not possess-for he says, 'I would if I were human'—and that hence, in the battle of life, in the profoundest Christian sense of the expression, if victory is to be secured in the tempest of passions, we must either in the first place keep the lower nature under, not give that which is holy to dogs-the Ariel to the Caliban-or, failing in our first endeavour, can only rise again to our proper selves by 'heart's sorrow and a clear life ensuing.' This, perhaps, was Shakespeare's gospel." ... It is, we think, far more probable that Shakespeare had no gospel to deliver. A great poet suggests to other minds a thousand thoughts which never crossed his own. He creates new worlds of intellect and of feeling, but he does this unconsciously. He is a philosopher without having formed any system of philosophy, a wise teacher without knowing it, and is content to sing and to create, untroubled by careful problems as to the result of his labour. For a long time "The Tempest" was highly popular on the stage, but it was not "The Tempest" of Shakespeare. Dryden "profaned his God-given strength" many times, but never perhaps more shamelessly than when in 1667 he produced, with the help of Sir William Davenant, what Professor Saintsbury justly calls his "disgusting burlesque" of the play, and converted a drama matchless for purity and ideal beauty into a vulgar comedy. "Sir William Davenant," Dryden writes, "as he was a man of quick and piercing imagination, designed the counterpart to Shakespeare's plot, namely, that of a man who had never seen a woman; that by this means those two characters of innocence and love might the more illustrate and commend each other. This excellent contrivance he was pleased to communicate to me and to desire my assistance in it. I confess that from the very first moment it so pleased me that I never writ anything with more delight." That a distinguished poet should have felt delight in degrading the work of a far greater poet would be incredible if Dryden had not expressed his pleasure thus frankly. He was, indeed, no more conscious of his shame in thus treating Shakespeare than when, a few years later, in “The State of Innocence" he burlesqued Milton. Strange that actors like the Kembles should have been contented to produce "The Tempest altered from Shakespeare by Mr. Dryden and Sir Wm. Davenant." 99.66 as |