a certain extent, with the Winter's Tale.' | make nature afraid in his plays, like those The probability is, that these plays were that beget tales, tempests, and such-like produced in their present form soon after drolleries." Gifford has contended, arguing the period of Shakspere's quitting the stage against the disposition of the commentators about 1603; and perhaps before the pro- to charge Jonson with malignity, that the duction of 'Macbeth,' 'Troilus and Cressida,' expressions servant-monster, and tales, tem'Henry VIII.,' and the Roman plays. "The pests, and such-like drolleries, had reference Tempest' appears to us to belong to the to the popular puppet-shows which were same cycle. The opinion which we here especially called drolleries. The passage, express is not inconsistent with a belief that however, still looks to us like a sly, though Mr. Hunter has brought forward several not ill-natured, allusion to Shakspere's Calicurious facts to render it highly probable ban, and his 'Winter's Tale,' and 'Tempest,' that it was produced in 1596. But the which were then popular acting plays. aggregate evidence, as we think, outweighs Hunter believes that in this passage Jonson these curious facts. does pointedly direct his satire against 'The Tempest;' but he also maintains that Jonson does, in the same way, satirize 'The Tempest' in 1596, in the Prologue to 'Every Man in his Humour:' 'The Tempest' is not included by name in the list of plays ascribed to Shakspere by Francis Meres in 1599. Mr. Hunter says that it was included, under the name of 'Love's Labour Won.' We have endeavoured to show, in the Chapter on 'All's Well that Ends Well,' not only that the comedy bearing that name had the highest pretension to the title of 'Love's Labour Won,' but that 'The Tempest' had no such pretension. We do not agree that the comedy called "The Tempest,' when it was first printed, bore the title, either as a leading or secondary title, when Meres published his list in 1599, of 'Love's Labour Won.' We believe that it was always called 'The. Tempest;' and that, looking at its striking fable, and its beauty of characterization and language, it would undoubtedly have been mentioned by Meres if it had existed in 1599. The 'Bartholomew Fair' of Ben Jonson was produced at the Hope Theatre in 1614; and it was performed by "the Lady Elizabeth's servants.' It is stated by Malone that "it appears from MSS. of Mr. Vertue that 'The Tempest' was acted by John Heminge and the rest of the King's company, before Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine Elector, in the beginning of the year 1613." This circumstance gives some warrant to the belief of the commentators that a passage in the Induction to Bartholomew Fair' is a sarcasm upon Shakspere:-"If there be never a servant-monster in the fair, who can help it, he says, nor a nest of antiques? He is loth to Mr. "He rather prays you will be pleased to see Nor nimble squib is seen to make afcard It is scarcely probable, if Jonson had meant You that have so graced monsters may like men," must allude to Caliban. Surely the term monsters, as opposed to men, must be a general designation of what Jonson believed to be unnatural in the romantic drama, as contrasted with the "image of the times" in comedy. But, if we must have real monsters, there were plenty to be found in the older plays. Gosson, in 1581, thus writes:"Sometimes you shall see nothing but the adventures of an amorous knight, passing from country to country for the love of his lady, encountering many a terrible monster, made of brown paper, and at his return is so wonderfully changed that he cannot be known but by some posy in his tablet, or by a broken ring, or a handkerchief, or a piece of a cockle-shell." Sir Philip Sidney ridicules the appearance of “a hideous monster, with fire and smoke." Much older theatres than the Globe were furnished with their thunder and lightning. In 1572 John Izarde, according to an entry in the accounts of the revels at court, was paid for a device for counterfeiting thunder and lightning."* It is as likely that thrones descended in other plays besides 'The Tempest,' as it is certain that in 'The Tempest' Juno descended with a classical fitness of which Jonson has given us many similar examples in his own masks. We can see nothing in these circumstances to connect the date of 'The Tempest' with that of Ben Jonson's 'Every Man in his Humour.' The third point upon which Mr. Hunter relies for fixing the date of 'The Tempest,' as of 1596, is deduced from the passage in the third act where Gonzalo laughs at the stories of "men whose heads stood in their breasts." Raleigh told this story, in his account of his voyage to Guiana, in 1595. Shakspere makes Othello, not in a boasting or lying spirit, but with the confiding belief that belonged to his own high nature, tell Desdemona of "The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders." Would Mr. Hunter contend that this second notice of "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" fixes the date of Othello, as well as that of 'The Tempest,' in 1596? Such circumstances are, as we believe, of the very slightest value. The argument may be put ingeniously and learnedly, as Mr. Hunter puts it; or it may be rendered ludicrous, as Chalmers renders it. What, for example, *Collier, Annals of the Stage,' vol. iii. p. 370. "Me seemeth that what in those nations we see by experience doth not only exceed all the pictures wherewith licentious poesy hath proudly embellished the golden age, and all her quaint inventions to feign a happy condition of man, but also the conception and desire of philosophy, They could not imagine a genuitie so pure and simple as we see it by experience; nor ever be lieve our society might be maintained with so little art and human combination. It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrates, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; | no manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon, were never heard amongst them. How dissonant would he find his imaginary commonwealth from this perfection!" This extract establishes beyond all possible doubt that the lines of Gonzalo, "I' the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things," &c.— were founded upon Montaigne, and upon Florio's translation. That translation was not published before 1603. But portions of it had been seen in manuscript, says Mr. Hunter. Sir William Cornwallis mentions in his Essays' that "divers of his pieces I have seen translated," and he describes Cornwallis were not printed till 1600; but Florio as the translator. The Essays' of they, also, had been seen in manuscript; and so Cornwallis might have written about | and hopeless of any succour, most of them were "divers parts" of Florio's 'Montaigne' before gone to sleep, yielding themselves to the mercy 1596; and Shakspere might have read this of the sea, being all very desirous to die upon identical part of Florio's 'Montaigne' before any shore wheresoever. Sir George Sommers, 1596; and thus the dates both of Cornwallis's sitting at the stern, seeing the ship desperate of and Florio's books go for nothing in this relief, looking every minute when the ship would sink, he espied land, which, according to inquiry. Is this evidence? his and Captain Newport's opinion, they judged it should be that dreadful coast of the Bermudas, which islands were, of all nations, said and sup The posed to be enchanted, and inhabited with witches and devils, which grew by reason of accustomed monstrous thunder-storm and tem The date of Shakspere's 'Tempest' has been a fertile subject for the exercise of critical conjecture. Malone writes a pamphlet of sixty pages upon it; Chalmers another pamphlet somewhat longer. first has been reprinted in Boswell's edition; pest near unto those islands; also for that the the other costs as much as a manuscript in whole coast is so wonderous dangerous of rocks the days before printing. It is worth the that few can approach them but with unspeakmoney, however, for a quiet laugh. The two able hazard of shipwreck. Sir George Sommers, critics differ very slightly in their opinions Sir Thomas Gates, Captain Newport, and the as to the date of the comedy; but their rest, suddenly agreed of two evils to choose the proofs are essentially different. Malone least, and so, in a kind of desperate resolution, contends for 1611, holding that "the storm directed the ship mainly for these islands, which, by which Sir George Sommers was ship- by God's divine providence, at a high water ran wrecked on the island of Bermuda, in 1609, right between two strong rocks, where it stuck unquestionably gave rise to Shakspeare's fast without breaking, which gave leisure and 'Tempest,' and suggested to him the title, as good opportunity for them to hoist out their well as some incidents." The whole rela-boat, and to land all their people, as well sailors tion is contained in the additions to Stow's 'Annals' by Howes: "In the year 1609 the Adventurers and Company of Virginia sent from London a fleet of eight ships, with people to supply and make strong the colony in Virginia; Sir Thomas Gates being general, in a ship of 300 tons: in this ship was also Sir George Sommers, who was admiral, and Captain Newport, vice-admiral, and with them about 160 persons. This ship was 'Admiral,' and kept company with the rest of the fleet to the height of 30 degrees; and, being then assembled to consult touching divers matters, they were surprised with a most extreme violent storm, which scattered the whole fleet, yet all the rest of the fleet bent their course for Virginia, where, by God's special favour, they arrived safely; but this great ship, though new, and far stronger than any of the rest, fell into a great leak, so as mariners and passengers were forced, for three days' space, to do their utmost to save themselves from sudden sinking: but notwithstanding their incessant pumping, and casting out of water by buckets and all other means, yet the water covered all the goods within the hold, and all men were utterly tired, and spent in strength, and overcome with labour; as soldiers and others, in good safety; and being come ashore they were soon refreshed and cheered, the soil and air being most sweet and delicate." Here we have a storm, a wreck, the Bermudas, and an enchanted island; and, in other descriptions of the same event, we have mention of a sea-monster. "Nothing can be more conclusive, then," says Malone, "that the date of the play is fixed, with uncommon precision, between the end of the year 1610 and the autumn of 1611." No, says Chalmers, the shipwreck of Sir George Sommers did suggest the incidents; but Malone himself had admitted that there was a great tempest at home in 1612;-" the author availed himself of a circumstance then fresh in the minds of his audience, by affixing a title to it which was more likely to excite curiosity than any other that he could have chosen, while, at the same time, it was sufficiently justified by the subject of the drama." "Now this tempest," says Chalmers, "happened at Christmas 1612; and so the play could not have been written in the summer of 1612." Surely all this is admirable fooling, which is scarcely necessary to say is put an end to by the certainty that the play existed in 1611. In such minute inquiries, all assuming that poetry is to be dealt with by the same laws as chronology, or geography, or any other exact branch of knowledge, there can be nothing but perpetual mistake, and contradiction, and false inference. Chalmers, in some respects acute enough, has, through the indulgence of these propensities for making poetry literal, fallen into the mistake of imagining that Bermuda was the scene of 'The Tempest.' Mr. Hunter says, "No editor of Shakspeare has ever gone so far as to represent the island of Bermuda as actually the scene of this play;" but he adds, "Chalmers has given some encouragement to this very prevalent mistake." Encouragement? He says, in his 'Apology,' and repeats the passage in his rare tract*, "Our maker showed great judgment in causing, by enchantment, the king's ship to be wrecked on the still-vex'd Bermoothes." Again, "Stephano became king of the still-vex'd Bermoothes." Lastly, in the 'Another Account,'-" If it be asked what circumstance it was which induced our dramatist to think of Bermudas, in 1613, as the scene of his comedy, the answer must be that the Bermudas, which had been considered, ever since the publication, in 1596, of Sir Walter Raleigh's description of Guiana, as a 'hellish sea for thunder, lightning, and storms,' was first planted, in 1612, by a ship called the Plough, from the Thames, which carried out a colony of a hundred and sixty persons." The nonsense of this notion is self-evident. If the Bermudas were the scene, Ariel must have outdone himself to convey "the rest of the fleet" over the Atlantic, to place them 'upon the Mediterranean flote ;" and, on the contrary, he would have been a mere human carrier if he had been called up from one "deep nook" of the island "to fetch dew" from some other part. This will not quite fit. And so we must resort to another geographical system. Mr. Hunter has discovered "another island," which he thus introduces:"I must do the old critics the justice to say that, till this discovery (such I *Another Account of the Incidents,' &c., 1815. may call it), no island, as far as I know, had a better claim to be regarded as the island of Prospero than Bermuda." That island is Lampedusa. “Did we not know,” he continues, "how much still remains to be done in the criticism of these plays, it would be scarcely credible that no one seems to have thought of tracing the line of Alonso's track, or of speculating, with the map before him, on the island on which Prospero and Miranda may be supposed to have been cast." Lampedusa is the island: "It lies midway between Malta and the African coast;""in its dimensions Lampedusa is what we may imagine Prospero's island to have been ; in circuit thirteen miles and a half;"—it is "situated in a stormy sea;"-it is "a deserted island;" it has the reputation of "being enchanted." Can anything be more decisive? "What I contend for is the ab solute claim of Lampedusa to have been the island in the poet's mind when he drew the scenes of this drama." The matter, according to Mr. Hunter, is beyond all doubt. "In the rocks of Lampedusa there are hollows;”— Caliban is stied in the "hard rock:" in Lampedusa there was a hermit's cell-"this cell is surely the origin of the cell of Prospero :" Caliban's employment was collecting firewood;-" Malta is supplied with firewood from Lampedusa." Mr. Hunter asks his friend "whether you would think me presumptuous in requiring that in future editions of these plays there should be, in the accustomed place, at the foot of the dramatis personæ, the words 'SCENE, LAMPEdusa.” " We have not so determined the scene. We believe that the poet had no locality whatever in his mind, just as he had no notion of any particular storm. Tempests and enchanted islands are of the oldest materials of poetry. Mr. Hunter says Shakspere had Ariosto's description of a storm in his mind. Who, we may ask, suggested to Ariosto his description? Has any one fixed the date of Ariosto's storm? Has not the poet described the poet's office ? "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.' dramas, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Some are clearly derived from English models; and Mr. Thoms thinks that an old play, on which Shakspere founded The Tempest,' is translated in Ayrer's Franz Horn asks whether Prospero left Cali- works, published in 1618. ban to govern the island? We believe the island sunk into the sea, and was no more seen, after Prospero broke his staff and drowned his book. There is a very curious story told by Warton, of poor Collins informing him, during his mental aberration, that he had seen a romance which contained the story of The Tempest.' "I was informed by the late Mr. Collins, of Chichester, that Shakspeare's Tempest,' for which no origin is yet assigned, was founded on a romance called 'Amelia and Isabella,' printed in Italian, Spanish, French, and English, in 1588. But, though this information has not proved true on examination, a useful conclusion may be drawn from it, that Shakspeare's story is somewhere to be found in an Italian novel; at least, that the story preceded Shakspeare. Mr. Collins had searched this subject with no less fidelity than judgment and industry; but, his memory failing in his last calamitous indisposition, he probably gave me the name of one novel for another. I remember he added a circumstance which may lead to a discovery, that the principal character of the romance answering to Shakspere's 'Prospero' was a chemical necromancer, who had bound a spirit like Ariel to obey his call and perform his services." Mr. Thoms, in a very interesting paper on the Early English and German Dramas," has given, from Tieck, an account of certain early productions of English dramatists which were translated into German about the year 1600. We cannot here enter into the very curious question whether an English company performed English plays in Germany at that period; but it is quite certain that some of our earliest dramas were either translated or adapted for the German stage at this early period. Jacob Ayrer, a notary of Nürnburg, was the author of thirty *New Monthly Magazine,' January 1, 1841. "The origin of the plot of "The Tempest" is for the present a Shakspearean mystery,' are the words of our friend Mr. Hunter, in his learned and interesting dissertation upon that play. That mystery, however, I consider as solved,-Tieck appears to entertain no doubt upon the subject, and I hope to bring the matter before you in such a manner as will satisfy you of the correctness of Tieck's views in this respect. But to the point. Shakspeare unquestionably derived his idea of "The Tempest' from an earlier drama, now not known to exist, but of which a German version is preserved in Ayrer's play, entitled 'Die Schöne Sidea' (The Beautiful Sidea); and the proof of this fact is to be found in the points of resemblance between the two plays, which are far too striking and peculiar to be the result of accident. "It is true that the scene in which Ayrer's play is laid, and the names of the personages, differ from those of 'The Tempest;' but the main incidents of the two plays are all but identically the same. For instance, in the German drama, Prince Ludolph and Prince Leudegast supply the places of Prospero and Alonso. Ludolph, like Prospero, is a magician, and like him has an only daughter, Sidea-the Miranda of The Tempest'-and an attendant spirit, Runcifal, who, though not strictly resembling either Ariel or Caliban, may well be considered as the primary type which suggested to the nimble fancy of our great dramatist those strongly yet admirably contrasted beings. Shortly after the commencement of the play, Ludolph, having been vanquished by his rival, and with his daughter Sidea driven into a forest, rebukes her for complaining of their change of fortune, and then summons his spirit Runcifal to learn from him their future destiny, and prospects of revenge. Runcifal, who is, like Ariel, somewhat 'moody,' announces to Ludolph that the son of his enemy will shortly become his prisoner. After a comic episode, most probably introduced by the German, we see Prince dinand of The Tempest-and the councillors, Leudegast, with his son Engelbrecht-the Ferhunting in the same forest; when Engelbrecht |