INTRODUCTION.

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Ir is, as all readers know, the habit of Shakespeare to find the source of his plots in earlier tales or plays. They are the scaffolding by the aid of which he erects his marvellous works, and his genius, so far from being lessened, gains fresh lustre from the appropriation. The more we know of the materials used in this by the dramatist, the more conscious are we of his transcendent powers. That Shakespeare could dispense with such aid no student will doubt, and in "The Tempest" he appears in great measure to have done so. Like the "Midsummer Night's Dream," it is one of the most purely imaginative of his dramas, one in which poetry has least to do with the commonplace elements of life. Moreover, it contains many of the poet's deepest thoughts, and some of his sweetest songs. On this account the poetical charm of "The Tempest" is more likely to be felt in the closet than on the stage. What actor can represent an Ariel or a Caliban?

"Although," as Coleridge observes, "the illusion may be assisted by the effect on the senses of the complicated scenery and decorations of modern times, yet this sort of assistance is dangerous "—the danger being, as this great critic adds, that "the spiritual vision is apt to languish, and the attraction from without will withdraw

the mind from the proper and only legitimate interest which is intended to spring from within."

"The Tempest" occupies the first place in the Folio of 1623, and was printed for the first time in that edition. There seems good reason to believe that it was performed before Prince Charles, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine Elector in 1613, and there is little doubt that Jonson refers to it in his Induction to “Bartholomew Fair," 1614, where allusion is made to a servant-monster, and to "those who beget Tales, Tempests and such like drolleries." Beyond this, we have only conjecture to guide us with regard to the date. "It was probably written in the year 1610," says Dr. Dowden, and that, perhaps, is as near to the exact period as we are likely to attain.

Hitherto no source of the play has been discovered by the commentators, but it has been conjectured that it may be due to the same original as a German play, "Die Schöne Sidea," written by Jacob Ayrer of Nuremberg, who died in 1605. In both dramas a magician appears who has an only daughter and an attendant spirit; in both the son of the magician's enemy becomes his prisoner, and there are other points of resemblance between the plays. Ayrer was in the habit of adapting English dramas, and probably did so in this case. The plays may have a common origin, but the translation of "Die Schöne Sidea" in Furness's "Variorum Shakespeare" makes it certain, as the editor points out, that the dramatist did not find the source of his play in Ayrer. Some critical discoverers think they have found out the "uninhabited island" over which Prospero exercises his magic art. One or two commentators make no question that the site is Lampedusa, an island

in the Mediterranean which supplies Malta with firewood, and where, according to a tradition, the magical skill of a Jew raised a tempest and dispersed the fleet of Charles V. Others are persuaded that one of the "still vexed Bermoothes" is the scene of the play, since the shipwreck of Sir George Somers on the coast of those hitherto unknown islands in 1609 and the safe return of the adventurers excited great interest. Mr. Sidney Lee, in his admirable "Life of Shakespeare," does not hesitate to say that "the references to the gentle climate of the island on which Prospero is cast away, and to the spirits and devils that infested it, seem to render its identification with the newly-discovered Bermudas unquestionable," and Mr. Kipling, who holds a similar opinion, suggests that Shakespeare heard the story from one of the shipwrecked crew. Mr. Gosling, a native of Bermuda, in two articles full of minute detail,1 also maintains that Bermuda is Prospero's island, and that the poet was familiar with the story of the shipwreck. The summary of his argument is as follows: "We find two fleets overtaken by a terrific tempest, the chief only wrecked, two leaders in each ship, a sudden unexpected rescue, an island reputed enchanted, but proving possessed of all things for men's welfare, many striking resemblances, the same daily tasks, dissensions, mutinies, and a happy termination." Mr. Gosling adds that if it be granted that Shakespeare made use of Strachey's "Narrative," published in 1612, February 14, 1613, was more than likely the date of its first performance." The question is not one of much significance. We may conjecture that in this as in other

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1 See "Literature," April 8 and April 15, 1899.

plays Shakespeare aided his imagination by the help of travellers' stories, but such a surmise does not add one iota to the reader's pleasure, and he will perhaps feel something like regret that the poet is not allowed to dream of an enchanted isle,

"full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not," without having its physical characteristics discovered and its latitude and longitude marked out.

In "The Tempest" there are three great poetical creations, Miranda, Ariel, and Caliban. Of the pure womanliness and enchanting simplicity of Miranda it is needless to say anything. There is a transparency in the character which needs no interpretation, an openhearted simplicity that has won many a faithful lover besides Ferdinand. Not even in Shakespeare, unless it be in "The Winter's Tale," is there a love-scene more perfect than this "encounter of two most rare affections in "The Tempest."

Of Ariel, Coleridge asks, “Is there anything in nature from which Shakespeare caught the idea of this delicate and delightful being, with such child-like simplicity, yet with such preternatural powers? He is born neither of heaven nor of earth; but as it were between both, like a may-blossom kept suspended in air by the fanning breeze, which prevents it from falling to the ground, and only finally and by compulsion touching the earth." Caliban is a much more complex character, and has exercised the art of poets and imaginative writers like Browning and M. Renan as well as of critics. After observing that it is not pleasant to see such a character on the stage, Hazlitt writes: "In itself it is one of the

wildest and most abstracted of all Shakespeare's characters, whose deformity, whether of body or mind, is redeemed by the power and truth of the imagination displayed in it. It is the essence of grossness, but there is not a particle of vulgarity in it. Shakespeare has described the brutal mind of Caliban in contact with the pure and original forms of Nature; the character grows out of the soil where it is rooted, uncontrolled, uncouth, and wild, uncramped by any of the meannesses of custom. It is of the earth, earthy."" Coleridge, too, points out that Caliban is a creature of the earth, but observes that he is "in some respects a noble being "

-a term needing considerable qualification, since it does not satisfy the reader to learn that "he is a man in the sense of the imagination," and that "all the images he uses are highly poetical." It has been suggested, probably with truth, that the conception of Caliban occurred to Shakespeare when he describes Ajax, in "Troilus and Cressida," as 66 'a very land fish, languageless, a monster." Caliban, however, though a land fish and a monster, was far from languageless. One wonders whether in the delineation of this strange character Shakespeare had more than a poetical conception of a man monster. That Caliban was in the form of a man we know from Miranda's saying that Ferdinand was the third man "that e'er I saw," but at the same time he was wholly without a perception of moral good or evil. "Shall we say," says "The Spectator" (and the hand that penned the article is clearly to be recognized), "apart from modern speculation altogether, that in his last great legacy to the world Shakespeare was giving to us his parable of man-man awfully linked with nature in her coarsest satyr or