STATE OF THE TEXT, AND CHRONOLOGY, OF THE TEMPEST. THIS comedy stands the first in the folio collection of 1623, in which edition it was originally printed. In the entry upon the Stationers' registers of November the 8th, 1623, claiming for Blount and Jaggard such plays of Shakspere as were not formerly entered to other men, it also is the first in order. The original text is printed with singular correctness; and if, with the exception of one or two obvious typographical errors, it had continued to be reprinted without any change, the world would have possessed a copy with the mint-mark of the poet upon it, instead of the clipped and scoured impression that bears the name of Steevens. Fortunately, however, in consequence of this remarkable correctness of the original, the commentators have been unable to do much in the way of what they call emendation; but what they have done is done as badly as possible. Until within the last year or so the general opinion of the readers of Shakspere had settled into the belief that The Tempest was the last of his works. We are inclined to think that this belief was rather a matter of feeling than of judgment. Mr. Campbell has put the feeling very elegantly: -"The Tempest has a sort of sacredness as the last work of a mighty workman. Shakspeare, 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. And this final play of our poet has magic indeed; for, what can be simpler in language than the courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda, and yet what can be more magical than the sympathy with which it COMEDIES.-VOL. II. subdues us? Here Shakspeare 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 to bury it fathoms in the ocean, Deeper than did ever plummet sound.' That staff has never been, and never will be, recovered." But this feeling, pretty and fanciful as it is, is certainly somewhat deceptive. It is not borne out by the internal evidence of the play itself. Shakspere never could have contemplated, in health and intellectual vigour, any abandonment of that occupation which constituted his happiness and glory. We have no doubt that he wrote on till the hour of his last illness. His later plays are unquestionably those in which the mighty intellect is more tasked than the unbounded fancy. His later plays, as we believe, present the philosophical and historical aspect of human affairs rather than the passionate and the imaginative. The Roman historical plays are, as it appears to us, at the end of his career, as the English historical plays are at the beginning. Nothing can be more different than the principle of art upon which the Henry VI. and the Antony and Cleopatra are constructed. The Roman plays denote, we think, the growth of an intellect during five-and-twenty years. The Tempest does not present the characteristics of the latest plays. It has the playfulness and beauty of the comedies, mingled with the higher notes of passionate and solemn thought which distinguish the great tragedies. It is essentially, too, written wholly with reference to the stage, at a period when an Ariel could be presented to an imaginative audience without the prosaic encumbrance of wings. The later plays, such as Troilus and Cressida, and the three Roman subjects, are certainly written without any very strong regard to dramatic effect. They are noble acting plays, especially Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus; but even in these the poet appears to have poured himself forth with a philosophical mastery of the great principles by which men are held in the social state, without being very solicitous as to the favourable reception of his opinions by the mixed audiences of the days of James I. The Antony and Cleopatra is still more remarkable for its surpassing historical truth-not the mere truth of chronological exactness, but that truth which is evolved out of the power of making the past present and real, through the marvellous felicity of knowing and representing how individuals and masses of men must have acted under circumstances which are only assimilated to the circumstances of modern times by the fact that all the great principles and motives of human action are essentially the same in every age and in every condition of civilization. The plays that we have mentioned must have been the result of very profound thought and very accurate investigation. The characters of the Troilus and Cressida are purposely Gothicised. An episode of "the tale of Troy divine" is seized upon, to be divested of its romantic attributes, and to be presented with all the bold colouring of a master regardless of minute proprieties of costume, but producing the most powerful and harmonious effect through the universal truth of his delineations. On the contrary, the Roman plays are perfect in costume. We do not believe that there are any productions of the human mind in existence, ancient or modern, which can give us so complete a notion of what Roman life was under its great general aspects. This was the effect, not only of his instinctive wisdom, but of that leisure for profound inquiry and extensive investigation which Shakspere possessed in the latter years of his life. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that The Tempest belonged to this very late period. Ulrici has said " The Tempest is the completing companion-piece of the Winter's Tale and A Midsummer Night's Dream." The Midsummer Night's Dream was printed in 1600;—it was probably written some five or six years previous. The Winter's Tale, we know, was acted in 1611, and it is conjectured that it was then first acted. this, however, we have no evidence. Comparing the style and rhythm of The Tempest with the Winter's Tale, we have little difficulty in believing that the Winter's Tale is the later play. But, on the other hand, we are not disposed to separate them by any very wide interval; more especially we cannot agree with Mr. Hunter, who has recently brought great learning to an investigation of all the points connected with The Tempest, that this play, " instead of being the latest work of this great master, is in reality one of the earliest, nearly the first in time, as the first in place, of the dramas which are wholly his." The difficulty of settling the chronology of some of Shakspere's plays by internal evidence is very much increased by the circumstance that some of them must be regarded as early performances, that have come down to us with the large additions and corrections Of of maturer years. For example: Pericles was, it is believed by Mr. Collier, produced as a novelty in 1608. There are portions of that play which we think no one could have written but the mature Shakspere; mixed up with other portions which indicate, not so much immature powers as the treatment of a story in the spirit of the oldest dramas. So it is with Cymbeline; and, to a certain extent, with the Winter's Tale. The probability is that these plays were produced in their present form soon after the period of Shakspere's quitting the stage about 1602 and 1603, and before the production of Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida, Henry VIII., and the Roman plays. The Tempest appears to us to belong to the same cycle. The opinion which we here express is not inconsistent with the belief which we still retain, that Mr. Hunter has brought forward several curious facts to render it highly probable that it was produced in 1596. The aggregate evidence, as we think, outweighs these curious facts. The Tempest is not included by name in the list of plays ascribed to Shakspere by Francis Meres in 1599. Mr. Hunter says that it was included, under the name of Love's Labour Won. We have endeavoured to show, in the Introductory Notice to All's Well that Ends Well, not only that the comedy bearing that name had the highest pretension to the title of Love's Labour Won, but that The Tempest had no such pretension. The Love Labours of The Tempest, according to Mr. Hunter, are the labours of Ferdinand under the harsh commands of Prospero, and the title given to The Tempest by Meres is derived from this incident. To this argument we have answered, -"We venture to say that our belief in the significancy of Shakspere's titles would be at an end, if even a main incident were to suggest a name, instead of the general course of the thought or action. In this case there are really no Love Labours at all. The lady is not won by the piling of the logs; the audience know that both Ferdinand and Miranda are under the influence of Prospero's spells, and the magician has explained to them why he enforces these harsh labours." We do not agree that the comedy called The Tempest, when it was first printed, bore the title, either as a leading or secondary title, when Meres published his list in 1599, of Love Labour's Won.' We believe that it was always called The Tempest; and that, looking at its striking fable, and its beauty of characterization and language, it would undoubtedly have been mentioned by Meres if it had existed in 1599. The Bartholomew Fair' of Ben Jonson was produced at the Hope Theatre in 1614; and it was performed by "the Lady Elizabeth's servants." It is stated by Malone that "it appears from MSS. of Mr. Vertue that The Tempest was acted by John Heminge and the rest of the King's company, before Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Prince Palatine Elector, in the beginning of the year 1613." This circumstance gives some warrant to the belief of the commentators that a passage in the Induction to Bartholomew Fair' is a sarcasm upon Shakspere:" If there be never a servant-monster in the fair, who can help it, he says, nor a nest of antiques? He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempests, and such-like drolleries." Gifford has contended, arguing against the disposition of the commentators to charge Jonson with malignity, that the expressions servant-monster, and tales, tempests, and suchlike drolleries, had reference to the popular puppet-shows which were especially called drolleries. The passage, however, still looks to us like a sly, though not ill-natured, allusion to Shakspere's Caliban, and his Winter's Tale, and Tempest, which were then popular acting plays. Mr. Hunter believes that in this passage Jonson does pointedly direct his satire against The Tempest; but he also maintains that Jonson does, in the same way, satirize The Tempest in 1596, in the Prologue to Every Man in his Humour :' "He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see One such to-day, as other plays should be; Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please: Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard, To say, it thunders: nor tempestuous drum Rumbles, to tell yon when the storm doth come." It is scarcely probable, if Jonson had meant to allude to The Tempest, either in the Prologue or * See Cymbeline, Introductory Notice, p. 8. |