That “dozen years” is to me astonishingly true and interesting: it shows that my reading of the duration of his passion-torture was absolutely correct—Shakespeare's “delicate spirit” and best powers bound to Mary Fitton's “earthy” service from 1597 to 1608.
We can perhaps fix this latter date with some assurance. Mistress Fitton married for the second time a Captain or Mr. Polwhele late in 1607, or some short time before March, 1608, when the fact of her recent marriage was recorded in the will of her great uncle. It seems to me probable, or at least possible, that this event marks her complete separation from Shakespeare; she may very likely have left the Court and London on ceasing to be a Maid of Honour.
Shakespeare is so filled with himself in this last play, so certain that he is the most important person in the world, that this scene is more charged with intimate self-revealing than any other in all his works. And when Ferdinand comes upon the stage Shakespeare lends him, too, his own peculiar qualities. His puppets no longer interest him; he is careless of characterization. Ferdinand says:
“This music crept by me upon the waters
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air.”
Music, it will be remembered, had precisely the same peculiar effect upon Duke Orsino in “Twelfth Night.” Ferdinand, too, is extraordinarily conceited:
“I am the best of them that speak this speech.
.... Myself am Naples.”
Shakespeare's natural aristocratic pride as a Prince reinforced by his understanding of his own real importance. Ferdinand then declares he will be content with a prison if he can see Miranda in it:
“Space enough
Have I in such a prison.”
Which is Hamlet's:
“I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself
a king of infinite space.”