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The Tempest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Elmer Edgar Stoll
Elmer Edgar Stoll*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

There is always a particular interest attaching to the last work of a great author; and in an especial degree this has been the case with Shakespeare. If The Tempest was not really his last play, it would seem that it ought to have been. The action now and then lags a bit, and gives the people on the stage or in the audience a chance to ponder; which the chief character once does to such effect that his speech, of purest and highest poetry, seems to be the “conclusion of the whole matter,” der Weisheit letzter Schluss. And there are meetings and leave-takings, and glances into the past and at what is to come.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , September 1932 , pp. 699 - 726
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

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References

1 The Nation (N. Y.), April 27, 1916, p. 459.

2 Lessing (Hamburgische Dramaturgie i, Stücke 11, 12) complains of the ghost in Voltaire's Semiramis that it is not poetical—human—enough.

3 See Raysor's Coleridge's Shakespearean Criticism (1930), ii, 176. I have a bit modified the poet's thought.

4 Professor Mackail and Mr. Bailey, however, have misgivings, and make reservations in keeping with their general antipathy to such a critical process. Cf. Approach to Shakespeare, pp. 104–105; Shakespeare, in the “English Heritage” Series, pp. 204–205.—It seems necessary to cite these recent critics, for several years ago I was charged by a learned reviewer with performing a needless task—slaying monsters of error already dead.

5 Shakespeare: A Survey (1925) p. 310.—It is only fair to notice that Sir Edmund is here not so confident as in the matter that Prospero, when bidding farewell to the elves and breaking his staff, is Shakespeare. See below, p. 707. But if company and countenance be what is lacking, he now has it, and of the best. Mr. Middleton Murry (Criterion, Oct., 1931) is of the opinion that Hamlet is, besides the story of the Dane, an allegory of Shakespeare's own difficulties as a dramatist; and “Hamlet's final appeal to Horatio ‘to tell my story’ is Shakespeare's appeal to the well-conditioned critic … to understand the conditions under which he laboured, rebelled, submitted, and triumphed” (p. 124). Can these dying but undying words mean this and—any longer be such? The interpretation is as disturbing to drama and poetry as that of Ibsen, Milton, and Goethe below (pp. 708–11), and as little warranted by the text.

6 See my Shakespeare Studies (1927), the chapter on the Ghosts.

7 Metamorphoses, vii, 197–219 (Luce).

8 Cf. Mr. Robert Bridges' Essay, “On the Influence of the Audience, Stratford Town Edition, x, p. 328. For the treatment of place, see Granville-Barker, Second Series, pp. 130–135.

9 See my Shakespeare Studies, chapter i, especially pp. 22–38, from which some ideas and expressions are here and in the next paragraph borrowed.

10 Induction to Bartholomew Fair (1614).

11 See above, p. 707.

12 Shakespeare (New York, 1907), p. 225.

13 Shakespeare Studies, pp. 331 et seq.

14 Cf. W. W. Lawrence, The Problem Plays of Shakespeare, p. 15.

15 Faust, Part ii (1901), p. lxviii.

16 Op. cit. p. lxx. “Speaking broadly,” for in figures like Sorge there is allegory of course.

17 Op. cit., p. lxiii.

18 M. de Reul (Rice Institute Pamphlets, xiii, p. 236) is certainly right in denying the presence of any allegory in Browning save possibly in Numpholeptos.

19 In this paragraph and elsewhere are reproduced a few touches from the sketch of Caliban in my Poets and Playwrights (1930), pp. 124, 127.

20 Coleridge (ibid.), ii, p. 177.

21 Professor Schücking (Character Problems, 1922, p. 254), speaks of Caliban's “disgusting self-abasement and servility.” Coleridge says the poet has raised him far above contempt (ibid., ii, p. 178); and the artistic principle touched on above (p. 712) here applies. Bootlicking per se is disgusting, but not in a dog, and not in Caliban half-drunk and moved by gratitude and admiration, in a nobly written play.

Was im Leben uns verdriesst
Man im Bilde gern geniesst—

though Aristotle was the first to say it.

22 These three lines ending with the same vowel are (like the “light” and “night” above (p. 713), in the same caesural position) strange lapses for the greatest, though most careless, of metrists. Cf. above p. 706, for other examples of Shakespeare's irresponsible art.

23 It may be Caliban that is bidden, but Trinculo is carrying it in the next scene.

24 A phrase misapprehended by both a German and a French critic. “Deep-set,” they say, like a philosopher's.

25 Cf. Shakespeare Studies, chap. iii, section 4; and chap. vii.—Coleridge and Schücking have noted the difference in Caliban.

26 Shakespeare (1931), p. 333.

27 Cf. Professor Prescott's “The Poetic Mind.”

28 Cf. Shakespeare Studies, chap. ii, “Literature and Life.”

29 Books and Characters (London, 1922), the essay “Shakespeare's Final Period.”

30 With the well-known anachronisms and geographical incongruities in Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest compare Calderón and Lope, Ticknor's Spanish Literature ii, p. 375.—In keeping with these, monstrous situations, such as Leontes' commands to throw Perdita and Paulina into the flames, Antigonus' being eaten by a bear, and Cymbeline's recklessness with human life in the dénouement, are not only not realized and taken to heart, but also the shock of these is often broken by positive comedy. Generally this is not quite happy in effect; but it is in the first scene of The Tempest. The shipwreck is kept from unduly alarming us, and yet the humor is not at the expense of kindliness.

31 Shakespeare Studies, pp. 22–25.

32 See above, p. 703 note. Professor Mackail, chap. ii, even seems to share my opinion that Shakespeare, like the world about him, was not aware of his own greatness; himself perhaps not aware that by the reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement (Sept. 1, 1927) the conception had been already pronounced impossible.