The preceding Index is compiled on the fame plan as that fub- レ * TEMPEST.) The Tempest and The Midfummer Night's Dream are the noblest efforts of that fublime and amazing imagination peculiar to Shakspeare, which foars above the bounds of nature without forsaking sense; or, more properly, carries nature along with him beyond her established limits. Fletcher seems particularly to have admired these two plays, and hath wrote two in imitation of them, The Sea Voyage and The Faithful Shepherdess. But when he prefumes to break a lance with Shakspeare, and write in emulation of him, as he does in The False One, which is the rival of Antony and Cleopatra, he is not so successful. After him, Sir John Suckling and Milton catched the brightest fire of their imagination from these two plays; which shines fantastically indeed in The Goblins, but much more nobly and ferenely in The Mask at Ludlow Castle. WARBURTON. No one has hitherto been lucky enough to discover the romance on which Shakspeare may be supposed to have founded this play, the beauties of which could not secure it from the criticism of Ben Jonfon, whose malignity appears to have been more than equal to his wit. In the induction to Bartholomew Fair, he says: "If there be never a fervant monster " in the fair, who can help it, he says, nor a neft of “ antiques? He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays, " like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and fuch like ،، drolleries. ," STEEVENS. I was informed by the late Mr. Collins of Chichester, that Shakspeare's Tempest, for which no origin is yet affigned, was formed on a romance called Aurelio and Isabella, printed in Italian, Spanish, French, and English, in 1588. But though this information has not proved true on examination, an ufeful conclufion may be drawn from it, that Shakspeare's story is fome-where to be found in an Italian novel, at least that the story preceded Shakspeare. Mr. Collins had searched this fubject with no less fidelity than judgement and industry: but his memory failing in his last calamitous indisposition, he probably gave me the name of one novel for another. I remember he added a circumstance, which may lead to a difcovery, - that the principal character of the romance, answering to Shakspeare's Profpero, was a chemical negromancer, who had bound a spirit like Ariel to obey his call, and perform his services. It was a common pretence of dealers in the occult sciences to have a demon at command. At least Aurelio, or Orelio, was probably one of the names of this romance, the production and multiplicity of gold being the grand object of alchemy. Taken at large, the magical part of the Tempestis founded on that fort of philosophy which was practifed by John Dee and his affociates, and has been called the Roficrucian. The name Ariel came from the Talmudistick mysteries with which the learned Jews had infected this Science. T. WARTON. Mr. Theobald tells us, that The Tempest must have been written after 1609, because the Bermuda islands, which are mentioned in it, were unknown to the English until that year; but this is a mistake. He might have seen in Hackluyt, 1600, folio, a defcription of Bermuda, by Henry May, who was shipwrecked there in 1593. It was however one of our author's last works. In 1598 he played a part in the original Every Man in his Humour. Two of the characters are Profpero and Stephano. Here Ben Jonfon taught him the pronunciation of the latter word, which is always right in The Tempest. ،، Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler?,, And always wrong in his earlier play, The Merchant of Venice, which had been on the stage at least two or three years before its publication in 1600. ،، My friend Stephano, fignify I pray you,,, &c. So little did Mr. Capell know of his author, when he idly supposed his school literature might perhaps have been loft by the dissipation of youth, or the busy Scene of public life ! FARMER. This play must have been written before 1614, when Jonson sneers at it in his Bartholomew Fair. In the latter plays of Shakspeare, he has lefs of pun and quibble than in his early ones. In The Merchant of Venice, he expressly declares against them. This perhaps might be one criterion to difcover the dates of his plays. : BLACKSTONE. See Mr. Malone's attempt to afcertain the order of Shakspeare's plays, and a Note on The cloud-capt Towers, &c. Act. IV. STEEVENS. PERSONS represented. * Alonso, king of Naples. Profpero, the rightful duke of Milan. Gonzalo, an honest old counsellor of Naples. Caliban, a Savage and deformed flave. Stephano, a drunken butler. Master of a ship, Boatswain, and Mariners. Miranda, daughter to Profpero. Ariel, an airy Spirit. Iris, Ceres Juno, Reapers, } Spirits. Other Spirits attending on Profpero. SCENE, the fea, with a ship; afterwards 1 an uninhabited island. * This enumeration of persons is taken from the folio 1623. |