Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 2 of 2] / Including the Biography of the Poet; criticisms on his genius and writings; a new chronology of his plays; a disquisition on the on the object of his sonnets; and a history of the manners, customs, and amusements, superstitions, poetry, and elegant literature of his age

by Nathan Drake

them here may be to the reader;" and he adds, in the next page, that they were "tired with feasting and jollity."[502:A]

But how can this relation be reconciled with the chronology of Mr. Chalmers? for, if The Tempest, as he supposes, was written in 1613, it must have been commenced and finished in the course of one month! a rapidity of composition which, considering the unrivalled excellence of this drama, is scarcely within the bounds of probability. Beside, were The Tempest the production of January, 1613, it must have been written on the spur of the occasion, and for the nuptials in question; and is it to be supposed that no reference to such an event would be found throughout a play composed expressly to adorn, if not to compliment, the ceremony?

If we can, therefore, ascertain, that all the circumstances necessary for the suggestion, not only of the title of The Tempest, but of a considerable part of its fable, may have occurred to Shakspeare's mind anterior to the close of 1611, and would particularly press upon it, during the two years preceding this date, it may, without vanity, be expected, that the epoch which we have chosen, will be preferred to those which we have just had reason to pronounce either trivial or improbable.

So far back as to 1577, have Mr. Steevens and Dr. Farmer referred for some particulars to which Shakspeare was indebted for his conception of the "foul witch Sycorax," and her god Setebos[502:B]; but the

circumstances which led to the name of the play, to the storm with which it opens, and to some of the wondrous incidents on the enchanted island, commence with the publication of Raleigh's "Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana," a book that was printed at London in 1596, and in which this great man, after mentioning the Channel of Bahama, adds,—"The rest of the Indies for calms, and diseases, are very troublesome; and the Bermudas, a hellish sea, for thunder, lightning, and storms."[503:A]

From this publication, therefore, our author acquired his first intimation of the "still vexed Bermoothes," which was repeated by the appearance of Hackluyt's Voyages, in 1600, in which, as Dr. Farmer observes, "he might have seen a description of Bermuda, by Henry May, who was shipwrecked there in 1593."[503:B] But the event which immediately gave rise to the composition of The Tempest, was the Voyage of Sir George Sommers, who was shipwrecked on Bermudas in 1609, and whose adventures were given to the public by Silvester Jourdan, one of his crew, with the following title:—A Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called the Isle of Divels: By Sir Thomas Gates, Sir Geo. Sommers, and Captayne Newport, and divers others. In this publication, Jourdan informs us, that "the Islands of the Bermudas, as every man knoweth, that hath heard, or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian, or heathen, people, but ever esteemed, and reputed, a most prodigious, and inchanted, place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes and foul weather; which made every navigator and mariner to avoid them, as Scylla and Charybdis, or as they would shun the Devil himselfe."

Now these particulars in Jourdan's book, taken in conjunction with preceding intimations, appear to us to have been fully adequate to the purpose of suggesting to the creative mind of Shakspeare,

without any reference to succeeding pamphlets on the subject, or to storms at home, the name, the opening incidents, and the magical portion of his drama; for, when Mr. Chalmers refers us to A Plaine Description of the Bermudas now called Sommer islands, it should be recollected, that, even on his own chronology, this work, which was printed in 1613, must, unless it had appeared on the first days of the new year, have come too late to have furnished the poet with any additional information.[504:A]

That The Tempest had been produced anterior to the stormy autumn of 1612 seems to have been the opinion of Mr. Douce; for, alluding to the use which the commentators have made of the mere date of Sommers's voyage, he adds,—"but the important particulars of his shipwreck, from which it is exceedingly probable that the outline of a considerable part of this play was borrowed, has been unaccountably overlooked;" and then, after quoting the title, and noticing some of the particulars of Jourdan's book, and introducing a passage from Stowe's Annals descriptive of Sommers's shipwreck on the "dreadful coast of the Bermodes, which island were of all nations said and supposed to bee inchanted and inhabited with witches and devills," he proceeds thus:—"Now if some of these circumstances in the shipwreck of Sir George Sommers be considered, it may possibly turn out that they are 'the particular and recent event which determined Shakspeare to call his play The Tempest,' instead of 'the great tempest of 1612,' which has already been supposed to have suggested its name, and which might have happened after its composition."[504:B]

From these circumstances, and this chain of reasoning, we are induced to conclude, that The Tempest was written towards the close