that sublime and amazing imagination, peculiar to Shakspeare,
which soars above the bounds of nature, without forsaking sense;
or, more properly, carries nature along with him beyond her
established limits."
{355}
Everything is, in this picture, at once fantastic and true. As if
he were the creator of the work, as if he were the true
enchanter, surrounded by all the illusions of his art, Prospero,
manifesting himself to us, seems the only opaque and solid body
in the midst of a populace of airy phantoms clothed with the
forms of life, but unpossessed of the appearances of duration. A
few minutes scarcely elapse before the amiable Ariel, lighter
even than when he comes with the quickness of thought, escapes
from the contact of the magic wand, and, freed from the forms
which are prescribed to him--free, in fact, from all sensible
form, dissolves into thin air, in which his individual existence,
as far as we are concerned, vanishes away. Is not that
half-intelligence, which seems to glimmer in the monster Caliban,
an effect of magic? and does it not seem that, on setting foot
out of the disenchanted isle in which he is about to be left to
himself, we shall see him relapse into his natural state of an
inert mass, assimilating itself by degrees to the earth, from
which it is scarcely distinct? When far from our view, what will
become of that Antonio and that Sebastian, who were so ready to
conceive plans of crime, and of that Alonzo, who was so easily
and frivolously accessible to feelings of every kind? What will
become of the young lovers, so quickly and so completely enamored
of each other, and who, in our view, seem to have been created
only that they might love, and to have no other object in life
than to disclose to our view the delightful pictures of love and
innocence? Each of these personages displays to us only that
portion of his existence which concerns his present position;
none of them reveals to us in himself those abysses of nature, or
those deep sources of thought into which Shakspeare descends so
frequently and so thoroughly; but they manifest before our eyes
all the outward effects of these inward feelings; we do not know
whence they come, but we recognize perfectly well what they seem
to be--true visions of which we can discern neither the flesh nor
the bones, but the forms of which are distinct and familiar to
us.
{356}
Thus, by the suppleness and lightness of their nature,
these singular creatures conduce to a rapidity of action
and a variety of movement, unexampled, perhaps, in any
other of Shakspeare's dramas. None of his other plays are
more amusing or more animated than this, and in none is
a lively, and even waggish, gayety more naturally conjoined
with serious interests, melancholy feelings, and
touching affections. It is a fairy tale in all the force of
the term, and in all the vivacity of the impressions which such a
tale can impart.
The style of the "Tempest" shares in this kind of magic.
Figurative and aerial, bringing before the mind a host of images
and impressions as vague and fugitive as those uncertain forms
which are depicted in the clouds, it moves the imagination
without riveting it, and maintains it in a state of undecided
excitement, which renders it accessible to all the spells under
which the enchanter desires to place it. It is a tradition in
England, that the celebrated Lord Falkland, [Footnote 37] Mr.
Selden, and Lord Chief-justice Vaughan, regarded the style of the
part of Caliban, in the "Tempest," as quite peculiar to that
personage, and as one of Shakspeare's own creations.
[Footnote 37: The most virtuous, amiable, and erudite man in
England, during the reign of Charles I., of whom Lord
Clarendon has said that "if there were no other brand upon
the Civil War than his single loss, it must be most infamous
and execrable to all posterity." After having boldly
maintained the liberties of his country against Charles I. in
Parliament, he joined the cause of that prince as soon as it
became the cause of justice; and having been made a minister
of Charles, he died at the battle of Newbury, in despair at
the misfortunes which he foresaw; he was then thirty-three
years of age.]
{357}
Johnson is of a contrary opinion; but, supposing the tradition to
be authentic, the authority of Johnson would not be sufficient to
invalidate that of Lord Falkland, a man of eminently elegant
mind, and who was remarkable, as it would appear, for a delicacy
of tact, which, in criticism at least, was often wanting in the
Doctor. Besides, Lord Falkland, who was almost a contemporary of
Shakspeare, as he was born several years before the death of the
poet, would be entitled to be believed in preference regarding
shades of language which, a hundred and fifty years later, were
naturally merged by Johnson under a general color of oldness. If,
therefore, we had any right to decide between them, we should be
rather disposed to adhere to the opinion of Lord Falkland, and
even to apply to the whole work what he has said regarding the
part of Caliban alone. At all events, we may remark, that the
style of the "Tempest" appears, more than any other of
Shakspeare's works, to differ from that general type of
expression of thought which is found and maintained more or less
every where, in spite of the difference of idioms. We must
probably ascribe this fact partly to the singularity of the
position, and to the necessity for bringing into harmony so many
different conditions, feelings, and interests, which, for a few
hours, are involved in a common fate, and surrounded by the same
supernatural atmosphere. In none of his other works, moreover,
has Shakspeare been so sparing of plays upon words.
It would be somewhat difficult to determine with precision to
what species of the marvelous that which Shakspeare has employed
in the "Tempest" belongs. Ariel is a true sylph; but the sprites
which Prospero subjects to him, fairies, imps, and goblins,
belong to the popular superstitions of the North.
{358}
Caliban is akin at once to the gnome and the demon; his brute
existence is animated only by an infernal malice; and the "Oho!
Oho!" with which he answers Prospero, when he charges him with
having attempted to dishonor his daughter, was the exclamation,
and probably the kind of chuckle, ascribed, in England, to the
Devil, in the old Mysteries in which he played a part. Setebos,
whom the monster invokes as the god, and perhaps as the husband,
of his mother, was held to be the devil or god of the
Patagonians, who represented him, it was said, with horns growing
out of his head. We can not exactly picture to ourselves the
manner in which this Caliban must have been formed, so as to
account for his being so frequently taken for a fish; it appears
that he was represented with his arms and legs covered with
scales; but it seems to me that a fish's head, or something like
it, would be necessary to impart any probability to the mistakes
of which he is the object. But Shakspeare may very probably not
have looked so closely into the matter, and may have troubled
himself but little to obtain an exact idea of the form suited to
his monster. He played with his subject, and allowed it to flow
from his brilliant imagination clothed with all the poetic tints
which it received while passing through his brain. The lightness
of his labor is sufficiently observable from the various
inadvertences which have escaped from him; as, for example, when
he makes Ferdinand say that the Duke of Milan "and his brave son"
have perished in the storm, although nothing whatever is said
about this son in the remainder of the drama, and there is
nothing to lead us to suppose that he is in existence upon the
island, although Ariel, who assures Prospero that no one has
perished, has only confined the crew under the hatches.
{359}
The "Tempest" is a drama tolerably regular as regards the
unities, since the storm which swamps the vessel in the first
scene occurs within view of the island, and the entire action
does not embrace an interval of more than three hours. Some
commentators have thought that Shakspeare might have intended to
reply, by this specimen of what he was able to do, to Ben
Jonson's continual criticisms upon the irregularity of his works.
Dr. Johnson is of an opposite opinion, and regards this
circumstance as an effect of chance and the natural result of the
subject; but there is one thing that might give us reason to
believe that Shakspeare, at least, intended to avail himself of
this advantage, and that is, the care with which the different
personages, even including the boatswain, who has slept during
the whole of the action, mark the time which has elapsed since
the beginning of the play. More than this; when Ariel informs
Prospero that they are drawing near the sixth hour, the hour in
which his master had promised him that their labors should cease,
Prospero replies:
"I did say so, when first I raised the tempest."
This remark would even seem to indicate an intention which the
poet desired should be perceived.
It is not known from what sources Shakspeare derived the subject
of the "Tempest;" but it appears sufficiently certain that he
borrowed it from some Italian novel, which it has hitherto been
impossible to discover.
Malone's chronology places the composition of the "Tempest" in
the year 1612, which conjecture, however, agrees ill with another
supposition equally probable. While reading the Masque performed
before Ferdinand and Miranda, it is impossible not to be struck
with the idea that the "Tempest" was first composed to be
performed on the occasion of some marriage festival; and the
lightness of the subject, as well as the brilliant carelessness
which is remarkable in the composition, seem entirely to confirm
this conjecture.
{360}
Mr. Holt, one of the commentators upon Shakspeare, has supposed
that the marriage upon which Shakspeare has poured so many
blessings, through the mouths of Juno and Ceres, might very
probably be that of the Earl of Essex, who married Lady Frances
Howard in 1611, or rather terminated in that year his marriage,
which had been contracted ever since 1606, but the consummation
of which had been delayed by the travels of the earl, and
probably by the youth of the contracting parties. This last
circumstance appears even to be indicated with considerable
clearness in the scene in which great stress is laid upon the
continence which the young lovers have promised to observe until
the complete accomplishment of all the necessary ceremonies.
Would it not also be possible to suppose that this piece, though
composed in 1611 for the nuptials of the Earl of Essex, was not
performed in London until the following year?
The End.
End of Project Gutenberg's Shakspeare And His Times, by François Guizot