Subsequent with almost violent emphasis in the contrasted picture of Caliban, bred in the same island and by the same hand, but void of the saving birthright of noble race and inherited civility, so that upon his nature 'Nurture will never stick.' This contrast has a kind of inverted counterpart in the several groups of the wrecked crew-samples of civilised breeding at its best and worst ;-from Ferdinand, almost the peer of Miranda, and 'holy' Gonzalo, the kindly friend of Prospero, to the traitors, Antonio and Sebastian, and the dregs of humanity, Stephano and Trinculo, in whose vulgar cynicism Caliban himself, with his pathetic awe, his naïve poetry of wonder, finds a foil. The slightness of its plot-interest has not prevented The Tempest from exercising a fascination upon posterity which in kind and variety belongs to no other play. It combines the profound and inexhaustible intellectual suggestiveness of Hamlet with the enchanted scenery, the piquant invention, the lyrical loveliness of the Midsummer-Night's Dream. It amused Pepys by its 'innocence,' and furnished new instruments of expression to a Browning and a Renan. In its own century The Tempest served to some extent as an early edition of Robinson Crusoe. The honours of fame were fairly divided between Miranda and Caliban. 'The woman who had never seen a man' was a piquant conception, over which Fletcher in The Sea Voyage and Sir John Suckling in The Goblins (pr. 1646) drew the trail of their grosser fancy. After the Restoration it was witnessed by thronged houses with half-unwilling delight faithfully reflected in the naïve records, already mentioned, of Pepys (1667-8). Dryden, nearly at the same time, paid The Tempest the ambiguous compliment of an adaptation in The Enchanted Island (produced in 1667, published in 1670). Nothing can better illus trate Shakespeare's admirable economy in the use of the marvels at his command, than this bustling composition of an ingenious playwright intent solely upon stage-effect. The banished Duke of Milan is doubled with an heir to the duchy of Mantua, and 'the woman who has never seen a man' with 'a man who has never seen a woman,' carefully secluded in another part of the cave. Ariel has a mistress, and Caliban a sister, Sycorax, who marries Trinculo. There is much cleverness in all this, and some wisdom; for Dryden perfectly understood that, as he confessed in the Prologue, Shakespeare's magic could not copied be. Twelve years later he showed by a masterly appreciation of Caliban (in The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, 1679) that he had penetrated further than any contemporary into the methods of that magic. In our own century no one has ventured, on this elaborate scale, to make good the economies of Shakespeare; but the unexhausted zest of single aspects of the Isle has repeatedly overpowered the usual reluctance of wise men to carry further the stories which Shakespeare left half told. The voyage home to Naples proved adventurous in the hands of F. C. Waldron, whose The Virgin Queen, a melodrama, appeared in 1797. But it is chiefly the story of Caliban that has arrested the imagination of modern Europe. The grovelling worshipper of drink and 'Freedom' became in the hands of Renan an embodiment of prosperous and unspiritual democracy; and Browning elicited from the poor cowerer before the terrors of his dam's god Setebos the subtlest expression of the being of 'natural theology.' And among the imaginative progeny of The Tempest must be reckoned a long line of critical interpretations. Darwin's discoveries threw a new light upon the manmonster, which Daniel Wilson exploited in his Caliban, or The Missing Link (1873). Politics, metaphysics, anthropology, literary history, have each been divined in the cloudy symbols of Shakespeare's high romance.1 Few of these interpretations have had any vogue. One, however, the world by a common instinct refuses to resign: that which regards Shakespeare as having, in Prospero's epilogue, himself bidden farewell to the stage. 1 Cf. the summary in Dowden's Shakspere, His Mind and Art, P. 424. THE TEMPEST SCENE I. ACT I. On a ship at sea: a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard. Enter a Ship-Master and a Boatswain. Mast. Boatswain! Boats. Here, master: what cheer? Mast. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to 't, yarely, or we run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir. Enter Mariners. [Exit. Boats. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle. Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough! 3. Good, my good fellow,' a persuasive preface to a command. So in vv. 16, 20, etc. 3. fall to 't, yarely. This order corresponds to the first of the five phases or positions,' distinguished by Lord Musgrave. Apart from this general command and the final cata- 7. Take in the topsail; this is the first manœuvre. 9. if room enough, if there is sea-room. Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND, GONZALO, and others. Alon. Good boatswain, have care. Where's ΤΟ the master? Play the men. Boats. I pray now, keep below. Ant. Where is the master, boatswain ? Boats. Do you not hear him? You mar our labour: keep your cabins: you do assist the storm. Gon. Nay, good, be patient. What cares these roarers for the name of king? silence! trouble us not. Gon. Good, yet remember whom thou hast 20 aboard. Boats. None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor; if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority if you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. Cheerly, good hearts! Out of our way, I say. [Exit. Gon. I have great comfort from this fellow: 30 methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage. If he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable. [Exeunt. Re-enter Boatswain. Boats. Down with the topmast! yare! lower, 18. roarers, blusterers. 37. Down with the topmast; the second manœuvre, still further reducing the weight aloft. The movable topmast was a new invention in Shakespeare's time. This order is introduced to prepare for the next. |