Tempest (1918) Yale/Appendix B
APPENDIX B
History of the Play
The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's very latest plays. Internal evidence, afforded partly by the versification and partly by the obvious relation of the play to certain accounts of a famous shipwreck which occurred in the year 1609, enables scholars to attribute the play, with a fair degree of accuracy, to 1610–1611. Certain critics, notably Lowell and Brooke, think that it must be read as the dramatist's allegorical farewell to the stage (see, in particular, Prospero's adieu to magic, V. i. 33 ff., and the Epilogue); but, owing chiefly to the over-subtle application of the allegory to the details of the drama, this theory has of late been somewhat discredited.
Ben Jonson almost certainly refers to The Tempest in the Induction to Bartholomew Fair (acted 1614), where the Scrivener, speaking on behalf of the author, is made to say, 'If there be never a servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it? . . . He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and suchlike drolleries.' This would seem to indicate that Shakespeare's comedies, A Winter's Tale and The Tempest, had achieved immediate favor with theatregoers, and that Caliban was a particularly popular character with them.
We know that The Tempest was acted at court in 1611 and in 1613. Its appropriateness to court-production may have been due in part to its preeminently scenic character. The comedy was no doubt popularly known as a splendid spectacle. Even a casual reader will note the elaborateness of the stage directions, the introduction of the masque, and the novelty of such scenes as the shipwreck, the magic banquet, and the chasing of Caliban and his drunken friends by 'dogs and hounds.' The singing of many lyrics, the trolling of the catch, the duet of Juno and Ceres, and the dance of the nymphs and reapers, lent to the play a certain effect not unlike that of later operatic entertainments.
This spectacular and musical aspect recommended the play to the attention of the Restoration stage. In 1667 Dryden and Davenant produced a comedy entitled, The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island. It is often described as a 'version' of Shakespeare's play; but it is not so much that as a new play based on a familiar plot. The authors themselves describe it in their prologue as a 'new reviving play,' which springs up from Shakespeare's 'honoured dust.' In the light of this statement it is hardly worth while to pour out upon the authors the contempt that should be reserved for those who really despised Shakespeare. How far the Restoration authors departed from their original may be seen from the additions to the dramatis personæ. Here are Hippolito, 'one that never saw woman,' Dorinda, a second 'daughter to Prospero, that never saw man,' Sycorax, Caliban's sister, Mustacho and Ventoso. This play ends as an opera, with the entry of Neptune, Amphitrite, Oceanus, and a host of sea-gods. Its popularity is attested by the fact that Pepys witnessed it with great delight at least six times within fifteen months. In 1673 Shadwell turned the piece frankly into an opera. The retention of operatic features marked the great productions of The Tempest by David Garrick in the eighteenth century; the play was still half opera when it was produced by Mr. Augustin Daly a generation ago.
The play, with its subtle study of primitive life, has renewed its popularity in our own day. It has been often acted in both England and America. In 1904, Sir Herbert Tree bestowed upon its production a wealth of theatrical beauty; but the success of the acted play has been most conspicuous when the scenic embellishment has been reduced to the simplicity of what is known as the 'Elizabethan manner.' The effectiveness of such a simple presentation was well illustrated by the performance at the Century Theatre, New York, in 1915. Here the attention was not for ever diverted from the action and the poetry of the drama by the gorgeousness of its setting.
One of the most interesting evidences of the vitality of Shakespeare's subject is afforded by the numerous works based upon or suggested by it. The material has fascinated the creative imagination from the days of Dryden down to our own time. Mr. Mackaye has been scarcely more successful than the Restoration dramatists in recapturing the delicate charm of the original. Those authors have succeeded best who have deliberately employed the material for purposes wholly different from Shakespeare's. Thus Renan, in Caliban, a 'drame philosophique,' used the situation created by Shakespeare as the vehicle for the most brilliant political and social satire. Browning, in Caliban upon Setebos, a dramatic monologue, uses Caliban's religion as an interpretation of primitive anthropomorphism.