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
CONTENTS
| Introduction by Ashley H. Thorndike | [1] | |
| How Shakspere Came to Write the ‘Tempest’ | [23] | |
| Notes by A. H. T. | [33] |
INTRODUCTION
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,