every navigator and mariner to avoid them as Scylla and Charybdis, or as they would shun the devil himselfe.' It has hence been concluded that this play was written towards the close of 1611, and that it was brought on the stage early in the succeeding year.

Mr. Hunter says, there is an island in the Mediterranean named Lampedosa, which is near to the coast of Tunis, and from its description in Dapper, was the probable track of the King of Naples' voyage in Shakespeare's 'Tempest.' This island is known to sailors as the enchanted island, and if the Italian novel or its translations should ever be discovered, it will be found that this surmise is correct.

It is remarked by Dr. Drake, that 'the 'Tempest' is, next to Macbeth, the noblest product of our author's genius. Never were the wild and the wonderful, the pathetic and the sublime, more artfully and gracefully combined with the sportive sallies of a playful imagination, than in this enchantingly attractive drama. Nor is it less remarkable, that all these excellences of the highest order are connected with a plot, which, in its mechanism, and in the preservation of the unities, is perfectly classical and correct.'

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

ALONSO, king of Naples.

SEBASTIAN, his brother.

PROSPERO, the rightful duke of Milan.

ANTONIO, his brother, the usurping duke of Milan.

FERDINAND, son to the king of Naples.

GONZALO, an honest old counsellor of Naples.

ADRIAN,
FRANCISCO,

} lords.

CALIBAN, a savage and deformed slave, found by Prospero on the desert island.

TRINCULO, a jester.

STEPHANO, a drunken butler.

MASTER of a ship, BOATSWAIN, and MARINERS.

MIRANDA, daughter to Prospero.

ARIEL, an airy spirit.

Other spirits attending on Prospero.

SCENE, the sea, with a ship; afterwards an uninhabited island.

COMPENDIUM OF THE PLAY.

PROSPERO, duke of Milan, being fond of study and retirement, intrusts the public business of the state to his younger brother Antonio, who secretly engages with Alonso, king of Naples, to hold Milan as a fief of the Neapolitan crown, in consideration of his assistance in dethroning his unsuspecting brother. Not daring publicly to deprive Prospero of life, on account of his great popularity, the conspirators force him and his daughter Miranda, an infant three years

old, into a crazy boat; and with a small supply of provisions abandon them to the fury of the elements. Being cast on a desert island, where no human creature is found but a savage named Caliban, Prospero puts into practice the necromantic art, with which he had formerly experimented, with great success, and employed his leisure hours with the education of Miranda. About twelve years after these transactions, Alonso, having agreed to marry his daughter to the king of Tunis, conducts her to that country, accompanied by the usurping duke of Milan, and a numerous train. Having left the lady with her husband at Tunis, they embark on their return to Naples; and the drama commences with a great tempest raised by Prospero, who, by the agency of a spirit named Ariel, wrecks the king's ship in such a manner, that none of the passengers are lost, and they are all landed on Prospero's island. Ferdinand, the king's son, is separated from his father, who supposes him drowned; while Prospero, discovering him after the shipwreck, conducts him to his cell, where he and Miranda become mutually enamored. In the mean time, Alonso, Antonio and their immediate followers, terrified by spectral illusions raised by the injured duke, run distracted, till at length, Prospero, satisfied with making them sensible of their former guilt, and with the resumption of his dignity, generously remits further punishment; extends his mercy to Caliban and his drunken companions, who had conspired to murder him; and, having restored Ferdinand to his disconsolate parent, abjures forever the magic art, and proceeds to Naples to solemnize the nuptials of the youthful pair. Like the Midsummer Night's

Dream,' with which it has been classed, the 'Tempest' is one of those romantic dramas, which defy analytical criticism, and would lose in effect by being subjected to a rigid examination of realities. Although the unities are preserved, perhaps more by accident than design, no play owes less allegiance to the exact sciences; and the interest is not weakened by trivial incongruities in the author's conduct of time and space. A hag-born monster, a young lady educated by a magician prince in a desolate island, and an attendant spirit, capable of the assumption of any form, who not only treads the oose of the salt deep, runs on the sharp wind of the north, works in the frosted earth, and rides on the curled clouds, but in his lighter moods, rides on the bat's back, or reposes in a cowslip's bell, are singular materials for a drama, the simplicity of whose construction exhibits in strong outline the boundless skill by which it is made so irresistibly attractive. It required the genius of Shakespeare to reconcile these apparently discordant elements, and construct out of them an harmonious structure. If, however, the reader imagines a defect exists, and agreeing with some critics in the opinion that Ariel was not an ethereal featureless angel,' observes an inconsistency in the development of his character, let us entreat him to merge it into the romantic conduct of the plot, and regard the whole drama as a purely imaginative construction formed on the idea of retributive justice, to which no one but Shakespeare has made necromancy subservient, without in some degree injuring the cause of virtue.

HISTORICAL SUMMARY OF THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

MR. STEEVENS conjectures that some of the incidents of this play were taken by Shakespeare from the 'Arcadia,' book i. chap. 6, where Pyrocles consents to head the Helots; to which tale the adventures of Valentine with the outlaws, in this drama, bear a striking resemblance. But however this question may be disposed of, there can be little doubt that the episode of Felismena, in the Diana of George of Montemayor, a romance translated from the Spanish, and published in the year 1598, was the source whence the principal part of the plot of the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' has been derived. The story of Proteus and Julia, in this play, closely corresponds with its prototype; and in several passages the dramatist has copied the very language of the pastoral.

The authenticity of this drama has been disputed by Hanmer, Theobald, and Upton, who condemn it as a very inferior production: but Dr. Johnson, in ascribing it to the pen of Shakespeare, asks, if it be taken from him, to whom shall it be given?' justly remarking, that 'it will be found more creditable that Shakespeare might sometimes sink below his highest flights, than that any other should rise up to his lowest.' 'It is observable,' says Pope, 'that the style of this comedy is less figurative, and more natural and unaffected, than the greater part of this author's, though supposed to be one of the first he wrote.'