THE TEMPEST

THE TEMPEST first appeared in print as the opening play in the First Folio. This fact has, curiously enough, been taken as a reason for considering it Shakespeare's last drama; but more substantial evidence exists for placing it thus late. One limit is fixed by its presence in a list of plays performed during the marriage festivities of King James's daughter Elizabeth in the early spring of 1613. The other is less definite, but is approximately indicated by the author's use of details from various accounts of the wreck of Sir George Somers in 1609. Within these limits, 1610 to 1613, opinion varies. Metrical evidence associates The Tempest with Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, but does not decide their relative order. Those who place the play in 1612 regard it as having been specially written for the betrothal or the marriage of the Princess, adducing in support the large spectacular element and the nature of the masque in the fourth act. Further attempts to strengthen the argument by finding in Prospero a portrait of King James, and in the supposed drowning of Ferdinand references to the death of Prince Henry, are not convincing; nor does the mere fact of performance at the wedding prove anything, since the numerous other plays then acted were revivals. The Revels accounts contain an entry stating that The Tempest was presented at Whitehall on Hallowmas night, 1611, and though this is now known to have been forged, it may have been well founded, since sixty years before the forgery Malone had stated, on evidence no longer accessible, that he knew the play existed in the autumn of 1611. On the whole, there is no evidence quite strong enough to counterbalance the standing presumption in favor of Malone's accuracy, so that 1611 remains the most probable date. There is thus nothing to hinder us from regarding the play as the last completed by Shakespeare alone.

For the main thread of the plot no source has been discovered. The resemblance to Die Schöne Sidea of Jakob Ayrer of Nuremberg, who died in 1605, is much less striking when the whole of Ayrer's play is read than when the points of likeness are extracted. In both plays we have a prince given to magic, and driven into exile with a daughter who marries the son of his enemy; an attendant spirit; and most striking of all — the imposition of log-carrying upon the captive prince, and the fixing of his sword in his scabbard. But there is absolutely no similarity in character, and Ayrer's devil has nothing in common with Ariel, save his function as a supernatural servant. The fixing of the sword is a commonplace of magic, and even the carrying or splitting of logs is found as a task imposed by a magician on a captive prince in folk-tales having no connection with the present plays. The most that can be said is that both dramas may go back to a common origin, which, however, may have been far from immediate. "A fellow-actor's description" of the German play is of course a possibility, especially since English comedians are known to have been in Nuremberg in 1604 and 1606; but a positive statement is not warranted by the evidence.

Of the origin of minor details we can speak with more assurance. Shakespeare was well read in the literature of travel of his time, and evidences of this abound in the present case. In his descriptions of the island and of the storm he drew especially from the narratives of Sylvester Jourdan and William Strachey, who wrote accounts of the wreck on the Bermudas of one of the ships belonging to the expedition to Virginia led by Somers and Gates in 1609. Information with regard to this and similar adventures may well have reached him from oral sources also. Gonzalo's commonwealth (11. i. 147 ff.) was suggested by two passages in Florio's translation of Montaigne (1603). Prospero's abjuration speech (v. i. 33 ff.) is influenced by a passage in Golding's Ovid. Setebos is taken from Eden's History of Travaile (1577), where the name occurs as that of the devil-god of the Patagonian giants. Ariel occurs in Isaiah, and is the name of a prince of spirits in cabalistic literature. Miranda is evidently a significant coinage, like Perdita and Marina; and Caliban may be merely an anagram for "cannibal." The island is clearly not meant to be identified with Bermuda or any other.

[Other Spirits attending on Prospero.] SCENE: [A ship at sea;] an uninhabited island.