How Shakspere Came to Write the Tempest

PUBLICATIONS of the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK Third Series Papers on Playmaking:
PAPERS ON PLAYMAKING
Printed for the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University in the City of New York MCMXVI
INTRODUCTION AND NOTES COPYRIGHT 1916 BY DRAMATIC MUSEUM OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Mr. Kipling’s brilliant reconstruction of the genesis of the ‘Tempest’ may remind us how often that play has excited the creative fancy of its readers. It has given rise to many imitations, adaptations, and sequels. Fletcher copied its storm, its desert island, and its woman who had never seen a man. Suckling borrowed its spirits. Davenant and Dryden added a man who had never seen a woman, a husband for Sycorax, and a sister for Caliban. Mr. Percy Mackaye has used its scene, mythology, and persons for his tercentenary Shaksperian Masque. Its suggestiveness has extended beyond the drama, and aroused moral allegories and disquisitions. Caliban has been elaborated as the Missing Link, and in the philosophical drama of Renan as the spirit of Democracy, and in Browning’s poem as a satire on the anthropomorphic conception of Deity.
But apart from such commentaries by poets and philosophers, the poem has lived these many generations in the imaginations of thousands. There, the enchanted island has multiplied and continued its existence. Shelley sang,
Of a land far from ours Where music and moonlight and feeling are one.
Shakspere created that land as the possession of each of us. Not far removed, but close to the great continent of our daily routine and drudgery, lies this enchanted island where we may find music and moonlight and feeling, and also fun and mischief and wisdom. There, in tune with the melody and transfigured as by the charm of moonlight, we may encounter the nonsense of drunken clowns, the mingled greed and romance of primitive man, the elfishness of a child, the beauty of girlhood, and the benign philosophy of old age. We may leave the city at the close of business, and, if we avoid the snares of Caliban and Trinculo, we may sup with Prospero, Ariel, and Miranda.