The Tempest is on all hands regarded as one of Shakespeare's
perfectest works. Some of his plays, I should say, have beams in their
eyes; but this has hardly so much as a mote; or, if it have any, my
own eyes are not clear enough to discern it. I dare not pronounce the
work faultless, for this is too much to affirm of any human
workmanship; but I venture to think that whatever faults it may have
are such as criticism is hardly competent to specify. In the
characters of Ariel, Miranda, and Caliban, we have three of the most
unique and original conceptions that ever sprang from the wit of man.
We can scarce imagine how the Ideal could be pushed further beyond
Nature; yet we here find it clothed with all the truth and life of
Nature. And the whole texture of incident and circumstance is framed
in keeping with that Ideal; so that all the parts and particulars
cohere together, mutually supporting and supported.
The leading sentiment naturally inspired by the scenes of this drama
is, I believe, that of delighted wonder. And such, as appears from the
heroine's name, Miranda, who is _the_ potency of the drama, is
probably the sentiment which the play was meant to inspire. But the
grace and efficacy in which the workmanship is steeped are so ethereal
and so fine, that they can hardly be discoursed in any but the poetic
form: it may well be doubted whether Criticism has any fingers
delicate enough to grasp them. So much is this the case, that it
seemed to me quite doubtful whether I should do well to undertake the
theme at all. For Criticism is necessarily obliged to substitute, more
or less, the forms of logic for those of art; and art, it scarce need
be said, can do many things that are altogether beyond the reach of
logic. On the other hand, the charm and verdure of these scenes are so
unwithering and inexhaustible, that I could not quite make up my mind
to leave the subject untried. Nor do I know how I can better serve my
countrymen than by engaging and helping them in the study of this
great inheritance of natural wisdom and unreproved delight. For,
assuredly, if they early learn to be at home and to take pleasure in
these productions, their whole after-life will be the better and the
happier for it.
* * * * *
_The Tempest_ is one of the plays that were never printed till in the
folio of 1623; where, for reasons unknown to us, it stands the first
in the volume; though, as we shall presently see, it was among the
last of the Poet's writing.
It has been ascertained clearly enough that the play was written
somewhere between 1608 and 1613. On the one hand, the leading features
of Gonzalo's Commonwealth, as described in the play, were evidently
taken from Florio's translation of Montaigne. As the passage is
curious in itself, and as it aptly illustrates the Poet's method of
appropriating from others, I will quote it:
"_Gon_. Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
And were the King on 't, what would I do?
I' the Commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too,--but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty;--
_Seb_. Yet he would be King on't.
_Ant_. The latter end of his Commonwealth forgets the beginning.
_Gon_. All things in common Nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but Nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people."
In Montaigne's Essay _Of the Cannibals_, as translated by Florio, we
have the following: "It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath
no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of
numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of
service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no
dividences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kindred, but
common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands; no use of wine,
corn, or metal: the very words that import lying, falsehood, treason,
dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon, were never
heard amongst them."
Here the borrowing is too plain to be questioned; and this fixes the
writing of _The Tempest_ after 1603. On the other hand, Malone
ascertained from some old records that the play was acted by the
King's players "before Prince Charles, the Princess Elizabeth, and the
Prince Palatine, in the beginning of 1613."
For any nearer fixing of the date we have nothing firm to go upon but
probabilities. Some of these, however, are pretty strong. I must rest
with noting one of them:
Some hints towards the play were derived, apparently, from a book
published by one Jourdan in 1610, and entitled, _A Discovery of the
Bermudas, otherwise called the Isle of Devils_. The occasion was as
follows: A fleet of nine ships, with some five hundred people, sailed
from England in May, 1609. Among the officers were Sir George Somers,
Sir Thomas Gates, and Captain Newport. The fleet was headed by the
_Sea-Venture_, called the Admiral's Ship. On the 25th of July they
were struck by a terrible tempest, which scattered the whole fleet,
and parted the _Sea-Venture_ from the rest. Most of the ships,
however, reached Virginia, left the greater part of their people
there, and sailed again for England, where Gates arrived in August or
September, 1610, having been sent home by Lord Delaware. Jourdan's
book, after relating their shipwreck, continues thus: "But our
delivery was not more strange in falling so happily upon land, than
our provision was admirable. For the Islands of the Bermudas, as every
one knoweth that hath heard or read of them, were never inhabited by
any Christian or Heathen people, but ever reputed a most prodigious
and enchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, storms, and foul
weather. Yet did we find the air so temperate, and the country so
abundantly fruitful, that, notwithstanding we were there for the space
of nine months, we were not only well refreshed, but out of the
abundance thereof provided us with some reasonable quantity of
provision to carry us for Virginia, and to maintain ourselves and the
company we found there." About the same time, the Council of Virginia
also put forth a narrative of "the disasters which had befallen the
fleet, and of their miraculous escape," wherein we have the following:
"These Islands of the Bermudas have ever been accounted an enchanted
pile of rocks, and a desert inhabitation of devils; but all the
fairies of the rocks were but flocks of birds, and all the devils that
haunted the woods were but herds of swine."
In this account and these extracts there are several points which
clearly connect with certain things in the play. To mark those points,
or to trace out that connection, seems hardly worth the while. It may
be well to add that the Poet's _still-vexed Bermoothes_ seems to link
his work in some way with Jourdan's narrative. So that 1610 is as
early a date as can well be assigned for the writing of _The Tempest_.
The supernatural in the play was no doubt the Poet's own creation; but
it would have been in accordance with his usual method to avail
himself of whatever interest might spring from the popular notions
touching the Bermudas. In his marvellous creations the people would
see nothing but the distant marvels with which their fancies were
prepossessed.
Concurrent with all this is the internal evidence of the play itself.
The style, language, and general cast of thought, the union of
richness and severity, the grave, austere beauty of character which
pervades it, and the organic compactness of the whole structure, all
go to mark it as an issue of the Poet's ripest years. Coleridge
regarded it as "certainly one of Shakespeare's latest works, judging
from the language only." Campbell the poet considers it his very
latest. "_The Tempest_," says he, "has a sort of sacredness as the
last work of a mighty workman. Shakespeare, as if conscious that it
would be his last, and as if inspired to typify himself, has made his
hero a natural, a dignified, and benevolent magician, who could
conjure up 'spirits from the vasty deep,' and command supernatural
agency by the most seemingly-natural and simple means. Shakespeare
himself is Prospero, or rather the superior genius who commands both
Prospero and Ariel. But the time was approaching when the potent
sorcerer was to break his staff, and bury it fathoms in the ocean
'deeper than did ever plummet sound.' That staff has never been and
will never be recovered." But I suspect there is more of poetry than
of truth in this; at least I can find no warrant for it: on the
contrary, we have fair ground for believing that at least _Coriolanus,
King Henry the Eighth_, and perhaps _The Winter's Tale_ were written
after _The Tempest_. Mr. Verplanck, rather than give up the notion so
well put by Campbell, suggests that the Poet may have _revised The
Tempest_ after all his other plays were written, and inserted the
passage where Prospero abjures his "rough magic," and buries his
staff, and drowns his book. But I can hardly think that Shakespeare
had any reference to himself in that passage: for, besides that he did
not use to put his own feelings and purposes into the mouth of his
characters, the doing so in this case would infer such a degree of
self-exultation as, it seems to me, his native and habitual modesty
would scarce permit.
* * * * *
No play or novel has been discovered to which Shakespeare could have
been at all indebted for the plot or matter of _The Tempest_. There is
indeed an old ballad called _The Inchanted Island_, which was once
thought to have contributed something towards the play: but it is now
generally held to be more modern than the play, and probably founded
upon it; the names and some of the incidents being varied, as if on
purpose to disguise its connection with a work that was popular on the
stage.
* * * * *
There has been considerable discussion as to the scene of _The
Tempest_. A wide range of critics from Mr. Chalmers to Mrs. Jameson
have taken for granted that the Poet fixed his scene in the Bermudas.
For this they have alleged no authority but his mention of "the
still-vex'd Bermoothes." Ariel's trip from "the deep nook to fetch dew
from the still-vex'd Bermoothes" does indeed show that the Bermudas
were in the Poet's mind; but then it also shows that his scene was not
there; for it had been no feat at all worth mentioning for Ariel to
fetch dew from one part of the Bermudas to another. An aerial voyage
of some two or three thousand miles was the least that so nimble a
messenger could be expected to make any account of. Besides, in less
than an hour after the wrecking of the King's ship, the rest of the
fleet are said to be upon the Mediterranean, "bound sadly home for
Naples." On the other hand, the Rev. Mr. Hunter is very positive that,
if we read the play with a map before us, we shall bring up at the
island of Lampedusa, which "lies midway between Malta and the African
coast." He makes out a pretty fair case, nevertheless I must be
excused; not so much that I positively reject his theory as that I
simply do not care whether it be true or not. But if we must have any
supposal about it, the most reasonable as well as the most poetical
one seems to be, that the Poet, writing without a map, placed his
scene upon an island of the mind; and that it suited his purpose to
transfer to his ideal whereabout some of the wonders of trans-Atlantic
discovery. I should almost as soon think of going to history for the
characters of Ariel and Caliban, as to geography for the size,
locality, or whatsoever else, of their dwelling-place. And it is to be
noted that the old ballad just referred to seems to take for granted
that the island was but an island of the mind; representing it to
have disappeared upon Prospero's leaving it:
"From that day forth the isle has been
By wandering sailors never seen:
Some say 'tis buried deep
Beneath the sea, which breaks and roars
Above its savage rocky shores,
Nor e'er is known to sleep."
Coleridge says "_The Tempest_ is a specimen of the purely romantic
drama." The term _romantic_ is here used in a technical sense; that
is, to distinguish the Shakespearian from the Classic Drama. In this
sense, I cannot quite agree with the great critic that the drama is
_purely_ romantic. Highly romantic it certainly is, in its wide, free,
bold variety of character and incident, and in all the qualities that
enter into the picturesque; yet not romantic in such sort, I think,
but that it is at the same time equally classic; classic, not only in
that the unities of time and place are strictly observed, but as
having the other qualities which naturally go with those laws of the
classic form; in its severe beauty and majestic simplicity, its
interfusion of the lyrical and the ethical, and in the mellow
atmosphere of serenity and composure which envelopes it: as if on
purpose to show the Poet's mastery not only of both the Classic and
Romantic Drama, but of the common Nature out of which both of them
grew. This union of both kinds in one without hindrance to the
distinctive qualities of either,--this it is, I think, that chiefly
distinguishes _The Tempest_ from the Poet's other dramas. Some have
thought that in this play Shakespeare specially undertook to silence
the pedantic cavillers of his time by showing that he could keep to
the rules of the Greek stage, if he chose to do so, without being any
the less himself. But it seems more likely that he was here drawn into
such a course by the leadings of his own wise spirit than by the
cavils of contemporary critics; the form appearing too cognate with
the matter to have been dictated by any thing external to the work
itself.
There are some points that naturally suggest a comparison between
_The Tempest_ and _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_. In both the Poet has
with equal or nearly equal success carried Nature, as it were, beyond
herself, and peopled a purely ideal region with the attributes of life
and reality; so that the characters touch us like substantive,
personal beings, as if he had but described, not created them. But,
beyond this, the resemblance ceases: indeed no two of his plays differ
more widely in all other respects.
_The Tempest_ presents a combination of elements apparently so
incongruous that we cannot but marvel how they were brought together;
yet they blend so sweetly, and co-operate so smoothly, that we at once
feel at home with them, and see nothing to hinder their union in the
world of which we are a part. For in the mingling of the natural and
the supernatural we here find no gap, no break; nothing disjointed or
abrupt; the two being drawn into each other so harmoniously, and so
knit together by mutual participations, that they seem strictly
continuous, with no distinguishable line to mark where they meet and
join. It is as if the gulf which apparently separates the two worlds
had been abolished, leaving nothing to prevent a free circulation and
intercourse between them.
* * * * *
Prospero, standing in the centre of the whole, acts as kind of
subordinate Providence, reconciling the diverse elements to himself
and in himself to one another. Though armed with supernatural might,
so that the winds and waves obey him, his magical and mysterious
powers are tied to truth and right: his "high charms work" to none but
just and beneficent ends; and whatever might be repulsive in the
magician is softened and made attractive by the virtues of the man and
the feelings of the father: Ariel links him with the world above us,
Caliban with the world beneath us, and Miranda--"thee, my dear one,
thee my daughter"--with the world around and within us. And the mind
acquiesces freely in the miracles ascribed to him; his thoughts and
aims being so at one with Nature's inward harmonies, that we cannot
tell whether he shapes her movements or merely falls in with them;
that is, whether his art stands in submission or command. His sorcery
indeed is the sorcery of knowledge, his magic the magic of virtue. For
what so marvellous as the inward, vital necromancy of good which
transmutes the wrongs that are done him into motives of beneficence,
and is so far from being hurt by the powers of Evil, that it turns
their assaults into new sources of strength against them? And with
what a smooth tranquillity of spirit he everywhere speaks and acts! as
if the discipline of adversity had but served
"to elevate the will,
And lead him on to that transcendent rest
Where every passion doth the sway attest
Of Reason seated on her sovereign hill."
Shakespeare and Bacon, the Prince of poets and the Prince of
philosophers, wrought out their mighty works side by side, and nearly
at the same time, though without any express recognition of each
other. And why may we not regard Prospero as prognosticating in a
poetical form those vast triumphs of man's rational spirit which the
philosopher foresaw and prepared? For it is observable that, before
Prospero's coming to the island, the powers which cleave to his
thoughts and obey his "so potent art" were at perpetual war, the
better being in subjection to the worse, and all being turned from
their rightful ends into a mad, brawling dissonance: but he teaches
them to know their places; and, "weak masters though they be," without
such guidance, yet under his ordering they become powerful, and work
together as if endowed with a rational soul and a social purpose;
their insane gabble turning to speech, their savage howling to music;
so that
"the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not."
Wherein is boldly figured the educating of Nature up, so to speak,
into intelligent ministries, she lending man hands because he lends
her eyes, and weaving her forces into vital union with him.
"You by whose aid--
Weak masters though ye be--I have bedimm'd
The noontide Sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azure vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt: the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar."
In this bold imagery we seem to have a kind of prophecy of what human
science and skill have since achieved in taming the great forces of
Nature to man's hand, and harnessing them up into his service. Is not
all this as if the infernal powers should be appeased and soothed by
the melody and sweetness of the Orphean harp and voice? And do we not
see how the very elements themselves grow happy and merry in serving
man, when he by his wisdom and eloquence has once charmed them into
order and concert? Man has but to learn Nature's language and obey her
voice, and she clothes him with plenipotence. The mad warring of her
forces turns to rational speech and music when he holds the torch of
reason before them and makes it shine full in their faces. Let him but
set himself steadfastly to understand and observe her laws, and her
mighty energies hasten to wait upon him, as docile to his hand as the
lion to the eye and voice of Lady Una. So that we may not unfairly
apply to Prospero what Bacon so finely interprets of Orpheus, as "a
wonderful and divine person skilled in all kinds of harmony, subduing
and drawing all things after him by sweet and gentle methods and
modulations."
All this, to be sure, is making the work rather an allegory than a
drama, and therein of course misrepresents its quality. For the
connecting links in this strange intercourse of man and Nature are
"beings individually determined," and affect us as persons, not as
propositions.
* * * * *
Ariel and Caliban are equally preternatural, though in opposite
directions. Ariel's very being is spun out of melody and fragrance; at
least, if a feeling soul and an intelligent will are the warp, these
are the woof of his exquisite texture. He has just enough of
human-heartedness to know how he would feel were he human, and a
proportionable sense of gratitude, which has been aptly called "the
memory of the heart": hence he needs to be often reminded of his
obligations, but is religiously true to them so long as he remembers
them. His delicacy of nature is nowhere more apparent than in his
sympathy with right and good: the instant he comes within their touch
he follows them without reserve; and he will suffer any torments
rather than "act the earthy and abhorr'd commands" that go against his
moral grain. And what a merry little personage he is withal! as if his
being were cast together in an impulse of play, and he would spend his
whole life in one perpetual frolic.
But the main ingredients of Ariel's zephyr-like constitution are shown
in his leading inclinations; as he naturally has most affinity for
that of which he is framed. Moral ties are irksome to him; they are
not his proper element: when he enters their sphere, he feels them to
be holy indeed; but, were he free, he would keep out of their reach,
and follow the circling seasons in their course, and always dwell
merrily in the fringes of Summer. Prospero quietly intimates his
instinctive dread of the cold by threatening to make him "howl away
twelve Winters." And the chief joy of his promised release from
service is, that he will then be free to live all the year through
under the soft rule of Summer, with its flowers and fragrances and
melodies. He is indeed an arrant little epicure of perfume and sweet
sounds, and gives forth several songs which "seem to sound in the air,
and as if the person playing them were invisible."
A part of Ariel's unique texture is well shown in the scene where he
relents at the sufferings of the shipwrecked lords, and remonstrates
with his master in their behalf:
"_Ariel_. The King,
His brother, and yours, abide all three distracted;
And the remainder mourning over them,
Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly
He that you term'd _the good old lord, Gonzalo_:
His tears run down his beard, like Winter's drops
From eaves of reeds: your charm so strongly works 'em.
That, if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.
_Pros_. Dost thou think so, spirit?
_Ariel_. Mine would, sir, were I human."
Another mark-worthy feature of Ariel is, that his power does not stop
with the physical forces of Nature, but reaches also to the hearts and
consciences of men; so that by his music he can kindle or assuage the
deepest griefs of the one, and strike the keenest pangs of remorse
into the other. This comes out in the different effects of his art
upon Ferdinand and the guilty King, as related by the men themselves:
"Where should this music be? i' the air or th' earth?
It sounds no more:--and, sure, it waits upon
Some god o' the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the King my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather:--but it is gone.
No, it begins again."
Such is the effect on Ferdinand: now mark the contrast when we come to
the King:
"O, it is monstrous, monstrous!
Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it;
The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd
The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass.
Therefore my son i' the ooze is bedded; and
I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded,
And with him there lie mudded."
In the planting of love, too, Ariel beats old god Cupid all to
nothing. For it is through some witchcraft of his that Ferdinand and
Miranda are surprised into a mutual rapture; so that Prospero notes at
once how "at the first sight they have chang'd eyes," and "are both in
either's power." All which is indeed just what Prospero wanted; yet he
is himself fairly startled at the result: that fine issue of nature
outruns his thought; and the wise old gentleman takes care forthwith
lest it work too fast:
"This swift business
I must uneasy make, lest too light winning
Make the prize light."
I must note one more trait in Ariel. It is his fondness of mischievous
sport, wherein he reminds us somewhat of Fairy Puck in _A
Midsummer-Night's Dream_. It is shown in the evident gust with which
he relates the trick he has played on Caliban and his confederates,
when they were proceeding to execute their conspiracy against the
hero's life:
"As I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking;
So full of valour, that they smote the air
For breathing in their faces; beat the ground
For kissing of their feet; yet always bending
Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor;
At which, like unback'd colts, they prick'd their ears,
Advanc'd their eyelids, lifted up their noses
As they smelt music: so I charm'd their ears,
That, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through
Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns,
Which enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them
I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,
There dancing up to th' chins."
Of Ariel's powers and functions as Prospero's prime minister, no
logical forms, nothing but the Poet's art, can give any sort of an
idea. No painter, I am sure, can do any thing with him; still less can
any sculptor. Gifted with the ubiquity and multiformity of the
substance from which he is named, before we can catch and define him
in any one shape, he has passed into another. All we can say of him
on this score is, that through his agency Prospero's thoughts
forthwith become things, his volitions events. And yet, strangely and
diversely as Ariel's nature is elemented and composed, with touches
akin to several orders of being, there is such a self-consistency
about him, he is so cut out in individual distinctness, and so
rounded-in with personal attributes, that contemplation freely and
easily rests upon him as an object. In other words, he is by no means
an abstract idea personified, or any sort of intellectual diagram, but
a veritable _person_; and we have a personal feeling towards the dear
creature, and would fain knit him into the living circle of our human
affections, making him a familiar playfellow of the heart, to be
cherished with "praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles."
* * * * *
If Caliban strikes us as a more wonderful creation than Ariel, it is
probably because he has more in common with us, without being in any
proper sense human. Perhaps I cannot hit him off better than by saying
that he represents, both in body and soul, a sort of intermediate
nature between man and brute, with an infusion of something that
belongs to neither; as though one of the transformations imagined by
the Developmentists had stuck midway in its course, where a breath or
vapour of essential Evil had knit itself vitally into his texture.
Caliban has all the attributes of humanity from the moral downwards,
so that his nature touches and borders upon the sphere of moral life;
still the result but approves his exclusion from such life, in that it
brings him to recognize moral law only as making for self; that is, he
has intelligence of seeming wrong in what is done to him, but no
conscience of what is wrong in his own doings. It is a most singular
and significant stroke in the delineation, that sleep seems to loosen
the fetters of his soul, and lift him above himself: then indeed, and
then only, "the muddy vesture of decay" doth not so "grossly close him
in," but that some proper spirit-notices come upon him; as if in his
passive state the voice of truth and good vibrated down _to_ his
soul, and stopped there, being unable to kindle any answering tones
within: so that in his waking hours they are to him but as the memory
of a dream.
"Sometime a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again."
Thus Caliban is part man, part demon, part brute, each being drawn
somewhat out of itself by combination with the others, and the union
of all preventing him from being either; for which cause language has
no generic term that fits him. Yet this strange, uncouth, but
life-like confusion of natures Prospero has educated into a sort of
poet. This, however, has nowise tamed, it has rather increased, his
innate malignity and crookedness of disposition; education having of
course but _educed_ what was in him. Even his poetry is, for the most
part, made up of the fascinations of ugliness; a sort of inverted
beauty; the poetry of dissonance and deformity; the proper music of
his nature being to curse, its proper laughter to snarl. Schlegel
finely compares his mind to a dark cave, into which the light of
knowledge falling neither illuminates nor warms it, but only serves to
put in motion the poisonous vapours generated there.
Now it is by exhausting the resources of instruction on such a being
that his innate and essential deficiency is best shown. For, had he
the germs of a human soul, they must needs have been drawn forth by
the process that has made him a poet. The magical presence of spirits
has indeed cast into the caverns of his brain some faint reflection of
a better world, but without calling up any answering emotions or
aspirations; he having no susceptibilities to catch and take in the
epiphanies that throng his whereabout. So that, paradoxical as it may
seem, he exemplifies the two-fold triumph of art over nature, and of
nature over art; that is, art has triumphed in making him a poet, and
nature, in still keeping him from being a man; though he has enough of
the human in him to evince in a high degree the swelling of
intellectual pride.
But what is most remarkable of all in Caliban is the perfect
originality of his thoughts and manners. Though framed of grossness
and malignity, there is nothing vulgar or commonplace about him. His
whole character indeed is developed from within, not impressed from
without; the effect of Prospero's instructions having been to make him
all the more himself; and there being perhaps no soil in his nature
for conventional vices and knaveries to take root and grow in. Hence
the almost classic dignity of his behaviour compared with that of the
drunken sailors, who are little else than a sort of low, vulgar
conventionalities organized, and as such not less true to the life
than consistent with themselves. In his simplicity, indeed, he at
first mistakes them for gods who "bear celestial liquor," and they wax
merry enough at the "credulous monster"; but, in his vigour of thought
and purpose, he soon conceives such a scorn of their childish interest
in whatever trinkets and gewgaws meet their eye, as fairly drives off
his fit of intoxication; and the savage of the woods, half-human
though he be, seems nobility itself beside the savages of the city.
In fine, if Caliban is, so to speak, the organized sediment and dregs
of the place, from which all the finer spirit has been drawn off to
fashion the delicate Ariel, yet having some parts of a human mind
strangely interwoven with his structure; every thing about him, all
that he does and says, is suitable and correspondent to such a
constitution of nature. So that all the elements and attributes of his
being stand and work together in living coherence, thus rendering him
no less substantive and personal to our apprehension than he is
original and peculiar in himself.
* * * * *
Such are the objects and influences amidst which the clear, placid
nature of Miranda has been developed. Of the world whence her father
was driven, its crimes and follies and sufferings, she knows nothing;
he having studiously kept all such notices from her, to the end,
apparently, that nothing might thwart or hinder the plastic efficacies
that surrounded her. And here all the simple and original elements of
her being, love, light, grace, honour, innocence, all pure feelings
and tender sympathies, whatever is sweet and gentle and holy in
womanhood, seem to have sprung up in her nature as from celestial
seed: "the contagion of the world's slow stain" has not visited her;
the chills and cankers of artificial wisdom have not touched nor come
nigh her: if there were any fog or breath of evil in the place that
might else dim or spot her soul, it has been sponged up by Caliban, as
being more congenial with his nature; while he is simply "a villain
she does not love to look on." Nor is this all. The aerial music
beneath which her soul has expanded with answering sweetness seems to
rest visibly upon her, linking her as it were with some superior order
of beings: the spirit and genius of the place, its magic and mystery,
have breathed their power into her face; and out of them she has
unconsciously woven herself a robe of supernatural grace, in which
even her mortal nature seems half hidden, so that we are in doubt
whether she belongs more to Heaven or to Earth. Thus both her native
virtues and the efficacies of the place seem to have crept and stolen
into her unperceived, by mutual attraction and assimilation twining
together in one growth, and each diffusing its life and beauty over
and through the others. It would seem indeed as if Wordsworth must
have had Miranda in his eye, (or was he but working in the spirit of
that Nature which she so rarely exemplifies?) when he wrote,
"The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend:
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face."
Yet, for all this, Miranda not a whit the less touches us as a
creature of flesh and blood,
"A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death."
Nay, rather she seems all the more so, inasmuch as the character thus
coheres with the circumstances, the virtues and poetries of the place
being expressed in her visibly; and she would be far less real to our
feelings, were not the wonders of her whereabout thus vitally
incorporated with her innate and original attributes.
It is observable that Miranda does not perceive the working of her
father's art upon herself. For, when he casts a spell of drowsiness
over her, so that she cannot choose but sleep, on being awaked by him
she tells him, "The strangeness of your story put heaviness in me." So
his art conceals itself in its very potency of operation; and seems
the more like nature for being preternatural. It is another noteworthy
point, that while he is telling his strange tale he thinks she is not
listening attentively to his speech, partly because he is not
attending to it himself, his thoughts being busy with the approaching
crisis of his fortune, and drawn away to the other matters which he
has in hand, and partly because in her trance of wonder at what he is
relating she seems abstracted and self-withdrawn from the matter of
his discourse. His own absent-mindedness on this occasion is aptly and
artfully indicated by his broken and disjointed manner of speech. That
his tongue and thought are not beating time together appears in that
the latter end of his sentences keeps forgetting the beginning.
These are among the fine strokes and delicate touches whereby the Poet
makes, or rather permits, the character of his persons to transpire so
quietly as not to excite special notice at the time. That Miranda
should be so rapt at her father's tale as to seem absent and
wandering, is a charming instance in point. For indeed to her the
supernatural stands in the place of Nature; and nothing is so strange
and wonderful as what actually passes in the life and heart of man:
miracles have been her daily food, her father being the greatest
miracle of all; which must needs make the common events and passions
and perturbations of the world seem to her miraculous. All which is
wrought out by the Poet with so much art and so little appearance of
art, that Franz Horn is the only critic, so far as I know, that seems
to have thought of it.
I must not dismiss Miranda without remarking the sweet union of
womanly dignity and childlike simplicity in her character, she not
knowing or not caring to disguise the innocent movements of her heart.
This, too, is a natural result of her situation. The instance to which
I refer is when Ferdinand, his manhood all alive with her, lets her
hear his soul speak; and she, weeping at what she is glad of,
replies,--
"Hence, bashful cunning!
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!--
I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant,
Whether you will or no."
Equally fine is the circumstance that her father opens to her the
story of his life, and lets her into the secret of her noble birth and
ancestry, at a time when she is suffering with those that she saw
suffer, and when her eyes are jewelled with "drops that sacred pity
hath engender'd"; as if on purpose that the ideas of rank and dignity
may sweetly blend and coalesce in her mind with the sympathies of the
woman.
* * * * *
In Ferdinand is portrayed one of those happy natures, such as we
sometimes meet with, who are built up all the more strongly in truth
and good by contact with the vices and meannesses of the world.
Courage, piety, and honour are his leading characteristics; and these
virtues are so much at home in his breast, and have such an easy,
natural ascendant in his conduct, that he thinks not of them, and
cares only to prevent or remove the stains which affront his inward
eye. The meeting of him and Miranda is replete with magic indeed,--a
magic higher and more potent even than Prospero's; the riches that
nestle in their bosoms at once leaping forth and running together in a
stream of poetry which no words of mine can describe. So much of
beauty in so few words, and those few so plain and simple,--"O,
wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man!"
Shakespeare's genius is specially venerable in that he makes piety and
honour go hand in hand with love. It seems to have been a fixed
principle with him, if indeed it was not rather a genial instinct,
that where the heart is rightly engaged, there the highest and
tenderest thoughts of religion do naturally cluster and converge. For
indeed the love that looks to marriage is itself a religion: its first
impulse is to invest its object with poetry and consecration: to be
"true to the kindred points of Heaven and home," is both its
inspiration and its law. It thus involves a sort of regeneration of
the inner man, and carries in its hand the baptismal fire of a nobler
and diviner life.
And so it is in this delectable instance. In Ferdinand, as in all
generous natures, "love betters what is best." Its first springing in
his breast stirs his heavenward thoughts and aspirations into
exercise: the moment that kindles his heart towards Miranda also
kindles his soul in piety to God; and he knows not how to commune in
prayer with the Source of good, unless he may couple her welfare with
his own, and breathe her name in his holiest service. Thus his love
and piety are kindred and coefficient forces, as indeed all true love
and piety essentially are. However thoughtless we may be of the
Divine help and guardianship for ourselves, we can hardly choose but
crave them for those to whom our souls are knit in the sacred dearness
of household ties. And so with this noble pair, the same power that
binds them to each other in the sacraments of love also binds them
both in devout allegiance to the Author of their being; whose presence
is most felt by them in the sacredness of their mutual truth.
So much for the illustration here so sweetly given of the old
principle, that whatsoever lies nearest a Christian's heart,
whatsoever he tenders most dearly on Earth, whatsoever draws in most
intimately with the currents of his soul, that is the spontaneous
subject-matter of his prayers; our purest loves thus sending us to
God, as if from an instinctive feeling that unless God be sanctified
in our hearts, our hearts cannot retain their proper life.
In regard to what springs up between Ferdinand and Miranda, it is to
be noted that Prospero does little but furnish occasions. He indeed
thanks the quaint and delicate Ariel for the kindling touch that so
quickly puts them "both in either's power"; for it seems to him the
result of a finer inspiration than his art can reach; and so he
naturally attributes it to the magic of his airy minister; whereas in
truth it springs from a source far deeper than the magic of either,--a
pre-established harmony which the mutual recognition now first
quickens into audible music. After seeing himself thus outdone by the
Nature he has been wont to control, and having witnessed such a "fair
encounter of two most rare affections," no wonder that Prospero longs
to be a man again, like other men, and gladly returns to
"The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life; our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure."
The strength and delicacy of imagination displayed in the characters
already noticed are hardly more admirable than the truth and subtilty
of observation shown in others.
In the delineation of Antonio and Sebastian, short as it is, we have a
volume of wise science, which Coleridge remarks upon thus: "In the
first scene of the second Act, Shakespeare has shown the tendency in
bad men to indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions, as a mode of
getting rid of their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the good,
and also of rendering the transition of others to wickedness easy, by
making the good ridiculous. Shakespeare never puts habitual scorn into
the mouths of other than bad men, as here in the instance of Antonio
and Sebastian."
Nor is there less of judgment in the means used by Prospero for
bringing them to a better mind; provoking in them the purpose of
crime, and then taking away the performance; that so he may lead them
to a knowledge of themselves, and awe or shame down their evil by his
demonstrations of good. For such is the proper effect of bad designs
thus thwarted, showing the authors at once the wickedness of their
hearts and the weakness of their hands; whereas, if successful in
their schemes, pride of power would forestall and prevent the natural
shame and remorse of guilt. And we little know what evil it lieth and
lurketh in our hearts to will or to do, till occasion invites or
permits; and Prospero's art here stands in presenting the occasion
till the wicked purpose is formed, and then removing it as soon as the
hand is raised. In the case of Antonio and Sebastian, the workings of
magic are so mixed up with those of Nature, that we cannot distinguish
them; or rather Prospero here causes the supernatural to pursue the
methods of Nature.
And the same deep skill is shown in the case of the good old Lord
Gonzalo, whose sense of his own infelicities seems lost in his care to
minister comfort and diversion to others. Thus his virtue
spontaneously opens the springs of wit and humour in him amid the
terrors of the storm and shipwreck; and he is merry while others are
suffering, and merry even from sympathy with them; and afterwards his
thoughtful spirit plays with Utopian fancies; and if "the latter end
of his Commonwealth forgets the beginning," it is all the same to him,
his purpose being only to beguile the anguish of supposed bereavement.
It has been well said that "Gonzalo is so occupied with duty, in which
alone he finds pleasure, that he scarce notices the gnat-stings of wit
with which his opponents pursue him; or, if he observes, firmly and
easily repels them."
The comic portions and characters of this play are in Shakespeare's
raciest vein; yet they are perfectly unique and singular withal, being
quite unlike any other of his preparations in that kind, as much so as
if they were the growth of a different planet.
The presence of Trinculo and Stephano in the play has sometimes been
regarded as a blemish. I cannot think it so. Their part is not only
good in itself as comedy, but is in admirable keeping with the rest.
Their follies give a zest and relish to the high poetries amidst which
they grow. Such things go to make up the mysterious whole of human
life; and they often help on our pleasure while seeming to hinder it:
we may think they were better left out, but, were they left out, we
should somehow feel the want of them. Besides, this part of the work,
if it does not directly yield a grateful fragrance, is vitally
connected with the parts that do. For there is perhaps no one of the
Poet's dramas of which it can be more justly affirmed that all the
parts draw together in organic unity, so that every thing helps every
other thing.
* * * * *
Such are the strangely-assorted characters that make up this charming
play. This harmonious working together of diverse and opposite
elements,--this smooth concurrence of heterogeneous materials in one
varied yet coherent impression,--by what subtile process this is
brought about, is perhaps too deep a problem for Criticism to solve.
I cannot leave the theme without remarking what an atmosphere of
wonder and mystery overhangs and pervades this singular structure; and
how the whole seems steeped in glories invisible to the natural eye,
yet made visible by the Poet's art: so that the effect is to lead the
thoughts insensibly upwards to other worlds and other forms of being.
It were difficult to name any thing else of human workmanship so
thoroughly transfigured with
"the gleam,
The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet's dream."
The celestial and the earthly are here so commingled,--commingled, but
not confounded,--that we see not where the one begins or the other
ends: so that in the reading we seem transported to a region where we
are strangers, yet old acquaintances; where all things are at once new
and familiar; the unearthly visions of the spot hardly touching us
with surprise, because, though wonderful indeed, there is nothing
about them but what readily finds or creates some answering powers and
sympathies within us. In other words, they do not surprise us, because
they at once kindle us into fellowship with them. That our thoughts
and feelings are thus at home with such things, and take pleasure in
them,--is not this because of some innate aptitudes and affinities of
our nature for a supernatural and celestial life?
"Point not these mysteries to an art
Lodg'd above the starry pole?"