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THE TEMPEST

Peter Cunningham (Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court, 1842, p. 210) published the following entry, which he professed to have discovered in the Revels Accounts for the year 1611:

By the Kings Players: Hallomas nyght was presented att Whithall before ye kings matie A play called the Tempest.

This entry was long suspected or declared a forgery; but its genuineness has been recently affirmed by Mr Ernest Law (Some Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries, 1911); and, if Mr Law's arguments stand the test of further critical exploration of the problem, the entry may be regarded as the earliest record of a performance of The Tempest. There is some reason for believing that the performance at Court had been preceded by one or more public performances at the Blackfriars play-house. Malone states, on the authority of the Vertue MSS., that the play was acted by the King's Company before Prince Charles, the Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, in the beginning of the year 1613. In the preface (dated December 1, 1669) to The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island, Dryden states that 'the play itself had formerly been acted with success in the Black-Fryers.'

The subsequent stage-history of The Tempest is almost entirely a tale of distortion and misuse. The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island (published in 1670) was a version of the play made by William D'Avenant, with some help from Dryden (Cambridge History of English Literature, viii. 28, 398). Between them, they achieved what was doubtless considered to be artistic symmetry, by giving to Miranda a younger sister, Dorinda, and a male counterpart in Hippolyto, a youth who had never seen a woman;

to Caliban a female monster, Sycorax, and to Ariel a female sprite, Milcha. The first performance of this play, which took place at the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, on November 7, 1667, was attended by Samuel Pepys, who liked it so well, and especially 'a curious piece of musique in an echo of half sentences,' in a duet between Ferdinand and Ariel (the music was by John Banister and Pelham Humphrey), that he visited it at least six times more, the last occasion that he records being on January 21, 1669. In 1673 or 1674 D'Avenant and Dryden's play was turned into an opera, the music being written by Purcell, and was produced by Shadwell at the Dorset Gardens Theatre. There is no evidence to show whether The Tempest performed at Lincoln's Inn Fields on October 13, 1702, was Shakespeare's or D'Avenant and Dryden's. The lists of characters given in Genest's Account of the English Stage show that D'Avenant and Dryden's version, with or without alteration, was that produced at Drury Lane on June 4, 1714, January 2, 1729, and (by Garrick) on December 26, 1747. On January 31 and May 19, 1746, however, Shakespeare's play was acted there. The return to Shakespeare was not to persist, for on February 11, 1756, 'a new opera, called The Tempest, altered from Shakespeare,' with music by John Christopher Smith, was produced at Drury Lane by Garrick, who was suspected of having compiled the book. His production at Drury Lane, on October 2, 1757, appears to have been Shakespeare's play; and so does the first recorded production of The Tempest at Covent Garden, which took place on December 27, 1776. The representations at Drury Lane on January 4, 1777, and March 7, 1786, were probably an arrangement by Sheridan, with music by Thomas Lisley, junior.

On October 13, 1789, John Philip Kemble produced at Drury Lane a version of The Tempest, which was substantially D'Avenant and Dryden's, though he restored a good deal of Shakespeare, 'particularly in the comic scenes.' This version was acted there again in 1797 and 1799. At Covent Garden on December 8, 1806, Kemble produced a new version, 'greatly superior to his first,' in which he restored more of the original. Yet this must have been the version which, played at Covent Garden on July 10, 1815, so disgusted Hazlitt that he 'almost came to the resolution of never going to another representation of a play of Shakespeare's as long as we lived; and we certainly did come to this determination, that we never would go by choice.' His account, which appeared in The Examiner on July 23, 1815 (Hazlitt, ed. Waller and Glover, viii. 234), speaks of 'the common-place, clap-trap sentiments, artificial contrasts of situations and character, and all the heavy tinsel and affected formality which Dryden had borrowed from the French school,' and of the 'anomalous, unmeaning, vulgar, and ridiculous additions,' and dubs the whole representation 'farcical.' Dryden and D'Avenant's version was still the basis of The Tempest as acted, with Macready as Prospero, at Covent Garden, on May 15, 1821; additional songs and dialogue and a pantomime show making bad worse; but on October 13, 1838, when Macready was himself manager of Covent Garden, he staged there Shakespeare's play, only slightly altered. Shakespeare's play was acted by Samuel Phelps at Sadler's Wells in 1847 and 1849, and by Charles Kean (who made some alterations in it and gave Ariel's songs to Juno) at the Princess's Theatre in 1857. The play was also produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree at the Haymarket Theatre in 1904. Tree chose the part of Caliban for himself: in general, Prospero has been considered the principal male part in the play; and Ariel has been a favourite part with actresses and female singers. HAROLD CHILD.

GLOSSARY

Note. Where a pun or quibble is intended, the meanings are distinguished as (a) and (b)

A-HOLD, a-hauled, i.e. hauled right into the wind so as to reset canvas; 1. 1. 49

ARGIER, old form of 'Algiers' (v.

note 1. 2. 266); 1. 2. 261, 265 ASPERSION, dew, shower; 4. 1. 18 ATTACHED, seized, arrested; 3. 3.

5

Avom, depart, quit; 4. 1. 142

BARNACLE, a kind of wild goose, formerly believed to be hatched from the fruit of a tree by the sea-shore or from seashells ('barnacle-shells') growing on it or on a ship's bottom (N.E.D.); 4. 1. 249

BASS MY TRESPASS, the thunder echoed 'Prosper' like a burden (cf. the 'burthen' to Ariel's song 1. 2. 384); 3.3.99

BATE, 'bate me a full year,' remit a year of service. Ariel uses the language of a London apprentice (A. W. Reed; privately); 1. 2. 250

BAT-FOWLING, (a) killing birds by holding a lantern close to their roost, beating the bush with bats or sticks, and knocking down the victims as they blunder against the light; (b) gulling a simpleton, v. N.E.D. Gonzalo is the 'fowl,' and Sebastian proposes to use the stolen 'moon' as the lantern; 2. 1. 182

BEAK, prow; 1. 2. 196 BERMOOTHES, the Bermudas; 1.

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CHEEK, 'to th' welkin's cheek'; 1. 2. 4. (a) Cf. Ric. II. 3. 3. 57 'the cloudy cheeks of heaven'; (b) Miranda is also thinking of 'cheek'=the side of a grate; v. N.E.D. 'cheek' sb. 14 and Oth. 4. 2. 74: 'I should make very forges of my cheeks, That would to cinders burn.' Hence 'dashes the fire

out' and 'stinking pitch' CHOPPED, v. wide-chopped; 1. 1.

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