[1]Scarcely any poet has been more followed in modern times than Shakespeare. We have already drawn attention to the by no means accidental resemblances in Voltaire, Goethe, and Schiller, and we have further instances. Schiller'sD. Jungfrau von Orleansis markedly indebted to the first part ofHenry VI. The scene between the maid and the Duke of Burgundy (ii. 10) is fashioned after the corresponding scene in Shakespeare (iii. 3), and that between the maid and her father in Schiller (iv. II) answers to Shakespeare's (v. 4). The apothecary in Oehlenschläger'sAladdinis borrowed from the apothecary inRomeo and Juliet. In Björnstjerne Björnson'sMaria Stuart(ii. 2) Ruthven rises from a sick bed to totter into the conspirators with Knox, and take the more eager share in the plot to murder Rizzio, as the sick Ligarius makes his way to Brutus (Julius Cæsar, ii. I) to join the conspiracy to murder Cæsar.
[1]Scarcely any poet has been more followed in modern times than Shakespeare. We have already drawn attention to the by no means accidental resemblances in Voltaire, Goethe, and Schiller, and we have further instances. Schiller'sD. Jungfrau von Orleansis markedly indebted to the first part ofHenry VI. The scene between the maid and the Duke of Burgundy (ii. 10) is fashioned after the corresponding scene in Shakespeare (iii. 3), and that between the maid and her father in Schiller (iv. II) answers to Shakespeare's (v. 4). The apothecary in Oehlenschläger'sAladdinis borrowed from the apothecary inRomeo and Juliet. In Björnstjerne Björnson'sMaria Stuart(ii. 2) Ruthven rises from a sick bed to totter into the conspirators with Knox, and take the more eager share in the plot to murder Rizzio, as the sick Ligarius makes his way to Brutus (Julius Cæsar, ii. I) to join the conspiracy to murder Cæsar.
[2]It is somewhat remarkable that Guiderius and Arviragus should know anything about chimney-sweepers.
[2]It is somewhat remarkable that Guiderius and Arviragus should know anything about chimney-sweepers.
We are now about to see Shakespeare enthralled and reinspired by the glamour of fairy tale and romance.
TheWinter s Talewas first printed in the Folio of 1623, but, as we have already mentioned, an entry in Dr. Simon Forman's diary informs us that he saw it played at the Globe Theatre on the 15th of May 1611. A notice in the official diary of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, goes to prove that at that date the play was quite new. "For the king's players. An olde playe called Winter's Tale, formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke, and likewyse by mee on Mr. Hemmings his word that nothing profane was added or reformed, though the allowed book was missinge; and therefore I returned itt without fee this 19th of August 1623." The Sir George Bucke mentioned here did not receive his official appointment as censor until August 1610. Therefore it was probably one of the first performances of theWinters Taleat which Forman was present in the spring of 1611.
We have already drawn attention to Ben Jonson's little fling at the play in the introduction to hisBartholomew's Fairin 1614.
The play was founded on a romance of Robert Greene's, published in 1588 under the title of "Pandosto, the Triumph of Time," and was re-named half-a-century later "The Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia." So popular was it, that it was printed again and again. We know of at least seventeen editions, and in all likelihood there were more.
Shakespeare had adapted Lodge'sRosalyndein his earlier pastoral play,As You Like It, very soon after its publication in 1590. It is significant that this other tale, with its peculiar blending of the pathetic and idyllic, should only now, though it must have long been familiar to him, strike him as suitable for dramatic treatment. Karl Elze's theory that Shakespeare had adapted the story in some earlier work, which Greene had in his mind when he wrote his famous and violent accusation of plagiarism, cannot be considered as more than a random conjecture.Greene's attack was sufficiently accounted for by that remodelling and adaptation of older works which was practised by the young poet from the very first, and it clearly aimed atHenry VI.
Shakespeare, who could not, of course, use Greene's title, called his playA Winters Tale; a title which would convey an impression, at that time, of a serious and touching or exciting story, and he plainly strove for a dream-like and fantastic effect in his work. Mamillius says, when he begins his little story (Act ii. sc. I), "A sad tale's best for winter," and in three different places the romantic impossibility of the plot is impressed upon the audience. In the description of the discovery of Perdita we are warned that "this news, which is called true, is so like an old tale, that the verity of it is in strong suspicion" (Act v. sc. 2).
The geographical extravagances are those of the romance; it was Greene who surrounded Bohemia with the sea and transferred the Oracle of Delphi to the Island of Delphos. But Shakespeare contributed the anachronisms; it was he who made the oracle exist contemporaneously with Russia as an empire, who made Hermione a daughter of a Russian Emperor and caused her statue to be executed by Giulio Romano. The religion of the play is decidedly vague, the very characters themselves seem to forget at times what they are, one moment figuring as Christians, and the next worshipping Jupiter and Proserpina. In the same play in which a pilgrimage is made to Delphi to obtain an oracle, a shepherd lad says there is "but one puritan amongst them, and he sings songs to hornpipes" (Act iv. sc. 2). All this is unintentional, no doubt, but it greatly adds to the general fairy tale effect.
We do not know why Shakespeare transposed the localities. In Greene's book the tragedy of the play occurs in Bohemia, and the idyllic part in Sicily; in the drama the situations are reversed. It might be that Bohemia seemed to him a more suitable country for the exposure of an infant than the better known and more thickly populated island of the Mediterranean.
All the main features of the play are drawn from Greene, first and foremost the king's unreasonable jealousy because his wife, at his own urgent request, invites Polixenes to prolong his stay and speaks to him in friendly fashion. Among the grounds of jealousy enumerated by Greene was the naïve and dramatically unsuitable one that Bellaria, in her desire to please and obey her husband by showing every attention to his guest, frequently entered his bed-chamber to ascertain if anything was needed there.[1]Greene's queen really dies when she is cast off by the king in his jealous madness, but this tragic episode, whichwould have deprived him of his reconciliation scene, was not adopted by Shakespeare. He did, however, include and amplify the death of Mamillius, their little son, who pines away from sorrow for the king's harsh treatment of his mother. Mamillius is one of the gems of the play; a finer sketch of a gifted, large-hearted child could not be. We can but feel that Shakespeare, in drawing this picture of the young boy and his early death, must once again have had his own little son in his mind, and that it was of him he was thinking when he makes Polixenes say of his young prince (Act i. sc. 2):
"If at home, sir,He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter;Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy;My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all:He makes a July's day short as December;And with his varying childness, cures in meThoughts that would thick my blood."Leontes. So stands this squireOffic'd with me."
The father's tone towards little Mamillius is at first a jesting one.
"Mamillius, art thou my boy?"Mamillius. Ay, my good lord.Leontes. Why, that's my bawcock. What, hast smutch'dthy nose?They say it is a copy out of mine."
Later, when jealousy grows upon him, he cries:
"Come, sir page,Look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain!Most dear'st! my collop!—Can thy dam?—may'st be?"
The children of the French poets of the middle and end of that century were never childlike. They would have made a little prince destined to a sad and early death talk solemnly and maturely, like little Joas in Racine'sAthelie; but Shakespeare had no hesitation in letting his princeling talk like a real child. He says to the lady-in-waiting who offers to play with him:
"No, I'll none of you.lstLady. Why, my sweet lord?Mamillius. You'll kiss me hard, and speak to me as ifI were a baby still."
He announces that he likes another lady better because her eyebrows are black and fine; and he knows that eyebrows are most becoming when they are shaped like a half-moon, and look as though drawn with a pen.
"2nd Lady. Who taught you this?Mamillius. I learn'd it out of women's faces. Pray, now.What colour are your eyebrows?lstLady. Blue, my lord.Mam. Nay, that's a mock; I have seen a lady's noseThat has been blue, but not her eyebrows."
The tale he is about to tell is cut short by the entrance of the furious king.
During the trial scene, which forms a parallel to that inHenry VIII., tidings are brought of the prince's death (Act iii. sc. I):
"——whose honourable thoughts(Thoughts too high for one so tender) cleft the heartThat could conceive a gross and foolish fireBlemished his gracious dam."
In Greene's tale the death of the child causes that of his mother, but in the play, where it follows immediately upon the king's defiant rejection of the oracle, it effects a sudden revulsion of feeling in him as a punishment direct from Heaven. Shakespeare allowed Hermione to be merely reported dead because his mood at this time required that the play should end happily. That Mamilius seems to pass entirely out of every one's memory is only another proof of a fact we have already touched upon, namely, Shakespeare's negligent style of work in these last years of his working life. The poet, however, is careful to keep Hermione well in mind; she is brought before us in the vision Antigonus sees shortly before his death, and she is preserved during sixteen years of solitude that she may be restored to us at the last. It is, indeed, chiefly by her personality that the two markedly distinct parts of this wasp-waisted play are held together.
Although, as in Pericles, there is more of an epic than a dramatic character about the work, it possesses a certain unity of tone and feeling. As a painting may contain two comparatively unconnected groups which are yet united by a general harmony of line and colouring, so, in this apparently disconnected plot, there is an all-pervading poetic harmony which we may call the tone or spirit of the play. Shakespeare was careful from the first that its melancholy should not grow to such an incurable gloom as to prevent our enjoyment of the charming scenes between Florizel and Perdita at the sheep-shearing festival, or the thievish tricks of the rascal Autolycus. The poet sought to make each chord of feeling struck during the play melt away in the gentle strain of reconciliation at the close. If Hermione had returned to the king at once, which would have been the most natural course of events, the play would have ended with the third act. She therefore disappears, finally returning to life and the embrace of the weeping Leontes in the semblance of a statue.
Looked upon from a purely abstract point of view, as though it were a musical composition, the play might be considered in the light of a soul's history. Beginning with powerful emotions, suspense and dread; with terrible mistakes entailing deserved and undeserved suffering, it leads to a despair which in turn gradually yields to forgetfulness and levity; but not lastingly. Once alone with its helpless grief and hopeless repentance, the heart still finds in its innermost sanctuary the memory which, death-doomed and petrified, has yet been faithfully guarded and cherished unscathed until, ransomed by tears, it consents to live once more. The play has its meaning and moral just as a symphony may have, neither more nor less. It would be absurd to seek for a psychological reason for Hermione's prolonged concealment. She reappears at the end because her presence is required, as the final chord is needed in music or the completing arabesque in a drawing.
Among Shakespeare's additions in the first part of the play we find the characters of the noble and resolute Paulina and her weakly good-natured husband. Paulina, who has been overlooked by both Mrs. Jameson and Heine in their descriptions of Shakespeare's feminine characters, is one of the most admirable and original figures he has put upon the stage. She has more courage than ten men, and possesses that natural eloquence and power of pathos which determined honesty and sound common sense can bestow upon a woman. She would go through fire and water for the queen whom she loves and trusts. She is untouched by sentimentality; there is as little of the erotic as there is of repugnance in her attitude towards her husband. Her treatment of the king's jealous frenzy reminds us of Emilia inOthello, but the resemblance ends there. In Paulina there is a vein of that rare metal which we only find in excellent women of this not essentially feminine type. We meet it again in the nineteenth century in the character of Christiana Oehlenschläger as we see it in Hauch's beautiful commemorative poem.
The rustic fête in the second part of the play, with the conversations between Florizel and Perdita, is entirely Shakespeare's work; above all is the diverting figure of Autolycus his own peculiar property.
In Greene's tale the king falls violently in love with his daughter when she is restored to him a grown woman, and he kills himself in despair when she is wedded to her lover. Shakespeare rejected this stupid and ugly feature; his ending is all pure harmony.
Here, as inCymbeline, we see the poet compelled by the nature of his theme to dwell upon the disastrous effects of jealousy. This is the third time he treats of such suspicions driving to madness. Othello was the first great example, then Posthumus, and now Leontes.
The case of Leontes is so far unique that no one has suggested causes of jealousy, nor slandered Hermione to him. His owncoarse and foolish imaginings alone are to blame. This variation of the vice was evidently intended to darken the background against which womanly high-mindedness and blamelessness were to shine forth.
Mrs. Jameson has charmingly said that Hermione combines such rare virtues as "dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness without weakness." As queen, wife, and mother, there is a majestic lovableness about her, a grand and gracious simplicity, a natural self-control, the proverb, "Still waters run deep," being eminently applicable to her. Her gentle dignity contrasts well with Paulina's enthusiastic intrepidity, and her noble reticence with Paulina's free outspokenness. Her attitude and language during the trial scene are superb, far outshining Queen Katherine's on a similar occasion. Her nature, the ideal Englishwoman's nature, all meekness and submissiveness, rises in dignified protest. She is brief in her self-defence; life has no value for her since she has lost her husband's love, since her little son has been removed from her as though she were plague-stricken, and her new-born daughter "from her breast, the innocent milk in its most innocent mouth, haled out to murder." Her only desire is to vindicate her honour, yet the first words of this cruelly accused and shamefully treated woman are full of pity for the remorse which Leontes will some day suffer. Her language is that of innocent fortitude. When about to be taken to prison she says:
"There's some ill planet reigns:I must be patient till the heavens lookWith an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,I am not prone to weeping, as our sexCommonly are; the want of which vain dewPerchance shall dry your pities: but I haveThat honourable grief lodged here which burnsWorse than tears drown."
She bids her women not weep until she has deserved imprisonment; then indeed their tears will have cause to flow.
In the second half of theWinters Talewe are surrounded by a fresh and charming country, and shown a picture of rustic happiness and well-being. No one was less influenced by the sentimental vagaries of the fantastic pastorals of the day than Shakespeare. He had drawn in Corin and Phebe, inAs You Like It, an extremely natural, and therefore not particularly poetical, shepherd and shepherdess; and the herdsmen in theWinters Taleare no beautiful languishing souls. They do not write sonnets and madrigals, but drink ale and eat pies and dance. The hostess serves her guests with a face that is "o' fire with labour and the thing she took to quench it." The clowns' heads are full of the prices of wool; they have no thoughtfor roses and nightingales, and their simplicity is rather comical than touching. They are more than overmatched by the light-fingered Autolycus, who educates them by means of ballads, and eases them of their purses at the same time. He is a Jack-of-all-trades, has travelled the country with a monkey, been a process-server, bailiff, and servant to Prince Florizel; he has gone about with a puppet-show playing the Prodigal Son; finally, he marries a tinker's wife and settles down as a confirmed rogue. He is the clown of the piece—roguish, genial, witty, and always master of the situation. In spite of the fact that Shakespeare seized every opportunity to flout the lower classes, that he always gave a satirical and repellent picture of them as a mass, yet their natural wit, good sense, and kind-heartedness are always portrayed in his clowns with a sympathetic touch. Before his time, the buffoon was never an inherent part of the play; he came on and danced his jig without any connection with the plot, and was, in fact, merely intended to amuse the uneducated portion of the audience and make them laugh. Shakespeare was the first to incorporate him into the plot, and to endow him, not merely with the jester's wit, but with the higher faculties and feelings of the Fool inLear, or the gay humour of the vagabond pedlar, Autolycus.
The clown in theWinter's Taleis the drollest and sharpest of knaves, and is employed to unravel the knot in the story. He it is who transports the old shepherd and his son from Bohemia to the court of King Leontes in Sicily.
The ludicrous features of rustic society, however, are quite overpowered by the kind-heartedness which stamps every word coming from the lips of these worthy country folk, and prepares us for the appearance of Perdita in their midst.
She has been adopted out of compassion, and, with her gold, proves a source of prosperity to her adoptive parents. Thus she grows up without feeling the pressure of poverty or servitude. She wins the prince's heart by the beauty of her youth, and when we first see her she is attired in all her splendour as queen of a rural festival. Modest and charming as she is, she shows the courage of a true princess in face of the difficulties and hardships she must encounter for the sake of her love.
She is one of Shakespeare's cherished children, and he has endowed her with his favourite trait—a distaste for anything artificial or unnatural. Not even to improve the flowers in her garden will she employ the art of special means of cultivation. She will not have the rich blooms of "carnations and streaked gillyflowers" there; they do not thrive and she will not plant them. When Polixenes asks why she disdains them, she replies (Act iv. sc. 3):
"For I have heard it saidThere is an art which in their piedness sharesWith great creating nature."
To which Polixenes makes the profound response:
"Say there be;Yet nature is made better by no mean,But nature makes that mean: so over that artWhich you say adds to nature is an artThat nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marryA gentler scion to the wildest stock,And make conceive a bark of baser kindBy bud of nobler race; this is an artWhich does mend nature,—change it rather; butThe art itself is nature."With great creating nature."
These are the most profound and subtle words that could well be spoken on the subject of the relations between nature and culture; the clearest repudiation of that gospel of naturalism against which the figure of Caliban and the ridicule cast upon Gonzalo's Utopia inThe Tempestare protests. Perdita herself is one of those chosen flowers which are the product of that true culture which preserves and ennobles nature.
They are also words of genuine wisdom on the relative positions of nature and art. Shakespeare's art was that of nature itself, and in this short speech we possess his æsthetic confession of faith.
His ideal was a poetry which strayed neither in matter nor manner from what Hamlet calls "the modesty of nature." Although he did not wholly succeed in escaping its infection, Shakespeare invariably pursued the artificial taste of the times with gibes. From the days when he made merry at the expense of Euphuisms inLove's Labours Lostand Falstaff, until now, when he puts such affectedly poetical language in the mouths of his courtiers in theWinter s Tale, he has always ridiculed it vigorously.
In the first scene of the play Camillo says in praise of Mamillius:
"They that went on crutches before he was born desire still theirlife to see him a man.
"They that went on crutches before he was born desire still theirlife to see him a man.
Whereupon Archidamus sarcastically inquires:
"Would they else be content to die?"
"Would they else be content to die?"
and Camillo is forced to laughingly confess:
"Yes, if there were no other excuse why they should desire to live."
"Yes, if there were no other excuse why they should desire to live."
Still more absurd is the style in which the Third Gentleman describes, in the last scene of the play, the meeting between the king and his long-lost daughter and the aspect of the spectators. He says of Paulina:
She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband, anotherelevated that the oracle was fulfilled.[2]
This comical diction reaches a climax in the following expressions:
"One of the prettiest touches of all, and thatwhich angled for mine eyes, caught water though not the fish, was when at the relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came to't, bravely confessed and lamented by the king, how attentiveness wounded his daughter; till, from one sign of dolour to another, she did, with an 'Alas,' I would fain say,bleed tears, for I am sure my heart wept blood. Who was most marble there changed colour; some swooned, all sorrowed: if all the world could have seen'tthe woe had been universal."
"One of the prettiest touches of all, and thatwhich angled for mine eyes, caught water though not the fish, was when at the relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came to't, bravely confessed and lamented by the king, how attentiveness wounded his daughter; till, from one sign of dolour to another, she did, with an 'Alas,' I would fain say,bleed tears, for I am sure my heart wept blood. Who was most marble there changed colour; some swooned, all sorrowed: if all the world could have seen'tthe woe had been universal."
That Shakespeare's æsthetic sense did not sanction such expressions as these of the Third Gentleman scarcely needs stating. Perdita's language is that of nature itself. So great is her dislike of artificiality, that she will not even plant gardener's flowers in her garden, saying:
"No more than were I painted I would wishThis youth should say 'twere well, and only thereforeDesire to breed by me."
Nowhere is Shakespeare's knowledge of nature more charmingly displayed than in her speeches. It is not only the poetic expression that is so wonderful in Perdita's distribution of flowers; it is the intimacy shown with their habits. She says (Act iv. sc. 3):
"Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sunAnd with him rises weeping."
How well she knows that in England the daffodils bloom as early as February and March, while the swallow does not come till April:
"——O Proserpina,For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lett'st fallFrom Dis's waggon! daffodils,That come before the swallow dares, and takeThe winds of March with beauty; violets dim,But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyesOr Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,That die unmarried, ere they can beholdBright Phœbus in his strength—a maladyMost incident to maids; bold oxlips andThe crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,The flower-de-luce being one! Oh, these I lackTo make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,To strew him o'er and o'er!Florizel. What, like a corse?Perdita. No, like a bank for love to lie and play on:Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried,'But quick and in mine arms." ...
Florizel's answer describes her with a lover's eloquence:
"What you doStill betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,I'd have you do it ever: when you singI'd have you buy and sell so, so give alms,Pray so, and, for the ordering your affairs,To sing them too."...
Her charm is equalled by her pride and resolution. When the king threatens to have her "beauty scratched with briars" if she dares retain her hold upon his son, although she believes all is lost, she says:
"I was not much afraid; for once or twiceI was about to speak and tell him plainly,The self-same sun that shines upon his courtHides not his visage from our cottage, butLooks on alike." ...
The delineation of the love between Florizel and Perdita is marked by certain features not to be found in Shakespeare's youthful works, but which reappear with Ferdinand and Miranda inThe Tempest. There is a certain remoteness from the world about it, a tenderness for those who are still yearning and hoping for happiness and a renunciation of any expectation as far as himself is concerned. He stands outside and beyond it all now. In the old days the poet stood on a level, as it were, with the love he was portraying; now he looks upon it from above with a fatherly eye.
As inCymbeline, the court is here placed in contrast with idyllic life, and shown as the abode of cruelty, stupidity, and vice. Even the better of the two kings, Polixenes, is rough and harsh, and Leontes, whom we are not to look upon as criminal, but only as misled by his miserable suspicions, offers a true picture of the princely attitude and princely behaviour of the time of the Renaissance, during the sixteenth century in Italy and about a century later in England. It was with good reason that Belarius said inCymbeline(Act iii. sc. 3):
"And we will fear no poison, which attendsIn place of greater state."
We see that the thoughts of the king immediately turn to poison when he believes that his wife has deceived him, and we alsosee that the courtier in whom he confides has all the means ready to hand (Act i. sc. 2):
"And thou ...... might'st bespice a cup,To give mine enemy a lasting wink;Which draught to me were cordial.Camillo. Sir, my lord,I could do this, and that with no rash potion,But with a lingering dram that should not workMaliciously like poison."
When, to escape committing this crime, Camillo takes flight with Polixenes, and the king has to be content with wreaking his vengeance on the hapless Hermione and her infant, he returns again and again to the thought of having them burned:
"Say that she were gone,Given to the fire, a moiety of my restMight come to me again."'
Then the command with regard to the child:
"Hence with it, and, together with the dam,Commit them to the fire!" (Act ii/sc. 3).'
Paulina shall share their fate for daring to oppose him:
"I'll ha' thee burnt!"
When she is gone, he repeats his order for the burning of the infant:
"Take it henceAnd see it instantly consumed with fire....... If thou refuse,And wilt encounter with my wrath, say so;The bastard brains with these my proper handsShall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire!"
We can see that Shakespeare had no intention of allowing the drama to become mawkish by giving too free scope to the humours of a pastoral play.
The resemblance between the sufferings of the infant Perdita, put ashore on the coast of Bohemia during a tempest, and those of the infant Marina, born during a storm at sea, is accentuated by lines which markedly recall a well-known passage inPericles.In theWinter's Talewe have (Act iii. sc. 3):
"Thou'rt like to haveA lullaby too rough: I never sawThe heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour!"[3]
The impression designedly produced upon the audience, that all this is not serious earnest, enables Shakespeare to approach more nearly to tragic dissonance than would otherwise be permissible in a work of this kind. The atmosphere of fairy tale, so skilfully breathed here and there throughout the play, carries with it a certain playfulness of expression which gives a touch of raillery to incidents which would otherwise be horrible. Playfulness it is, and we once more obtain a glimpse of this quality which has so long deserted Shakespeare. It would be difficult to find a more roguish bit of drollery than the old shepherd's monologue on finding the child (Act iii. sc. 3):
"A pretty one; a very pretty one: sure, some 'scape: though I am not bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the 'scape. This has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work: they were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here."
"A pretty one; a very pretty one: sure, some 'scape: though I am not bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the 'scape. This has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work: they were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here."
The same tone is preserved in the young shepherd's account of how he saw Antigonus torn to pieces by a bear. Impossible to feel horror-stricken or solemn over this:
"And then for the land-service, to see how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help, and said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman. But to make an end of the ship, to see how the sea flap-dragoned it; but first how the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them; and how the poor gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both roaring louder than sea or weather."
"And then for the land-service, to see how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help, and said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman. But to make an end of the ship, to see how the sea flap-dragoned it; but first how the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them; and how the poor gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both roaring louder than sea or weather."
It does not seem very likely that the unfortunate man's chief anxiety while the bear was tearing him to pieces would be to inform the shepherd of his name and rank. He forgot to add his age, although, through a slip on Shakespeare's part, the old shepherd knows without being told that Antigonus was aged.
Shakespeare did not concentrate his whole strength on this play either. He took no great pains to reduce his scattered materials to order, and, as if in defiance of those classically cultivated people who demanded unity of time and place, he allowed sixteen years to elapse between two acts, leaving us on the voyage between Sicily and Bohemia, between reality and wonderland. In other words, he has freely improvised on his instrument upon a given poetic theme; he has painted purely decoratively, content with a general harmony of colour and unity of tone, without giving much thought to any ultimate meaning.
[1]The Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia. Shakespeare's Library. T. P. Collins. Vol. i. p. 7.
[1]The Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia. Shakespeare's Library. T. P. Collins. Vol. i. p. 7.
[2]Julius Lange positively asserts that these expressions are not to be taken as an intentional jest on the part of Shakespeare, but are to be regarded as part of his style ("said in sober earnest," to quote his own words), and he makes them the pretext of an attack upon the "then, as now, idolised Shakespeare—in whose works, after all, we find more high-sounding and highly-coloured words than any meaning or real understanding of life." (Tilskueren, 1895, p. 699.)
[2]Julius Lange positively asserts that these expressions are not to be taken as an intentional jest on the part of Shakespeare, but are to be regarded as part of his style ("said in sober earnest," to quote his own words), and he makes them the pretext of an attack upon the "then, as now, idolised Shakespeare—in whose works, after all, we find more high-sounding and highly-coloured words than any meaning or real understanding of life." (Tilskueren, 1895, p. 699.)
[3]InPericles:"For thou'rt the rudliest welcome to this worldThat e'er was prince's child."
[3]InPericles:
"For thou'rt the rudliest welcome to this worldThat e'er was prince's child."
It is a different matter with that rich, fantastic wonder-poem,The Tempest, on which Shakespeare concentrated for the last time all the powers of his mind. Everything here is ordered and concise, and so inspired with thought that we seem to be standing face to face with the poet's idea. In spite of all its boldness of imagination, the dramatic order and condensation are such that the whole complies with the severest rules of Aristotle, the action of the entire play occupying in reality only three hours.
Owing to a notice by the Master of the Revels concerning a performance of the play at Whitehall in 1611, the date 1610-11 was long accepted as the year of its production. This memorandum is, however, a forgery, and the sole bit of reliable information we possess ofThe Tempest, before its appearance in the Folio edition of 1613, is a notice in Vertue's Manuscripts of a performance at court in February 1613, as one of the festivities celebrating the Princess Elizabeth's wedding. We can prove that this was its first performance and that it was written expressly for the occasion.
The Princess Elizabeth had been educated at Combe Abbey, far from the impure atmosphere of the court, under the care of Lord and Lady Harrington, an honourable and right-minded couple. When returned to her parents at the age of fifteen, she was distinguished by a charm and dignity beyond her years, and soon became the special favourite of her brother Henry, then seventeen years of age. Claimants for her hand were not long in appearing. The Prince of Piedmont was among the first, but the Pope would not consent to a marriage between a Catholic potentate and a Protestant princess. The next wooer was no less a person than Gustavus Adolphus, and his suit was rejected because James refused to bestow his daughter upon the enemy of his friend and brother-in-law, Christian IV. of Denmark. As early as December 1611 negotiations were entered upon on behalf of Prince Frederick V., who had just succeeded his father as Elector of the Palatinate. There was much to be said in favour of an alliance with a son of the man who had stood at the head of the Protestant League in Germany, and in May 1612a preliminary contract of betrothal was signed. In the August of the same year an ambassador from the young Elector came to England. Meanwhile the first suitor, strongly supported by the Queen's Catholic sympathies, had reappeared. The King of Spain had also made some overtures, but they had fallen through on account of their implying the conversion of the Princess to the Catholic faith. It was the Elector Frederick, therefore, who was finally victorious in the contest, and matters were soon so far settled that he could set out on his journey to England. He was very popular there by reason of his Protestantism, and he arrived at Gravesend amid general rejoicing. He sailed up to Whitehall on the 22nd of October, and was enthusiastically greeted by the crowd. King James received him warmly, and presented him with a ring worth eighteen hundred pounds. He was ardently supported by the young Prince of Wales, who announced his intention of following his sister on her wedding-tour to Germany, where it was his secret purpose to look for a bride for himself, regardless of political intrigue.
The Elector Palatine was a remarkably handsome and prepossessing young man. Born on the 16th of August 1596, he was at this time just sixteen years of age, and nothing in his conduct suggested the unmanly and contemptible character he displayed eight years later, when he, as King of Bohemia, lost the battle of Prague through a drunken revel. The contemporary English accounts of him abound with his praise. He made an excellent impression everywhere, and we read, of his dignified and princely behaviour in a letter from John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, dated 22nd October 1612: "He hath a train of very sober and well-fashioned gentlemen, his whole number is not above 170, servants and all, being limited by the King not to exceed." The condition of the exchequer would not permit of any unnecessary extravagance, and in less than a month after the wedding the whole retinue appointed to attend on the Prince during his stay in England was dismissed—a slight which the young Princess took very much to heart.
The much beloved Prince Henry was far from well at the time of his future brother-in-law's arrival in London. He had injured himself by violent bodily exercise during the unusually hot summer, and had ruined his digestion by eating great quantities of fruit. We now know that the illness by which he was attacked was typhus fever, and it appears that not many days after he was convalescent he incurred a severe relapse by playing tennis in the cold open air with no more clothing on the upper part of his body than a shirt.
High-minded, enlightened, and honourable as he was, Prince Henry was the idol and hope of the English nation. Queen Anne had taken the Prince, while he was yet a boy, to visit Raleigh at the Tower, soon after the illustrious prisoner hadbeen forced to abandon those hopes of the Admiralship of the Danish fleet which he had based on the visit of Christian the Fourth, to England. Prince Henry had been intimate with Raleigh since 1610, and is reported to have said, "No man but my father would have kept such a bird in a cage!" He had, with great difficulty, obtained from the King a promise that Raleigh should be released at Christmas 1612—a promise which was never kept.
On the morning of the 6th of November the Prince's condition was declared hopeless. The Queen sent to the Tower for a bottle of Raleigh's famous cordial, which she believed to have once saved her own life, and in which Raleigh himself placed the greatest faith. He despatched it with a message that it would save the Prince's life, unless he were dying of poison. It only availed to ease his death struggles, however, and, barely nineteen years of age, he died before the day was out.
Never before in the history of England had such hopes been fixed and such affection lavished on an heir-apparent, and we can realise how great would be the grief of the entire nation for his loss. According to the manner of the times, it was generally supposed that he had been poisoned. John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, says that grave doubts were entertained, but adds that no traces of poison were found when the body was opened on the second day. The editor of these letters however (author of theMemoirs of Sophia Dorothea), remarks: "There is nothing conclusive in this; for, in the first place, there were poisons which left no trace of their presence; and, in the next, if the effects of poisoning had been visible, the physicians would have been afraid to say so. More than one writer has ventured to assert that the atrocious crime was perpetrated with the connivance of the king, whose notorious jealousy of the popular young prince at this period, and foolish fondness for his brother Charles, induced a wretch well known to have been guilty of similar practices—the King's favourite, Viscount Rochester—to cause the prince to be secretly put out of the way. It was hoped by all who objected to the marriage of the Princess to the German Elector that Prince Henry's death would stand in the way of the wedding, for it could hardly be celebrated at a time of such deep mourning. The Elector, however, had come over to England on purpose to be married, and it was not possible to delay the ceremony long. The final marriage contract was signed by the King on the 17th of November, and the formal betrothal took place on the 27th of the same month. The wedding was postponed, but only until February. Sir Thomas Lake writes on the 6th of January that mourning is given up, and the wedding festivities are arranged.
The bride of seventeen was solemnly united to the bridegroom of sixteen to the general gratification of the court, on the 14th ofFebruary, in the presence of many spectators. On the 18th of the same month John Chamberlain writes to Mrs. Carleton: "The bridegroom and bride were both in a suit of cloth of silver, richly embroidered with silver, her train carried up by thirteen young ladies, or lord's daughters at least, besides five or six more that could not come near it. These were all in the same livery with the bride, though not so rich. The bride was married in her hair, that hung down long, with an exceeding rich coronet on her head, which the King valued at a million of crowns."
The bridegroom, with the King and Prince Charles, took part in a tournament of the wedding, and earned great applause in the evening by a display of his splendid horsemanship (Court and Times of James the First). In Wilson'sContemporary History(p. 64) we read of the bride: "Her vestments were white, the emblem of Innocency, her hair dishevel'd, hanging down her back at length, an ornament of Virginity; a crown of pure gold upon her head, the cognizance of Majesty, being all beset with precious gems, shining liking a constellation, her train supported by twelve young ladies in white garments, so adorned with jewels that her passage looked like a milky way."
Among the various plays chosen for performance at court during these wedding festivities wasThe Tempest, and we shall see that it was written expressly for the occasion.
It is hardly necessary to confute Hunter's theory, argued at great length, that the play dates from 1596. One fact alone will sufficiently prove its absurdity, namely, that use is made in the play of a passage from Florio's translation of Montaigne, which was not published until 1603. Nor is there any foundation for Karl Elze's opinion (also lengthily set forth) thatThe Tempestwas written by 1604. The metre shows that it belongs to Shakespeare's latest period. It has a proportion of 33 in the 100 of eleven-syllabled lines, whereasAntony and Cleopatra, written long after 1604, has but 25, andAs You Like It, of the year 1600, only 12 in the 100.
We have another fragment of internal evidence against the play having been written before 1610. In May 1609 Sir George Somer's fleet was scattered by a storm in mid-ocean while on its way to Virginia. The admiral's ship, driven out of its course, was blown by the gale unto the Bermudas. After all hope had been abandoned, the vessel was saved by being stranded between two rocks in just such a bay as that to which Ariel guides the king's ship inThe Tempest. A little book was written on the subject of this shipwreck, and the adventures connected with it, by Sylvester Jourdan, and was published in 1610 under the title, "Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called, The Isle of Devils." The storm and the peril of the admiral's ship are described; the vessel had sprung a leak, and the sailors were falling asleep at the pumps out of sheer exhaustion when she grounded. They foundthe island (hitherto regarded as enchanted) uninhabited, the air mild, and the soil remarkably fertile.
Shakespeare borrowed several details from this book, the name of Bermoothes, mentioned by Ariel in the first act, for instance; and his only reason for not following the narrative in detail was his desire to lay the scene in an island of the Mediterranean.
The play, then, was written for the royal wedding in 1613. This date was first surmised by Tieck, and later declared probable by Johan Meissner, being finally confirmed by Richard Garnett in theUniversal Reviewof 1889. The latter maintains and proves thatThe Tempestwas written for a private audience on the occasion of a wedding; that the nature of the audience and the identity of the wedding are determined by unmistakable references to the personality of the bridegroom, to the early death of Prince Henry, and to the qualities which King James prided himself on possessing, and for which he loved to be praised. Over and above all this, there is internal evidence for the year 1613, and none for any other date.
The play is much shorter than the generality of Shakespeare's dramas, there being only 2000 lines inThe Tempestagainst the average 3000. It was not permitted to take up too much of the King's time nor of that of his guests; moreover, the play had to be written and learned and put on the stage all within the course of, at most, a few months. Thus there was every inducement to make it short.
Not being written for performance in an ordinary theatre, it was desirable to have as few changes of scene as possible, and in this respectThe Tempestis unique among Shakespeare's plays. After the opening scene on the deck of the ship, no change of scenery whatever is necessary, although the action transpires on different parts of the island. The occasion of the play made it equally desirable to avoid change of costume, and of this there is actually none, except where Prospero attires himself in ducal robes at the close of the play, and even this he effects on the stage with the assistance of Ariel. We have already referred to the compression of the play, which, instead of extending, as is usual with Shakespeare, over a long period, or even (as inPericlesandThe Winter's Tale) over a whole lifetime, merely occupies three hours, not much longer than was required for the performance of the play.
In spite of its brevity, two masques, of the kind generally represented before royalty on such occasions, are introduced into the play.
The pantomime and ballet, with its transformations, are much more elaborate than would have been necessary if the scene was only there for its own sake. "Enter several strange Shapes, bringing in a banquet; they dance about it with gentle actions of salutation; and inviting the king, &c., to eat, they depart. Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel, like a harpy; claps his wings upon the table, and with a quaint device the banquet vanishes." King James had, as we know, a fancy for all mannerof stage machinery, and Inigo Jones contrived quantities of it for use at court festivities.
Still more suggestive is the great wedding masque, which, with its mythological figures, Juno, Ceres, and Iris, occupies nearly the whole of the fourth act. If it were not thatThe Tempestwas written for a bridal performance, this masque would be condemned, so extraneous is it to the plot, as a later interpolation, and as such, indeed, it was considered by Karl Elze. Without it, however, the fourth act dwindles to nothing, and the ballet is obviously required to give it its proper length. Moreover, masque and play are inseparably connected by the famous lines, "and like the baseless fabric of this vision," &c. It has been attributed, without sufficient reason, to Beaumont; but even supposing him to have composed it, it must have been planned by the author of the play and written to his order, and it affords unmistakable proof thatThe Tempestwas composed as an occasional play for the diversion of princes and courtiers. The audience must have been in possession of circumstances justifying the introduction of the masque, and those circumstances could not be anything but a wedding. We may now assert with absolute certainty thatThe Tempestwas performed on the occasion of the Princess Elizabeth's wedding. They would not revive an old play, originally written for the stage, for such a purpose, still less would they use one which had been composed for a previous wedding. Shakespeare would never allow anything unsuitable to be performed; moreover, at no former marriage would such a play have been appropriate. The fact that it was one of the king's musicians who composed the music for Ariel's songs, "Full fathom five" in the first act, and "Where the bee sucks" in the last, renders it still more probable that this of the court was its first performance. Everything indicates a royal wedding.
We find many flattering allusions in this play to King James, who could not possibly be neglected on such an occasion as that of his daughter's bridal. When Prospero, explaining his position to his daughter (Act i. sc. 2), tells how he was foremost among all the dukes for dignity and knowledge of the liberal arts, his special study, and how, absorbed in secret studies, he grew a stranger to his state, his speech conveys that interpretation of James's position and character which he himself favoured, and implies, at the same time, that the possession of these qualities was the cause of his unpopularity. Possibly there was a touch of well-concealed irony in all this. Garnett, indeed, finds an intentional dramatic satire in the crustiness and self-sufficiency of the character, proving that even the development of the highest human qualities is attended by drawbacks. But this is carrying the parallel between the characteristics of Prospero and James too far. Garnett can truly say, however, that just such a prince as Prospero, wise, humane, peace-loving, pursuing distant aims which none but he could realise or fathom; independent of counsellors and more than a match forhis enemies in sagacity, holding himself in reserve until the decisive moment and then taking effective action, a devoted student of every lawful science but a sworn foe to the black art, did James imagine himself to be, and as such did he love to be represented.
We have seen with what mingled feelings the King and court would prepare for the Princess's wedding. The grief for Prince Henry's death was still so fresh that all rejoicing must be overshadowed by it. A noisy joyous play would have been out of place, while, upon the other hand, it would not do to destroy all festive feeling by directly recalling the loss the royal family and the nation had so lately sustained. Shakespeare performed this difficult task with admirable tact and good feeling. He alluded to the death of the Prince, but in such a manner that grief was lost in joy. Until the last act of the play the youthful Prince Ferdinand is believed by his father and the courtiers to be dead, and frequent expression is given to their sorrow over their supposed loss. The Prince is not the son of Prospero, but of Alonso, and the sonless Duke finds a son in Ferdinand, as James found one in the Elector Palatine.
The fact that these guarded allusions to Prince Henry's death are found throughout the play prove that it must have been written after the 6th of November, and, since it was evidently performed before the wedding, which was celebrated on the 14th of February, we may see how little time was needed by Shakespeare in which to produce a work actually brimming over with genius, and how far he was from being enfeebled or exhausted when, in this play, he bade farewell for ever to his art and his position in London.
The entire drama is permeated by the atmosphere of that age of discovery and struggling colonists. It has been admirably shown by Watkins Lloyd that all the topics and problems it deals with correspond to the colonisation of Virginia—the marvels brought to light by the discovery of new countries and new races; by the wonderful falsehoods, and still more wonderful truths, of travellers concerning natural phenomena and the superstitions arising from them. Sea perils and shipwreck, the power that lies in such calamities to provoke remorse for crimes committed; the quarrels and mutinies of colonists, the struggles of their leaders to preserve their authority; theories on the civilisation and government of new countries, the reappearance of old world vices on a new soil, the contrast between the reasoning powers of man and those of the savage; and lastly, all the demands made upon the activity, promptitude, and energy of the conquerors.
The date of the first Virginian settlement was May 1607, and it then consisted of 107 colonists. The Virginia Company was not founded until 1609 and very little was known about it before 1610. Not before 1612 could they write home, "Our colony is now seven hundred strong." These circumstances all seem to point to 1612-13 as the period during whichThe Tempestwas produced.
We possess no knowledge of any one particular source from whichThe Tempestmight have been drawn, but it seems probable that Shakespeare constructed his drama upon some already existing foundation. A childishly old-fashioned play by Jacob Ayrer,Comedia von der schönen Sidea, seems to have been founded upon a variant of the story used by Shakespeare.[1]Ayrer died in 1605, and his work, therefore, cannot have owed anything to that of the great dramatist. The similarity between the two plays is confined to the relations between Prospero and Alonso, and Ferdinand and Miranda. In the German play we have a banished sovereign, his daughter, and a captive prince, who is compelled to atone for his audacity in making love to the daughter by carrying and cutting firewood. He promises his beloved she shall be queen, and attempting to draw his sword upon his father-in-law, is rendered powerless by magic. There is no real resemblance between the dramas. It is, of course, possible that Dowland, or some other English actor, might have introduced theSideafrom Germany, but Shakespeare did not know German, and in any case the play was too poor a one to interest him. Moreover, since we know that Ayrer did occasionally copy English works, we may safely conclude that both dramatists were indebted to some earlier English source. There is nothing specially original about the above incidents. In Greene'sFriar Bacon, four men make fruitless efforts to draw swords held in their scabbards by magic, andThe Tempestwould naturally possess traits in common with other plays representing sorcery upon the stage. In Marlowe's drama,Dr. Faustus, for instance, the hero punishes his would-be murderers by making them wallow in filth (Faustus, Act iv. sc. 2), just as Prospero drives Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano into the marsh and leaves them there up to their chins in mire (Tempest, Act iv.).
It is a most arbitrary and unreasonable supposition of Meissner's that Shakespeare borrowed his wedding masque from the one performed at Prince Henry's christening, in which also Juno, Ceres, and Iris appear. Shakespeare was neverso lacking in inventive power that he needed to unearth a description of an old play which had been acted before King James at Stirling Castle some nineteen years previously. We know that the masque itself was not yet in print.
It was an early and correct observation that various minor details ofThe Tempestwere taken from different books of travel. Shakespeare found the name of Setebos, and, possibly, the first idea of Caliban himself, in an account of Magellan's voyage to the south pole in Eden'sHistorye of Travaile in East and West Indies(1577). From Raleigh'sDiscovery of the large, rich, and bewtiful Empire of Guiana(1596) he took the fable of the men whose heads stood upon their breasts. Raleigh writes that, though this may be an invention, he is inclined to believe it true, because every child in the provinces of Arromai and Canuri maintains that their mouths were in the middle of their breasts.[2](See Gonzalo's speech inThe Tempest, Act iii. sc. 2.)
It was Hunter who first suggested that Shakespeare might have taken some hints from Ariosto. It is possible that he had in mind some stanzas from the 43rd canto ofOrlando Furioso. The 15th and 14th contain a faint foreshadowing, as it were, of Prospero and Miranda, and the 187th stanza alludes to the power of witchcraft to raise storms and calm seas again. TheOrlandohad been translated into English by Harrington, but, as we have already observed, Shakespeare was fully qualified to read it in the original. Too much, however, has already been made of these trivial, nay, utterly insignificant coincidences.[3]
It is far more remarkable that the famous and beautiful passage (Act iv.) proclaiming the transitoriness of all earthly things—a passage which seems to be a mournful epitome of the philosophy of Shakespeare's last years of productiveness—may be an easy adaptation of an inferior and quite unknown poetof his day. When the spirit play conjured up by Prospero has vanished he says:
"These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits, andAre melted into air, into thin air,And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep."
In Count Stirling's tragedy ofDarius, published in London, 1604, the following verses occur:
"Let Greatness of her glassy scepters vaunt,Not scepters, no, but reeds, soon bruis'd, soon broken;And let this worldly pomp our wits enchant,All fades, and scarcely leaves behind a token.Those golden palaces, those gorgeous halls,With furniture superfluously fair,Those stately courts, those sky-encount'ring walls,Evanish all like vapours in the air."
History could scarcely afford a more striking proof that in art the style is all, subject and meaning being of comparatively small importance. Stirling's verses are by no means bad, nor even poor, and their decidedly pleasing rhymes express, in very similar words, exactly the same idea we find in Shakespeare's lines, and were, moreover, their precursors. Nevertheless, both they and the name of their author would be utterly forgotten long since if Shakespeare had not, by a marvellous touch or two, transformed them into a few lines of blank verse which will hold their own in the memory of man as long as the English language lasts.
As Meissner[4]pointed out, Shakespeare was indebted to Frampton's translation of Marco Polo (1579) for one or two suggestive hints. For example, we read in Frampton of the desert of Lob in Asia: "You shall heare in the ayre, the sound ofTabers and other instruments, to putte the travellers in feare, and to make them lose their way, and to depart their company and loose themselves: and by that meanes many doe die, being deceived so, by evill spirits, that make these soundes, and also doe call diverse of the travellersby their names." Compare this with Caliban's words inThe Tempest(Act iii. sc. 2):
"The isle is full of noises,Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes athousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices."
And Trinculo's subsequent jesting remark, which evidently refers to the accompaniment of a clown's morris dance: "I would I could see thistabourer; he lays it on." Compare also Alonso's lament (Act iii. sc. 3):
"Oh, it is monstrous, monstrous!Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronouncedThe name of Prospero: it did bass my trespass."
Shakespeare may have found the first suggestions of Caliban and Ariel in Greene'sFriar Bacon. In the ninth scene of this play, two necromancers, Bungay and Vandermast, dispute as to which possess the greater power, the pyromantic (fire) spirits or the geomantic (earth) spirits. The fire spirits, says Bungay, are mere transparent shadows that float past us like heralds, while the spirits of earth are strong enough to burst rocks asunder. Vandermast maintains that earth spirits are dull, as befits their place of abode. They are coarse and earthly, less intelligent than other spirits, and thus it is they are at the service of jugglers, witches, and common sorcerers. But the fine spirits are mighty and swift, their power is far-reaching.
A more direct suggestion of Ariel's charming ways was probably found by Shakespeare at the close of the already mentionedFaithful Shepherdess, written by his young friend Fletcher. In it the satyr offers his services to the beautiful Corin in terms which recall Ariel's speech to Prospero (Act i. sc. 2):
"All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I comeTo answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,To swim, to dive into the fire, to rideOn the curled clouds, to thy strong bidding taskAriel and all his quality."
Fletcher's satyr makes the same offer:
"Tell me, sweetest,What new service now is meetestFor a satyr? Shall I strayIn the middle air, and stayThe sailing rack, or nimbly takeHold by the moon, and gently makeSuit to the pale queen of nightFor a beam to give thee light?Shall I dive into the sea,And bring thee coral, making wayThrough the rising waves that fallIn snowy fleeces?" &c.
But a much more striking example of Shakespeare's taste and talent for adaptation is presented by Prospero's farewell speech to the elves (Act v. sc. I), "Ye elves of hills, brooks," &c. Warburton was the first to draw attention to the fact that this speech, in which Shakespeare bids farewell to his art, and tells, through the medium of Prospero's marvellous eloquence, of all that he has accomplished, was founded upon the great incantation in Ovid'sMetamorphoses(vii. 197-219), where, after the conquest of the golden fleece, Medea, at Jason's request, invokes the spirits of night to obtain the prolongation of his old father's life. A comparison of the text plainly proves Shakespeare's indebtedness to Golding's translation of the Latin work:
"Ye Ayres and Windes:ye Elites of Hillies, of Brooks, of Woods alone,Of standing Lakes, and of the Night approche ye everyoneThrough helpe of whom(the crooked bankes much wondring at the thing)I haue compelled streames to run cleane backward to their spring.By charmes I make the calme seas rough, and make the rough seasplayne,And cover all the Skie with clouds and chase them thence againe.By charmes I raise and lay the windesand burst the Viper's iaw,And from the bowels of the earth both stones and trees do draw.Whole woods and Forrests I remoouve: I make the Mountains shake,And euen the earth it selfe to grone and fearefully to quake.I call up dead men from their graues, and thee, O lightsome Moone,I darken oft, though beaten brass abate thy perill soone.Our Sorcerie dimmes the Morning faire, and darkes the Sun at Noone.. . . . . . . . . .Among the earth-bred brothers you a mortall warre did setAnd brought asleepe the Dragon fell whose eyes were neuer shet."
The corresponding lines inThe Tempestrun:
"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;And ye that on the sands with printless footDo chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly himWhen he comes back; you . . .. . . . .by whose aid—Weak masters though ye be—I have bedimm'dThe noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,And twixt the green sea and the azur'd vaultSet roaring war: to the dread-rattling thunderHave I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oakWith his own bolt:the strong-bas'd promontoryHave I made shake;and by the spurspluck'd upThe pine and cedar: graves at my commandHave wak'd their sleepers, op'd and let 'em forthBy my so potent art."
The words employed in addressing the elves are actually the same. Medea's power to raise and calm the waves becomes the elfin chase of and flight from the advancing and retreating billows. Both Medea and Prospero proclaim their power to overcloud the sky and darken the sun, to raise winds and shatter trees, tearing them up by the roots. They can make the very mountains tremble, and can compel the grave to give up its dead.
The names Prospero and Stephano may be found in Ben Jonson'sEvery Man in his Humour(1595). Prospero was also the name of a riding-master well known in the London of Shakepeare's day.
Malone has suggested that the name "Caliban" was derived from "cannibal." Although the creature displays no tendency towards cannibalism, it is possible that Shakespeare had this term for a man-eater in his mind when he invented the name; it is even probable, seeing that the passage in Montaigne from which he drew Gonzalo's Utopia is contained in a chapter headed "Les Cannibales." Furness, who has inaugurated such an admirable edition of Shakespeare, considers this surmise an improbable one. He and Th. Elze incline to the belief that the name was derived from Calibia, a town in the neighbourhood of Tunis, but the connection is scarcely more obvious. Shakespeare found the name Ariel in Isaiah xxix. 1, the name of a city in which David dwelt, and he doubtless appropriated it on account of its similarity in sound to both English and Latin words for air.
We now seem to have exhausted all the available literary sources ofThe Tempest, and we need only add that Dryden and Davenant, in their abominable adaptation of the play (published in London 1670), made free use of Calderon's already mentioned "En esta vida todo es vertad y todo es mentira," and thus provided the Miranda, who has never seen a young man, with a counterpart in Hippolyto, who has never seen the face of woman.