phase of experience and presented a long succession of characters. Beginning with the old chronicle plays, which he read with the truest historical perception and feeling, he passed on to the humorous aspects of life, and thence to a study of its most appalling aspects; and at each stage he laid hold upon some human document in history, legend, tradition, or romance. He never lost his touch with the realities of life; and he found so much that was of supreme significance that he rarely had occasion to use invention. The race in many lands and at many periods of time had been at work storing up the raw material of poetry for him; he entered into partnership with the race, and, by rationalizing its experience and giving it the beauty and order of art, repaid the race a thousand fold for the material of every sort which had been placed in his hands. In this masterful dealing, not with images of his own making, but with the actualities of human experience, is to be found his originality—an originality identical in its method and operation with the originality of Homer, Dante, and Goethe, who share with him the splendid loneliness of supreme literary achievement.

In "The Tempest" Shakespeare used existing material only in the remotest way; the play fashioned itself largely in his imagination. In the earlier dramas he had dealt entirely with past conditions and incidents; the "Merry Wives of Windsor " is the only one of his works which may be said to deal with contemporary society and manners. "The Tempest," however, so far as it was rooted in reality, was drawn by

suggestion from stirring events in his own time. The poet, more than any of his contemporaries, personified the freedom, vitality, keen sense of reality, and wide discursive interests of the Elizabethan age; in "The Tempest" he touched the new world of wonder, adventure, and achievement fast coming to the knowledge of the old world. Strange tidings of new countries and peoples were coming up from time to time from the far seas, and marvellous stories of strange lands and perilous voyages were told by quiet English firesides. In the autumn of 1610 a great sensation was made in London by the arrival of a company of sailors who had been wrecked off the Bermudas, until that moment undiscovered. These sailors, like all men of their occupation, were lovers of marvels and spinners of strange tales; they had found the climate of the Bermudas charming, and they had heard many inexplicable sounds in the islands. These experiences were not dulled in colour by the homeward voyage; on the contrary, they gained in marvellous and mysterious accompaniments of sight and sound as the distance lengthened between the place where they befell the wrecked crew and the places in which they were heard with eager and uncritical ears.

The wreck of the Sea-Venture, Sir George Somers commanding, was described at length by several survivors, the most important of these accounts being that entitled "A Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called the Ile of Divels," which was reënforced by several pamphlets. According to these reports the island of Bermudas had never been "inhabited by any Chris

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tian or heathen people"; it was reported "a most prodigious and enchanted place," "still-vexed" with "monstrous thunder-storms and tempests." On the night the ship was wrecked the Admiral himself" had an apparition of a little, round light, like a faint star, trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half the height above the main-mast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, tempting to settle as it were upon any of the four shrouds."

The stories of this marvellous voyage were undoubtedly heard by Shakespeare, and he certainly read these narratives before writing of the " still-vexed Bermoothes," of the climate of the Island in "The Tempest," and of the spirits which frequented it. Traces of the reading of other books of travel are found in the play. It is possible also that Shakespeare may have heard from English actors, who had performed at Nuremberg a few years before this time, the plot of a comedy written by Jacob Ayrer, of that city, under the title "Die Schöne Sidea." It is also possible that there may have been an earlier play or novel of a somewhat similar plot, which has entirely disappeared. The famous description of an ideal commonwealth which is put in the mouth of Gonzalo was suggested to Shakespeare by an essay of Montaigne's which he read in Florio's translation; while the Invocation of Prospero may owe something to one of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," with which the poet had long been

familiar.

After recognizing his indebtedness for certain details to various earlier and contemporary sources, "The

Tempest" remains preeminently the creation of Shakespeare's imagination. In certain respects it is his masterpiece. As a drama it falls far below his earlier work; as a poem, cast in a dramatic form, it is one of the most beautiful creations in English poetry. The profound meditativeness and rich intellectual quality of "Hamlet" are fused in it with the lovely fancy of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," while in deep and sustained play of imagination, fashioning the play in its structure, shaping its parts to one high end, touching it everywhere with a kind of ultimate beauty, it stands alone not only in Shakespeare's work but in modern poetry. The nobleness of conception is matched throughout with a kindred nobleness of style; while the songs are full of the deep, spontaneous melody which issues out of the heart of the poet when sound and sense are perfectly mated in his imagination.

The profound seriousness of temper which pervades the play, the clearness with which its ethical bearings are disclosed, the deep philosophy which underlies it, convey an irresistible impression of something personal in the theme and the treatment. It is impossible to read "The Tempest" without a haunting sense of secondary meaning. Caliban, Miranda, and Prospero have been interpreted from many points of view; a final and convincing interpretation will never be made, but the instinct of Shakespeare's readers and lovers that in this last play from his hand the poet was bidding farewell to his art is probably sound. As a rule, critics err rather in diminishing than expanding the significance of great works of art.

"The Tempest" appeared about 1611. Shakespeare was then forty-seven years of age, and had nearly completed his work. When he set the noble figure of Prospero on the unknown island, and made him master of spirits and of men, with a knowledge of life which was so great that it easily passed on into magical art, he could not have been oblivious of the spiritual significance of the work, nor of its deep and vital symbolism in the development of his own mind and art.

The success of "The Tempest" appears to have been great; it was presented at Court, and was one of the plays performed during the marriage festivities of the Princess Elizabeth in 1613. One source of this popular interest was probably the charm of the songs which gave the movement pause and relief. There is good reason to believe that these songs were set to music by Robert Johnson, a popular composer of the day, and that two of them had been preserved in Wilson's "Cheerful Ayres and Ballads set for Three Voices."

Shakespeare completed no more plays after the appearance of "The Tempest," but he had a shaping hand in "Henry VIII.," which appeared about 1612 and is included among his works. This very uneven and very spectacular drama is based upon material found in Hall and Holinshed, in a life of Wolsey by George Cavendish, then in manuscript, and in Foxe's "Acts and Monuments of the Church." Its performance on June 29, 1613, led to the burning of the Globe Theatre an event of which there are several