‘Tempest.’
‘The Tempest’ was probably the latest drama that Shakespeare completed. In the summer of 1609 a fleet bound for Virginia, under the command of Sir George Somers, was overtaken by a storm off the West Indies, and the admiral’s ship, the ‘Sea-Venture,’ was driven on the coast of the hitherto unknown Bermuda Isles. There they remained ten months, pleasurably impressed by the mild beauty of the climate, but sorely tried by the hogs which overran the island and by mysterious noises which led them to imagine that spirits and devils had made the island their home. Somers and his men were given up for lost, but they escaped from Bermuda in two boats of cedar to Virginia in May 1610, and the news of their adventures and of their safety was carried to England by some of the seamen in September 1610. The sailors’ arrival created vast public excitement in London. At least five accounts were soon published of the shipwreck and of the mysterious island, previously uninhabited by man, which had proved the salvation of the expedition. ‘A Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called the Ile of Divels,’ written by Sylvester Jourdain or Jourdan, one of the survivors, appeared as early as October. A second pamphlet describing the disaster was issued by the Council of the Virginia Company in December, and a third by one of the leaders of the expedition, Sir Thomas Gates. Shakespeare, who mentions the ‘still vexed Bermoothes’ (I. i. 229), incorporated in ‘The Tempest’ many hints from Jourdain, Gates, and the other pamphleteers. The references to the
gentle climate of the island on which Prospero is cast away, and to the spirits and devils that infested it, seem to render its identification with the newly discovered Bermudas unquestionable. But Shakespeare incorporated the result of study of other books of travel. The name of the god Setebos whom Caliban worships is drawn from Eden’s translation of Magellan’s ‘Voyage to the South Pole’ (in the ‘Historie of Travell,’ 1577), where the giants of Patagonia are described as worshipping a ‘great devil they call Setebos.’ No source for the complete plot has been discovered, but the German writer, Jacob Ayrer, who died in 1605, dramatised a somewhat similar story in ‘Die schöne Sidea,’ where the adventures of Prospero, Ferdinand, Ariel, and Miranda are roughly anticipated. [253a] English actors were performing at Nuremberg, where Ayrer lived, in 1604 and 1606, and may have brought reports of the piece to Shakespeare. Or perhaps both English and German plays had a common origin in some novel that has not yet been traced. Gonzalo’s description of an ideal commonwealth (II. i. 147 seq.) is derived from Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s essays (1603), while into Prospero’s great speech renouncing his practice of magical art (V. i. 33-57) Shakespeare wrought reminiscences of Golding’s translation of Medea’s invocation in Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ (vii. 197-206). [253b] Golding’s rendering of Ovid had been one of Shakespeare’s best-loved books in youth.
A highly ingenious theory, first suggested by Tieck, represents ‘The Tempest’ (which, excepting the ‘The Comedy of Errors,’ is the shortest of Shakespeare’s plays) as a masque written to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth (like Miranda, an island-princess) with the Elector Frederick. This marriage took place on February 14, 1612-13, and ‘The Tempest’ formed one of a series of nineteen plays which were performed at the nuptial festivities in May 1613. But none of the other plays produced seem to have been new; they were all apparently chosen because they were established favourites at Court and on the public stage, and neither in subject-matter nor language bore obviously specific relation to the joyous occasion. But 1613 is, in fact, on more substantial ground far too late a date to which to assign the composition of ‘The Tempest.’ According to information which was accessible to Malone, the play had ‘a being and a name’ in the autumn of 1611, and was no doubt written some months before. [254]
The plot, which revolves about the forcible expulsion of a ruler from his dominions, and his daughter’s wooing by the son of the usurper’s chief ally, is, moreover, hardly one that a shrewd playwright would deliberately choose as the setting of an official epithalamium in honour of the daughter of a monarch so sensitive about his title to the crown as James I. [255a]
In the theatre and at court the early representations of ‘The Tempest’ evoked unmeasured applause. The success owed something to the beautiful lyrics which were dispersed through the play and had been set to music by Robert Johnson, a lutenist in high repute. [255b] Like its predecessor ‘A Winter’s Tale,’ ‘The Tempest’ long maintained its first popularity in the theatre, and the vogue of the two pieces drew a passing sneer from Ben Jonson. In the Induction to his ‘Bartholomew Fair,’ first acted in 1614, he wrote: ‘If there be never a servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it he [i.e. the author] says? nor a nest of Antics. He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries.’ The ‘servant-monster’ was an
obvious allusion to Caliban, and ‘the nest of Antics’ was a glance at the satyrs who figure in the sheepshearing feast in ‘A Winter’s Tale.’