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Hamlet and Dr. Timothy Bright

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Mary Isabelle O'Sullivan
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Extract

It is strange that contemporary criticism of the Hamlet of Romantic psychology has failed to reckon with an important document of Elizabethan psychology. Professor Stoll has invoked Burton and Professor Schücking, Sir Thomas Overbury; but both the Anatomy and Characters are Jacobean, first published in 1621 and 1614, respectively. There was, however, a book of Elizabethan psychology accessible from 1586, written in English, avowedly to win the general reader, and popular enough for two editions in 1586 and a third in 1613. That Shakespeare used Dr. Timothy Bright's A treatise of melancholie was suggested in 1894 by Richard Loening in support of his theory of Hamlet's physiological melancholy; and in 1899, apparently from independent observation, by Dowden in his edition of Hamlet (p. 77). This suggestion, however, seems to have fallen flat. The title of Bright's Treatise—but not the contents—was known to Stoll, to Schücking, and to Dr. G. A. Bieber, though it is not mentioned by J. M. Robertson, and no reference is made to it in the later studies by Stoll and Schücking. To suggest anew that the Treatise influenced Shakespeare and more particularly Hamlet, is the object of this paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , September 1926 , pp. 667 - 679
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1926

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References

1 “Shakspere, Marston, and the Malcontent Type,” Mod. Philol. III (Jan. 1906).

2 Character Problems in Shakespeare's Plays, N. Y. 1922, pp. 154-5.

3 Cf. “The epistle dedicatorie” [p. 6] I write it in our mother tong that the benefit .... might be more common ....

4 Bright, Timothy. A treatise of melancholie. Containing the cavses thereof, & reasons of the strange effects it worketh in our minds and bodies: with the phisicke cure, and spirituall consolation for such as haue thereto adioyned an afflicted conscience. The difference betwixt it, and melancholie with diuerse philosophicall discourses touching actions, and affections of soule, spirit, and body: the particulars whereof are to be seene before the booke. By T. Bright Doctor of Phisicke. Imprinted at London by Thomas Vautrollier, dwelling in the Black-Friers. 1586. Of this edition, there is a copy in the British Museum (wanting pp. 33-48) and one (used in preparing this article) in the Treasure Room of the Widener Library of Harvard University. There is a copy of the other 1586 edition in the British Museum: J. Windet : London, 1586. Of the 1613 edition, there are copies in the New York Public Library and in the Library of Goucher College, Baltimore; as well as in the British Museum.

5 “Ueber die physiologischen Grundlagen der Shakespeare'schen Psychologie,” Jahrb. der deutschen Sh.—Gesellschaft, XXXI, 4-5. In support of his view that Shakespeare knew and used Bright's Treatise, Loening points out that it was published by Vautrollier at his shop in Blackfriars, in Shakespeare's immediate neighborhood, and further that on the death of Vautrollier in 1588 his print-shop and stock passed into the hands of his son-in-law, Richard Field, fellow-townsman of Shakespeare and the publisher of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece.

6 Op. cit., p. 284. More recently he rejects Elizabethan melancholy as “a mythical disease which nowadays means little or nothing” (Kittredge Anniversary Papers, 1923, p. 268). See also his “Recent Criticism of Hamlet,” Contemporary Review, CXXV (1924), especially p. 350.

7 “Primitive Kunstmittel und moderne Interpretation,” Germ. —Romanische Monatsch., IV (1912), 335.

8 Der melancholikertypus Shakespeares und sein Ursprung, Jena diss., Heidelberg 1913, p. 30.

9 See the biography by W. J. Carlton, Timothie Bright, doctor of phisicke. Lond., 1911 (which I have not been able to consult). Gabriel Harvey (Marginalia, ed. G. C. Moore Smith 1913, p. 195) terms Bright, “unicus Medicus.” The discussion of Bright's system of shorthand in relation to the quartos of Shakespeare began in 1898. For bibliography, see B.A.P. Van Dam: The text of Shakespeare's Hamlet, London, 1924, p. 9-10.

10 Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd .... ? (Macbeth v:3).

11 What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason ! How infinite in faculty ! ....the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! (Hamlet:ii:2).

12 Of t breaking do wn the pales and forts of reason (Hamlet:i:4).

13 Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth (Sonnet 146).

14 And for my soul, what can it do to that,

Being a thing immortal as itself? (Hamlet:i:4).

15 .... these rebel powers that thee array .... (Sonnet 146).

16 There's such divinity doth hedge a king .... (Hamlet:iv:5).

17 That thereby beauty's rose might never die (Sonnet 1.)

18 The expense of spirit .... (Sonnet 129).

19 What a piece of work is a man ! .... in apprehension how like a god! ... (Hamlet:ii:2).

20 ... Weary with toil I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head .... (Sonnet 27).

21 .........for thou has been

As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;

A man that fortune's buffets and rewards

Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and bless'd are those

Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,

That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger

To sound what stop she please (Hamlet:ni:2).

22 .......... the dram of eale

Doth all the noble substance .... (Hamlet:i:4).

23 .... for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so .... (Hamlet:ii:2).

24 Denmark's a prison (Hamlet:ii:2)

..... methought I lay

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes (Hamlet:v:2).

25 The expense of spirit .... (Sonnet 129).

26 By the o'ergrowth of some complexion (Hamlet:1:4).

27 Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled out of tune, and harsh (Hamlet-iii:1).

28 The expense of spirit in a waste of shame .... (Sonnet 129).

29 Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep....(Hamlet:v.2).

30 Remember thee?

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe. Remember thee?

Yea, from the table of my memory

I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,

That youth and observation copied there;

And thy commandment all alone shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain,

Unmix'd with baser matter .... (Hamlet:1:5).

31 O! that this too too solid flesh would melt ....

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! (Hamlet:1:2.)

32 To be or not to be .... [through]

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all (Hamlet:iii:1).

33 .... Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected haviour of the visage .... (Hamlet:1:2).

34 .... Some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event .... (Hamlet:iv:4).

35 Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep .... (Hamlet:v:2).

36 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur'd like him. like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least (Sonnet 29).

37 Do not for ever with thy vailed lids

Seek for thy noble father in the dust .... (Hamlet:1:2).

38 E. E. Stoll: Hamlet: an historical and comparative study. [1919] (Research publications of the University of Minnesota. Studies in language and literature. No. 7), p. 12. Although I disagree with many of the conclusions of this monograph, I can hardly over-estimate my debt to its stimulation.

edition, 20 vol., Glasgow, 1905-7. Purchas was the first to print A True Reportory, in 1625; it occupies pp. 1734-56 of vol. IV of His Pilgrimes. Gayley (Shakespeare, esp. pp. 75-76 and 226) has shown that the document was brought to England by Gates in the summer of 1610, and that it was handed around to members of the Virginia Council, several of whom were probably personal friends of the poet.

4 Philadelphia, 1897.

5 Storms and wrecks occur in the Spanish stories often given as sources for The Tempest. For a review of these, see “The Sources of the Tempest,” by H. D. Gray, M. L. N., XXXV, esp. pp. 321-22, and Luce's revised edition of the play, p. 176. Mr. Gray himself advances the theory that Shakspere used commedia dell'arte scenarios which appeared later in a ms. of Locatelli dated 1622. The parallels which he gives, mostly concerning the magic element, are highly interesting and some of them quite close. But the weakness of his position consists in the lack of evidence (p. 323) that these scenarios were either produced in England or existed in written or printed form by 1611. A far closer study than has hitherto been made of Elizabethan demonology in its connection with The Tempest must be undertaken before we can agree with Mr. Gray, who is “unable to doubt that we have in the scenarios the immediate source of The Tempest.” (p. 329).

J. D. Rea in “A Source for the Storm in The Tempest” (Mod. Phil., XVII, 279-86) argues for one of Erasmus' Colloquia. What seem to me serious and valid objections to this hypothesis are advanced in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch, LVII, 122-23.

See also the play as edited by C. Porter and H. Clarke, New York, 1908, esp. pp. x-xxiv and 85-93. Sir Sidney Lee (The Tempest, Cleveland, 1911, p. xxi) strangely says, “In neither German play nor Spanish fiction is there any storm at sea.” But there is an important one in Eslava's Noches de Invierno. Cf. the translation in Porter's and Clarke's edition of the play, pp. 89-90.

6 The completest treatment to date is Gayley's. See Shakespeare, esp. pp. 53-69. My studies tend to bear out the conclusion of Gayley and Luce that there is very little material in Jourdan's Discovery of the Barmudas that Shakspere might not have taken just as well from Strachey. Further, it will be noticed that the few borrowings from A True Declaration are in no sense as literal as those from Strachey.

7 A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia (1610). In Tracts and Other Papers collected by Peter Force, 4 vol., Washington, 1836-46. See vol. III, 14-15.

8 p. 11.

9 A True and Sincere Declaration of the Purpose and Ends of the Plantation begun in Virginia, London, 1610. See p. 17.

10 Of these attention has been called only to the first.

11 The contexts are exactly similar. Mutinous elements had plotted to overthrow the Governor, Sir Thomas Gates, and would possibly have succeeded had not some “brake from the plot it selfe, and (before the time was ripe for the execution thereof) discovered the whole order.” This bears interesting analogy to Gonzalo's having waked in time to save the King from the mutinous attack of Sebastian and Antonio, and to his having issued the timely warning.

12 The figure is used twice more in the play, at I, ii, 236-38, and V, 50-1. In both of these passages the word roaring appears. The figure also occurs in the storm in Pericles, so often compared with this one. Cf. op. cit., III, i, 45-6. In fact, used in a general way, the figure was very popular with him. Cf. Caesar, I, iii, 6-8; Othello, II, i, 12-15, II, i, 92; Lear, III, vii, 62-4; Titus, III, i, 222-23; Troilus, II, ii, 75; Venus 819-20.

13 On p. 11 Strachey almost repeats himself: “The heavens look'd so blacke upon us.”

14 See A True Declaration, p. 10. See also Silvester Jourdan's Discovery of the Barmudas (1610), Force's Tracts, III, 9-10. What Force reproduces is A Plaine Description (1613), a reprint, “with some unimportant additions,” of A Discovery. Henceforth I will refer to it under the former title.

15 The figure of Wind, with puffed cheeks, was of course familiar to the Elizabethan from his maps.

16 May's Briefe Note describes (Hakluyt's Principall Navigations, 12 vol., Glasgow, 1903-5, X, 200-1) a “ship cast away upon the Northwest part of the isle of Bermuda”in which the sailors“demanded of him [the captain] their wine of heigth: the which they had. And being, as it should seeme, after they had their wine, carelesse of their charge which they tooke in hand, being as it were drunken, through their negligence a number of good men were cast away.”

One is reminded of Antonio's line: “We are meerly cheated of our lives by drunkards.” (I, i, 65).

17 Strachey mentions hatches three times, pp. 10 (twice) and 13. Halliwell-Phillipps (Selected Notes upon the Tempest, London, 1868, p. 25) cites The Cobler of Canterburie (1608), “bestowed the mariners under hatches.”

18 Shakspere reverts to the picture twice, in “Marriners asleepe Under the Hatches” (V, 111-12), and “we were dead of sleepe, And (how we know not) all clapt under hatches” (V, 275-76).

19 For Shakspere's knowledge of seamanship as evinced in this and the following quotation, consult notes in Variorum, pp. 16-18. Furness quotes passages from Hakluyt and Smith which parallel Shakspere's expression. See also L. G Carr Laughton's essay on “The Navy: Ships and Sailors,” in Shakespeare's England, Oxford, 1916, I, 141-69. B. Nicholson (New Sh. Soc. Trans. 1880-82, pt. I, 53-55) gives further information in “Shakspere and Sea-Glasses.”

20 The idea is repeated two pages later: “Such as in all their life times,” etc.

21 This interesting expression, “play the men,” is twice used by Marlowe in Tamb., Part II. See III, iii, last line; and III, v, 14.

22 A close parallel is found in a passage from Erasmus' Naufragium (quoted by John D. Rea, Mod. Phil., XVII, 285) : “Let everie man shift now for himselfe.”

23 Luce (Arden Temp., p. 165) finds it necessary to “quote the opposite doctrine preached by a rebel of the crew, 'how much we were therein bound each one to provide for himself.” But surely the Strachey passage quoted immediately below contains the doctrine itself.

24 Gayley (Op. cit., p. 56) says with some justification that “descriptions of St. Elmo's fire Shakespeare might havefound in Tonson of 1555 or in a half-dozen other sources, but in none just that chrysalis of the ethereal creature ‘flaming amazement’ who glorifies this second scene of The Tempest.” It must, however, be remembered that few superstitions were so familiar as this one.

Douce (Illustrations of Shakspeare, London, 1839, p. 3) cites its appearance in Pliny, Seneca, Erasmus, Schotti, Eden, and Batman. It is mentioned also by Hakluyt, Purchas, Thevet, Le Loyer, and as illustration in prose or verse it was used by Chapman, Phineas Fletcher, Gomersall,Bacon, Fulke Greville, Drayton, Thomas Watson, Drummond, Lodge, and Thomas Heywood. I am inclined to believe, therefore, since the idea was obviously so current, that Gayley has slightly overestimated Shakspere's indebtedness to this particular version. That Strachey recalled it to his mind I have no doubt. But the features mentioned are common in the other versions. Le Loyer (Treatise of Specters, London, 1605, fol. 67v), for instance, speaks of men who “see the fire .... to flie uppon their shippe, and to alight uppon the toppe of the mast.” And Hakluyt, as Luce remarks (Arden ed., p. 163), has “beak” and “it would be in two or three places at once.”

Similarly, Rea (Mod. Philol., XVII, 281) overemphasizes the uniqueness of Erasmus' version: “It is to be especially noted that in none of the other accounts from which Shakespeare is sometimes said to have drawn is the fire described as descending from the mast and running about the lower parts of the ship.”

The account in Pliny (Holland's trans., 1635 ed., p. 18), having the lights “settle also upon the crosse Saile yards and other parts of the ship,” “leaping to and fro,” falling “upon the bottome of the keele,” with its description of the light first as burning singly, then “two and two together,” is just as close to Shakspere as Erasmus.

25 For other instances of this gratitude, see A True Declaration, pp. 10, 11, and 24. See also A Newyeeres Gift to Virginea (1609-10). Extracts reprinted by Alex. Brown, Genesis of the United Slates, 2 vol., Boston, 1890. See I, 365.

26 Gonzalo refers to it as the “miracle, (I meane our preservation.”) (II, ii, 9-10). Jourdan has these words: “Our delivery was not more strange in falling so opportunely and happily upon the land, as our feeding and preservation was beyond our hopes.” (p. 10).

27 Luce implies (Arden, p. 164) that at this point the True Declaration is closer than Strachey to Shakspere, contending that “neere land” of the former account is “almost Shakespeare's phrase.” But taken in its context, it is no closer than Strachey. Thus, “if it had not beene so neere land, their companie or provision had perished by water” (p. 11). Whereas Strachey uses not only the expression neere the land but also the very word shoare. There are other details of Shakspere's reproduction of the wreck which, it seems to me, Luce has misinterpreted. (See Arden, pp. xiv—xvi). I cannot take space fully to indicate my objections to his theory that all “is vague, ideal, supernatural;” I shall examine only two or three passages which seem to me capable of other interpretations. He says for instance: “Then follows Prospero, who describes the occurrence as a wreck, and immediately afterwards as a sinking in deep water.” But surely, the lines to which he alludes,

There is no soule

No not so much perdition as an hayre

Betid to any creature in the vessell

Which thou heardst cry, which thou saw'st sinke (I, ii, 36-39), can just as well mean that the people and not the ship sank. “All but Mariners,” as Ariel says in his description of the same scene, (I, ii, 246) “Plung'd in the foaming bryne, and quit the vessell.” And even if the which does refer exclusively to ship, I see no real inconsistency between the ship's being, in Miranda's words, “dash'd all to peeces” and its being “swallowd.” It could be dashed on the rocks and then, falling back, be engulfed.

Further Luce says, “to be in danger of running aground (a suggestion, no doubt, of the narratives) is also to be strangely near shore, especially at two o'clock in the day; nor in all these distressing circumstances have the sailors been summoned to their posts.” The first mistake is contained in the implication that if they were so near shore, the sailors should have seen it before, “especially at two o'clock in the day”; where he obviously forgets another “suggestion of the narratives,” namely “(preparing for no lesse all the blacke night before) the cloudes gathering thicke upon us, ....a dreadfull storme .... did beate all light from heaven; which like an hell of darkenesse turned blacke upon us.” And A True Declaration stresses the same conditions: “The heavens were obscured, and made an Egyptian night of three daies perpetuall horror” (p. 10). The second mistake occurs in the sentence immediately following: “On the other hand, the gale—according to the boatswain—was one that the ship might easily weather.” What the boatswain actually says is, (I, i, 13-14) “Blow till thou burst thy winde, if roome enough,” the defiant shout of the weathered seaman who is trying to cheer on his men.

28 Jourdan specifies that they “had time and leasure to save some good part of our goods and provision, which the water had not spoyled” (p. 10). Cf. with this Gonzalo's words: “Our Garments being .... rather new dy'de then stain'd with salte water” (II, i, 65-68).

29 Cf. Gonzalo's exhortation: “Make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our owne doth little advantage” (I, i, 39-40).

30 A word much used in the narratives. Cf. A True Declaration, 14; James Rosier, True Relation of the Most Prosperous Voyage made this present yeere 1605 by George Waymouth, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collec, Third Series, VIII, (1843), 130. Also Historie of Travaile into Virginia, in Collec. Maine Hist. Soc., Portland, 1853, III, 287 and 292. The latter reads: “They sounded and had sixty fathome ooze.”

31 For this decided tendency to parallelisms in the play, see A. H. Gilbert J. E. G. P., XIV, 63-74.

32 Later (p. 42) when the ship was approaching mainland, the account reads: “The eighteenth about midnight wee sounded, with the Dipsing Lead, and found thirtie seven fadome,” in which we have the poet's spelling of fadomes.

33 Arden Temp., pp. 163-65. He also points out “not one eye of Sturgeon” and “with an eye of greene in't.” He gives (pp. 162-69) other parallels from Strachey, Jourdan, and A True Declaration, which seem to me less important.

34 Op. cit., p. 55.

35 True Reportory, pp. 10, 12, and 13.

1 Montégut considers this scene to represent the rivalry between Shakspere and his fellow-dramatists. See “Une Hypothèse sur La Tempête” in Essais sur la Littérature Anglaise, Paris 1883, p. 191.

2 Op. cit., see esp. pp. 8-80.

3 Published originally in 1612. Reprinted in Collec. Mass. Hist. Soc., Boston 1826, Second Series, VIII, 200.

4 See p. 2.

5 See For the Colony in Virginea Britannia, Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, London 1612, Force's Tracts, III, 12. To prove to what extent it was thought necessary to defend the colony, consult also Nova Britannia (1609), Force's Tracts, I, 10; Historie of Travaile (1612), Hak. Soc. ed., London 1849, p. 1; de Bry's edition of Thomas Hariot's Briefe and True Report of the newfound land of Virginia (1590), reprint, Manchester 1888, see p.5; Publication by the Counsell (1610), reprinted Genesis, I, 354-6; and Purchas' Pilgrimage (1613), p. 633; True Relation of Such occurrences and Accidents of Note, as hath Hapned in Virginia (1608), see Am. Hist. Leaflets, no. 27, p. 10.

6 A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia by Raphe Hamor. London, 1615. To the Reader. Reprinted Albany, 1860.

7 Printed as A New-yeeres Gift to Virginea. See Genesis, I, pp. 366-67.

8 p. 10.

9 p. 5.

10 Prospero speaks (I, ii, 331-32) of its being “not honour'd with A humane shape,” and Ariel (III, iii, 77-78), of “this Island, Where man doth not inhabit.” Cf. Jourdan (pp. 10-11): “The Hands of the Barmudas .... were never inhabited by any Christian or Heathen people.” And the first folio (p. 19) has “The Scene, an un-inhabited Island.”

11 Hariot speaks of “divers and variable reportes .... bruited abroade by many that returned from thence.” See Briefe and True Report, p. 5.

12 One of the charges which A True Declaration answers (see p. 9) is “barrennesse of the countrie.”

13 Gayley (Op. cit., pp. 54-5) maintains that “the temperate air of the island” is “specifically mentioned by Jourdan alone.” But the poet probably had in mind the whole colony, not Bermuda alone.

14 For other allusions to same, see New-yeeres Gift, p. 363; Brereton's Brief and True Relation of the Discovery of the North Part of Virginia (1602), reprinted 1843, Mass. Hist. Coll., Third Series, VIII, see p. 93; and Thevet's New Found Worlde, London 1568, p. 70. Many of these allusions are to Virginia; but in reflecting the conditions of colonization, Shakspere made no distinction between Virginia and Bermuda. Travelers often alluded to the sweet air wafted from the shore of islands and mainland. Cf. Strachey, p. 42, “we had a marvellous sweet smell from the shoare,” Eden's and Willes' History of Travayle, London, 1577, fol. 173v, “fragrant savoure of spices whiche proceded from the Ilandes,” Historie of Travaile, p. 43, “before we come in sight of yt thirty leagues, we smell a sweet savour,” and Thevet, p. 35, “Drawing neere to America, within fiftie leagues we began to smell the ayre of the lande .... a sweete and pleasant smell.”

15 Practically these same words are used by Strachey. See pp. 58-59.

16 II, i, 153-75.

17 My interpretation of this passage differs in essentials from that of Gayley or Luce. See Shakespeare and the Founders, pp. 6(5—69, and Arden Tempest, p. xliv.

18 p. 8.

19 p. 5.

20 To gain an idea of how far these praises went, we should read one whole account, such as that in A True Declaration, p. 22ff.

21 Cf. also Montaigne Essays, London, 1892-3, I, 226-27: “To this day they yet enjoy that naturall ubertie and fruitfulnesse, which without labouring toyle, doth in such plenteous abundance furnish them with all necessary things.”

22 We should think, too, of the words of the masque:

“Earths increase, foyzon plentie,

..........................................

Vines, with clustring bunches growing“ (IV, 122-24).

23 On the previous page he said, “Our feeding and preservation was beyond our hopes, and all mens expectations, most admirable.”

24 Cf. Gonzalo's “Here is every thing advantageous to life” (II, I, 53). Hamor speaks (True Dicourse, p. 16) of “that plenty of foode, which every man by his owne industry may easily, and doth procure.” And The Historie of Travaile (p. 115) alludes to the “commoditie .... for the sustenance of mankind.”

25 p. 19.

26 A True and Sincere Declaration (p. 25) speaks of “Idle and wicked persons such as shame, or feare compels into this action.” And A True Declaration (p. 25) says there is “nothing wanting, but onely mens labours, to furnish both Prince State and merchant, without charge or difficulty.”

27 p. 15.

28 V, 74.

29 We should notice one other small point about the Gonzalo-Antonio controversy. Gonzalo explains to the doubting Adrian that “This Tunis Sir was Carthage” (II, i, 86). Batman Upon Bartholome (London, 1582, p. 232) has the line, “The country where it [Carthage] stoode is now called Thunyse”;and Douce (Illustrations of Shakespeare, London, 1807, I, 8, 14) has made it reasonably clear that the dramatist used Batman elsewhere in The Tempest. In connection with his discussion of Carthage, Gonzalo mentions Dido, and Sebastian adds Aeneas. It is of passing interest to note that both are mentioned in the Strachey narrative (pp. 55-56), which Shakspere was following more closely than any other.

1 Strachey had said: “It could not be said to raine, the waters like whole Rivers did flood in the ayre” (p. 7).

2 Trinculo follows this with the lines, “Alas, the storme is come againe: my best way is to creepe under his Gaberdine: there is no other shelter hereabout.” Possibly Shakspere thought of the island monster's using the Palm Tree of which “so broad are the leaves, as an Italian Umbrello, a man may well defend his whole body under one of them, from the greatest storme raine that falls. For they being stiffe and smooth, as if so many flagges were knit together, the raine easily slideth off.” (Strachey, p. 19).

3 This is the passage, together with one from Jourdan's Plaine Description (p. 11), which very probably was the immediate suggestion for the famous “still-vexed Bermoothes.” Of course, the islands' reputation was a matter of general knowledge. See True Declaration, p. 10, Delaware's Despatch, printed in Historie of Travaile, London, 1849 (Hak. Soc), pp. xxiii-xxxvi, p. xxx, May's A Brief Note, p. 202, Hakluyt's Princ. Nav. X, 427 (this is Raleigh's allusion), Purchas' Pilgrimage, p. 746, and Stow's Annales, London 1615, pp. 943-44. R. Garnett (Shakespeare Jahrbuch, XL, 231) reproduces a passage from Robert Dudley's Voyage to the West Indies, and Hunter quotes Lord Brooke (Coelica, 57 Sonnet):

“Whoever sails near to Bermuda coast,

Goes hard aboard the monarchy of Fear.“

The spelling Bermoothawes in Rich's ballad, Newes from Virginia, 1610, (reprinted London, 1865), has long been noted.

As for the rest of Ariel's speech, “Thou calldst me up at midnight to fetch dewe From the still-vext Bermoothes” (I, ii, 268-69), it is of interest to compare a passage from Eden's Treatyse of the Newe India; “In this Ilande is no freshe water: but they gather the dew which in the night season falleth upon certayne leaves.” (See The First Three English Books on America, ed Arber; p. 38).

4 Repeated in Delaware's Despatch. See Hist. of Travaile, xxxv.

5 It is the same curse which Prospero uses with Ferdinand: “Sea water shalt thou drinke” (I, ii, 539).

6 The same difficulties were encountered when they got to Jamestown which, “hath no fresh water Springs .... but what wee drew from a Well.... fed by the brackish River owzing into it, from whence I verily beleeve, the chiefe causes have proceeded of many diseases” (p. 58)..

7 Archer speaks (Later, Purchas' Pilgrimes, XIX, 1) of being “crost by South-west windes.” Elsewhere Shakspere's allusions are simply to the south, not southwest, as bringing ill health. (Cf. Cymb. II, iii, 135, Troilus, V, I, 20, A. Y. L. I. III, v, 50). The experience of Strachey and others may have caused him to change it.

Douce quotes Batman, XI, 3. Luce (Arden, 34) thinks the use here is due to its being “an English wind, more pestilential in those days, which Shakespeare makes to blow in all quarters of the globe.”

8 E. g. Strachey, pp. 23, 24, Hariot, p. 18, Hist. of Travaile, p. 293, Brereton, p. 87.

9 In connection with Prospero's boast (V, 54-55) that he “by the spurs pluckt up The Pyne, and Cedar,” cf. May in his Briefe Note, p. 201 : “Cedar is the chiefest wood.” It is of some interest to note that in the passage of Golding's Ovid from which Prospero's words are taken (see Arden, pp. lxiii-lxiv) there is no mention of particular trees, and that oak and cedar (both mentioned by P. are found together in Strachey, p. 40.

10 Briefe and True Reporte, pp. 18-23.

11 This is here called “a standing lake of fresh water.” We remember Sebastian's words: “I am standing water” (II, i, 236).

12 Rosier also speaks of “ground-nuts.” See True Relation, p. 157. Note that Caliban says “will digge thee pig-nuts.”

13 Briefe and True Relation, all on p. 89.

14 Arden Tempest, p. 162.

15 Spelled Raphe on the original title page.

16 True Discourse, p. 23.

17 Luce says also, “In Strachey are muscles, and trees with their ‘huskes that the swine ate’ (I, ii, 463) ; also the wild cats (IV, 263) ; and notably the ‘Geese, Brants’ of IV, 250.” There is something wrong with the note here. There are no muscles in Strachey, and no huskes. Hamor (p. 23) has “huske like unto a Chesnut.”

18 Ibid., p. 22.

19 Ibid., p. 13.

20 Ibid., p. 173.

21 Ibid., p. 75.

22 Ibid., p. 175.

23 Ibid., p. 37.

24 Topsell History of Foure-footed Beasles, London, 1607, p. 3, has “Marmosits.” Both Luce (Arden, p. 76) and Furness (Variorum, p. 138) cite only “Maundevile's Travels.”

25 The N. E. D. recognizes seamel as a variant of sea-wall (=seamew), and there is little doubt that Scamels is a misprint in the first folio for Seamels.

26 Oviedo likewise saw sea-mews near the Bermudas. Cf. Eden's translation in The First Three English Books, p. 233.

27 One other animal of which Caliban had previously spoken (II, ii, 13) was the hedgehog, not mentioned by the voyagers. But there is mention of hogs. Luce, correcting Sir Sidney Lee, says (Arden, p. 151): “The trouble of hogs in the above .... may be derived from some authority I have not met with ....; but in the accounts that I have read, the hogs were a boon to the castaways.” Lee had spoken of their being “sorely tried by the hogs which overran the island.” He probably had in mind Strachey's (p. 18), “but the Hogs breaking in, both rooted them [plants] up and eate them.”

28 Scribners Magazine, September 1907, “American Indian in Elizabethan England,” vol. 42, pp. 313-30. See pp. 328-29.

29 Luce's speculation (Arden, 108) as to “how large a growth the boscage or the shrubbery may be,” is thus partially answered at least.

30 It is Shakspere's only use of the word.

1 Op. cit., pp. 61-69.

2 It is of passing interest that Shakspere's indebtedness to Die Schöne Sidea has been based in part on the circumstance of Prince Engelbrecht's carrying logs (see Variorum Tempest, pp. x and 333). But we have in the above quotation from Strachey a very possible suggestion for Ferdinand's rôle.

3 One of the means suggested by Caliban is, “Or with a logge Batter his skull” (III, ii, 94-95). Strachey mentions, “A Sayler, being villanously killed by the foresaid Robert Waters, (a Sayler likewise) with a shovell, who strake him therewith under the lift of the Eare” (p. 38).

4 pp. 28-38.

5 In Virginia itself one trouble was the search for gold. Luce shows (Arden Tempest, pp. 169-70) how the men were beguiled by talc which they took for gold, how they frittered away their time instead of planting, and how the poet may have rebuked them in Caliban's words:

“What doe you meane

To doate thus on such luggage?“ (IV, 256-57).

6 Lawes, Divine, Morall and Martiall (Force, III, 12).

7 Cf. A True Declaration, “they neither feared God nor man, which provoked the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, and pulled downe his judgements upon them” (p. 18).

8 True Reportory, p. 37. The conspiracies never got very far because some one always gave them away. E.g., “Stephen Hopkins ....brake with one Samuel Sharpe and Humfrey Reede (who presently discovered it to the Governour)” (p. 30). Reede here is virtually playing the rôle of Ariel, who overhears the plot of Stephano and Caliban against Prospero and says, “This will I tell my Master” (III, ii, 122),

1 Gayley (op. cit., pp. 62-63) gives the latest information about the derivation of this name and others. He quotes (pp. 63-65) from Strachey's account in which one Stephen Hopkins was, like Stephano, a prime mover in the conspiracy. And he indicates how the names of both Gonzalo and Ferdinand may have been suggested by Strachey's mention of Gonzalos Ferdinandus Oviedus. He might also have noticed Strachey's allusion (p. 54) to “Sir Ferdinando Weiman.” Luce (Arden Tempest, pp. xviii-xix and 177-79) gives a few additional details about names.

As for Setebos, Farmer long ago pointed out its probable derivation from Eden's History of Travayle.

2 For other instances, cf. A Good Speed to Virginia (1609), reprinted in J. P. Collier's Illustrations of Early English Popular Literature. (London 1864) XI, 23; Nova Britannia, p. 13; and Hist. of Travaile, p. 17.

3 New Life, p. 215.

4 A. H. Gilbert (Romanic Review, V, pp. 357-63) develops the influence of Montaigne on The Tempest, showing that much of the contrast between savage and civilized man may have been suggested by the Essays.

5 Essays, I, 225.

6 Essays, I, 231.

7 Briefe Collection, fol. 22.

8 II, ii, 124.

9 II, ii, 158.

10 For other instances, see Good Speed, p. 20, Purchas' Pilgrimage, pp. 589 and 643.

11 Fernando Alarcon. See Prin. Nav., IX, 287. Almost the same happened to Magellan in Patagonia, and to Sir Francis Drake on the coast of California. For other similar instances, consult Briefe and True Reporte, p. 29, New Found Worlde, p. 44, Hamor's True Discourse, p. 36, and Purchas His Pilgrimes XVIII, 427.

12 Rachel M. Kelsey (Jour. of Eng. and Ger. Philol. XIII, pp. 98-103) shows how the Indians danced to entertain their white brothers, and how a passage in the account of the Weymouth expedition may have suggested details in Ariel's song, I, ii, 441 ff. She further argues very plausibly that Shakspere may have seen parts of The Proceedings (1612) before they were published together by “W. S.”, and used them in his description of the dance, III. m, 24 ff.

13 Thevet's New Found Worlde, p. 69.

14 For the emphasis on this side of the Indians' nature, see Eden's History. p. 38, Good Speed p. 19, Montaigne, I, 221 ff., Rosier's True Relation, pp. 137, 156, Brereton's Briefe and True Relation, p. 92, and Hariot's Briefe and True Report, XXIII.

16 Nova Britannia, p. 11.

16 Briefe and True Report, To the Gentle Reader.

17 True Discourse, p. 2.

18 Op. cit., p. 28.

19 Prospero (I, ii, 430) calls Caliban “Malice.”

20 My interpretation at this point differs from that of Sir Sidney Lee (“American Indian” Scribner's, 1907, pp. 327-29), who believes that the two opposite portraits Shakspere gives of the Indian are due to their various characters in different parts of America. I cannot help feeling they are due rather to that change of attitude which took place after the first treacheries were perpetrated, a change often alluded to by the voyagers. The poet probably intended to satirize the two extremist conceptions of the people as he had those of their land.

21 Luce sees in Caliban a three-fold division, (see Arden Tempest, xxxii-xxxviii), as the embodiment of the supernatural, as a negro slave, and as a dispossessed Indian. I seriously question whether Shakspere had the second in mind as distinct from the third. The Indian served in the capacity of slave, and “this Thing of darkenesse,” which Luce quotes in substantiation, surely alludes to nothing but Caliban's parentage, “got by the divell himselfe Upon thy wicked Dam” (I, ii, 378-79). Cf. the common expression, Prince of darkness, for the devil.

22 Cf. p. 30, “Our Governour (.... at all times sorry in the punishment of him ....)”; p. 38, “had his tryall respited by our Governour”; p. 52, “The pitty hereof moved our Governour.”

23 p. 145.

24 “American Indian,” Scribner's, September, 1907, pp. 316-24. See also supplementary material in “Caliban's Visits to England,” Cornhill Magazine, March 1913, esp. pp. 338-41.

25 London, 1915, p. 432, n. 1.

26 It has been suggested that he is the one referred to in Henry VIII: “Or have we some strange Indian with the great tool come to court?” (V, ii, 33-35).

27 See John Smith's Travels and Works, Edinburgh, 1910, 2 vol., II, 701. The Historie of Travaile (finished before the close of 1612) has this contemporary reference to the same event (see pp. 172-73) : “Captain Harlow, the same who brought away the salvadges at this tyme shewed in London, from the river of Canada.”

There is no doubt about Epenow's being one of the five (see Smith's Travels, II, 697); but there is unfortunately some doubt about the date. Alexander Brown (see Genesis, II, 911) gives it as “in the spring of 1612.”

28 Douce (Illustrations 1839, p. 9) appositely quotes Batman (1582): “Of late years there hath been brought into England, the cases or skinnes of such crocodiles to be seene, and much money given for the sight thereof; the policy of strangers laugh at our folly, either that we are too wealthy, or else that we know not how to bestow our money.”

19 Luce (Arden Tempest, p. 169) conjectures that the Pocahantas-Smith episode may have suggested some details in the relation between Miranda and Ferdinand, her intercession for him with her father. Elsewhere (p. 160) he quotes a passage from Smith's True Relation wherein we see possible prototypes of Miranda and Caliban: “Powhatan .... sent his daughter .... the only Nonpareil (sic) of his Country; this hee sent by his most trustie messenger, called Rawhunt, as much exceeding in deformitie of person.”

This use of nonpareil, by which Shakspere describes Miranda (III, ii, 105), appears to have been the regular term in England for the Indian princess. Thus Hamor (True Discourse, p. 4) ; “Pocahuntas, (whose fame hath even bin spred in England by the title of Nonparella of Virginia).”

1 Arden Tempest, pp. xxxii-xxxv.

2 Edinburgh 1597, p. 68. This is connected with the old theory of incubi and succubi. For other allusions and explanations, see Jean Bodin's De la Demonomanie des sorciers, Paris, 1587, p. 4, Le Loyer's Treatise of Specters, p. 14, and Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) London 1886, p. 26. Le Loyer (p. 107) tells of the case of a monster born of a woman because her husband had been acting a devil's part in a play, and went to her “clad in the same attire wherein he had played the divell.” For a general review of the whole subject see T. A. Spalding's Elizabethan Demonology, London, 1880.

3 Travels, London, 1900, p. 145.

4 Op. cit., p. 60.

5 Cf. note, Arden Tempest, p. xxxv. Luce (p. 170) quotes Trinculo's description of Caliban, (II, ii, 36-37), “Leg'd like a man; and his Finnes like Armes,” and then offers a possible source. But his comments are misleading Under the heading of Other References to the Bermudas, he says, “More important is the following first sketch (circa 1597; Purchas, II, 1556) of the sole inhabitant of the Bermudas:—‘A sea-monster .... armes like a man without haire, and at the elbows great Firmes like a fish.‘ ” This passage is surely ambiguous. Luce should have made it clear that the monster described has absolutely nothing to do with Bermuda. It was seen by dos Sanctos on his journey to the coast of East Africa. (See Purchas Pilgrimes, IX, 255).

One case of a sea-monster which was connected with the Bermudas is recounted by Job Hortop (see Princ. Nov., IX, 461) : “When we came in the height of Bermuda, we discovered a monster in the sea, who shewed himselfe three times unto us from the middle upwards, in which parts he was proportioned like a man, of the complection of a Mulato, or tawny Indian.”

6 Treatise, fol. 77v.

7 A True Declaration, (p. 11) has “plentie of Tortoises,” Strachey (p. 24) has the passage quoted by Gayley above, and the Historie of Travaile (p. 127) speaks of “Tortoyes here (such as in the Bermudas).”

8 Konrad Meier (Die Neueren Sprachen, XV, 326) reproduces the picture of a fish-like man with long nails from Gesner's Fish-book.

9 Upon Bartholome, fol. 228.

10 Trinculo's allusion was primarily figurative.

11 Briefe Collection, fol. 82.

12 Cf. Troilus (III, iii, 265-66), “He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster.”

13 In spite of its obvious usefulness, the book is almost never mentioned by modern editors of Elizabethan texts. It is very rare, never having been reprinted.

There are further parallels in it which I hope to publish in a special article on the demonology in The Tempest.

14 Munster (Briefe Collection, fol. 82 ff.) has a list of such abortions. Also Mandeville (Travels, 105, 133-34, 180, 233) and Batman (Upon Bartholome, pp. 223-24, 228). The ultimate provenience of most of these creatures was Pliny's Natural History.

15 Briefe Collection, fol. 100. Douce (Illustrations, 1807, 1, 19) calls attention to a cut in Caxton's edition of Aesop's fables.

16 Briefe Collection, fol. 100v. Batman Upon Bartholome (p. 224), also not mentioned, has this:“There be other, that be called Bennij, and it is said, they have no heads, but they have eyes fixed in theyr breasts.” Luce (Arden Tempest, p. 97) cites Mandeville, Hakluyt, Raleigh; Furness (Variorum Tempest, p. 179) adds Holland's Pliny; and Halliwell-Phillipps (Selected Notes, p. 48) adds Montaigne.

17 See Arden Temp., p. 97, and Variorum, p. 179.

18 Mandeville (Travels, p. 134) also tells of people with great ears “that hang down to their knees.” Cf. likewise Thevet (New Found Worlde, fol. 112v): “In high Africa, there was people that had eares hanging downe to there hales.”

19 Among these have been Pliny, Mandeville, Lyly, and Batman.

20 Briefe Collection, fol. 60. The passage about the phoenix is as follows: “The Phenix is a noble byrd, and is but one in the worlde which is not much seene, .... Shee maketh her neste of Cassia and braunches of frankinsence tree .... This birde as Pliny sayth, is commonlye in Arabia.” On fol. 100v Münster again mentions the phoenix and unicorn together, and says at the bottom of the same page: “Many other such .... uncredible thinges the Jewes doe fable uppon the lande of Preto Jhoan, which are so farre beyonde all credite and likelyhoode of truth, that I thought it better to omit them.” We should remember that Sebastian was purposely alluding to “uncredible thinges,” or, as Antonio puts it in the next speech, “what does else want credit.”

21 See III, n. 17.

22 Briefe Collection, fol. 3.

23 Mandeville, most frequently cited in explanation of Shakspere's lines, spells the word Bernake. Gerarde has barnakles.

24 History of Foure-footed Beastes, pp. 2-3.

25 I hope soon to publish the material I have collected concerning the influence of the voyagers on the entire drama between 1550 and 1642.