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THE SHAKESPEARE ASSOCIATION 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' 
 AS ORIGINALLY PRODUCED 
 AT COURT 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEStir LAW, CJ. 
 
 FOR THE SHAKESPEARE ASSOCIATION 
 
 CHATTO AND WINDUS 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S LANE 
 
 Price One ShtMing and Sixpence net 
 
\y^ 
 
 P\S\G^^^ 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT.' 
 
 IN these supreme days of our nation's struggle for 
 existence and freedom, there is no diredlion in which 
 we can more profitably turn for solace and distraftion 
 from our overweighted thoughts, and for support and 
 inspiration in our hours of trial and strain, than to our 
 great national poet, Shakespeare, in whose works, 
 whether adted or read, while being lifted out of our- 
 selves, we may find expressed more thoroughly and 
 intensely than in those of any other Englishman the 
 spirit and the feelings which animate us — his fcUoW 
 countrymen — at this tremendous crisis in the fate of 
 our — and his — beloved country. 
 
 This, it is hoped, may be sufficient apology for 
 submitting at such a time the results of the writer's 
 researches into the mode in which one of Shakespeare's 
 plays was presented in his life-time, and probably under 
 his personal superintendence, before the Court of King 
 James at Whitehall. Especially may this be so, per- 
 haps — small as the subjedt may seem, beside the vast, 
 and ever-expanding lore, that deals with Shakespeare 
 and his art, and insignificant as may appear the present 
 writer's contribution towards it — if, nevertheless, it 
 should help us, however so little, towards arriving at 
 the right solution of that ever-present and ever-pressing 
 problem — equally pressing for play-goers, play a<5tors, 
 and play producers — namely, what is, with due regard 
 to the dramatist's work, the best and most loyal, as well 
 
 ' Some of the information here published is an amplification of 
 leftures delivered by the writer in February and March, 1918, to the 
 ' Shakespeare Association,' and to the ' Shakespeare Club ' of Stratford- 
 on-Avon ; and part of it originally appeared in ' The Times,' ist Novem- 
 ber,i9ii. ^^ 
 
2 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 as the most efFedlive and convincing mode of presenti&g 
 his plays on the modern stage ? 
 
 I It is now just 306 years and a half since, on ist 
 November, 161 1, in the old banqueting-house of 
 Whitehall Palace, on the site where stands to-day Inigo 
 Jones's later building, there was presented by Shake- 
 speare's Company of His Majesty's Players, before King 
 James and his Court, that most perfeft and enchanting 
 creation of our great dramatist — the crown of his life's 
 work — The Tempest. 
 
 Until recently the precise date of the composition 
 and production of this play had remained in doubt, 
 notwithstanding the ceaseless discussion of the problem 
 by scholars of all nations during the last 160 years. 
 Latterly it had been round the famous theory of the 
 German critic, Tieckj promulgated by him at the 
 beginning of the last century, that the controversy 
 had mainly raged — the theory that the play, with its 
 hymeneal masque, was written by Shakespeare in 
 honour of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth with 
 the Prince Palatine in 161 3. 
 
 This ingenious idea, though rather discredited for a 
 while by the publication in 1842 of Cunningham's 
 * Extradls from the Revels at Court,' quickly received 
 support again when the lists of plays in that book, 
 which is now preserved in the Record Office, were 
 soon after universally condemned as gross and impudent 
 forgeries. It was adopted, for instance, by, among 
 others. Dr. Brandes, the Danish critic, and it was the 
 subject of a most interesting essay in the ' Universal 
 Review ' by the late Dr. Garnett, who, with a wonder- 
 ful array of illustration and suggestion, elaborated the 
 theory in such a way as to bring conviftion to many 
 minds. Even so recently as 19 10 the late Mr. Henry 
 James gave it countenance in his introdudtion to the 
 play in the ' Caxton ' edition. Less imaginative writers 
 have, however, been more cautious. In America, Dr. 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 3 
 
 Furness, after marshalling all the arguments on each 
 side in some thirty-five pages of closely-printed type 
 in his great New Variorum edition, left the question 
 still undetermined. In England, Sir Sidney Lee, whose 
 cool judgment, tested by recent discoveries, has been 
 rarely found at fault, rejected Tieck's and Garnett's 
 attractive theory entirely, and pronounced decidedly 
 for an earlier date. His view was followed, or shared, 
 by Professor GoUancz, Professor Herford, Professor 
 Boas, and others, and was reinforced by Mr. Morton 
 Luce in a most penetrating and exhajistive analysis of 
 all that bore on the subje6l of the origin of the play in 
 the 'Arden' edition. And then, at last, in support of 
 the conclusions arrived at by these critics, and finally 
 to close the long controversy, came the universal 
 acceptance by our leading paleographers and archivists 
 — Dr. Wallace, Professor Feuillerat, Sir George Warner, 
 Sir Henry Maxwell-Lyte, and others — and by all Shake- 
 spearean scholars throughout the world, of the fa6t 
 that the supposed ' Cunningham Forgeries ' were, after 
 all, no forgeries at all, and that consequently the list of 
 plays prefixed to the account book of Sir George Buc, 
 Master of the Revels in 161 1, was an absolutely genuine 
 document. 
 
 The bearing of this on the question of the date of 
 The Tempest will at once be made apparent by the 
 following extracts from this ' Book of Reuells ' for the 
 year 1611-12. On page 2 is written: 'The Chardges 
 of those times, viz: Betwine the last of Oftobar 161 1, 
 Anno Reg. Regis Jacobi Nono untill the first of 
 Novembar, 161 2 . . .' and on page 3 is the heading: 
 'The names of the Playes And by what cumpaney 
 played them hcarafter followethe . . . presented before 
 the Kinge's Matie.,' the first item in the Hst being: 
 ' By the King's Players : Hallowmas Nyght was pre- 
 sented att Whithall before ye Kinges Matie. a play 
 called " The Tempest." ' 
 
4 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 The accuracy of this information is confirmed by an 
 entry in the accounts of the 'Treasurer of the Chamber' 
 of a payment made to Shakespeare's fellow-a6lors for 
 a play on this very night (Audit Office, Declared 
 Accounts: Bundle 389, Roll 49. For facsimiles, see 
 the writer's, ' Some Supposed Shakespeare Forgeries ' 
 and ' More about Shakespeare Forgeries ') : 
 
 To John Hemynges for himselfe and his fellowes the Kinges 
 Ma*'* Servauntes and Players upon the Councells warrante 
 dated at Whitehall primo Junii, 1612, for presenting VI 
 severall Playes before his Ma% viz. one upon the laste of 
 Odober, one upon the first of November {The Tempest) one on 
 the vth of November {A Winter's Tale), one on the 26th of 
 Deer. ... at twenty nobles {£6 13s. 4d.) for every play, and 
 five markes (;^3 6s. 8d.) for a reward for every play. — 
 LX.Ii. {£66). 
 
 Here then we have conclusively established for us the 
 exa6t date and place of production before King James 
 and his Court of that ever delightful and most poetic 
 of plays — in Shakespeare's presence, as we may assume, 
 if not under his personal superintendence. 
 
 So interesting an occasion seems to warrant an attempt 
 at rcconstrudting, as far as is possible, with the fragmen- 
 tary matter that remains to us, the scene and circum- 
 stances of that ' first-night,' when the creator of the 
 enchanted island and its inhabitants held ' spell-stopt ' 
 for ' at least two glasses,' by the magic of his imagination 
 'the King and's followers.' 
 
 Our first inquiry must be diredted to identifying the 
 site and discovering the appearance of the chamber in 
 which the piece was staged. For this purpose original 
 documents in the Record Office, some of them apparently 
 never searched through before, still less transcribed or 
 published, provide us with what we seek. Among 
 the accounts already cited is to be found this entry 
 (folio 26 a) : 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 5 
 
 To James Maxwell, gentleman usher daylie wayter to his 
 Ma'y for th' allowaunce of himselfe, one yeoman usher, three 
 yeomen, two groomes of the chamber, two groomes of the 
 warderobe, and one groome porter for making ready the 
 Banquetting House there (at Whitehall) three several tymes 
 for playes VI dales . . . mense Odobr et Novembr, 161 1. 
 
 Now ' the Banquetting House ' here referred to was 
 the one built by order of King James in 1606-7, ^^^ 
 burnt down some ten years afterwards. References to 
 it among the ' Works and Buildings ' accounts prove 
 that it stood on the site of the famous building whence 
 Charles I stepped forth to the scaffold rj 
 
 This being so, one cannot but pause to think how 
 impossible it would have been for the little Prince 
 Charles, then just eleven years old, seated there that 
 night listening to the play, with his father and mother 
 and his elder brother, Henry Prince of Wales, beside 
 him, to have imagined that thirty-eight years later he 
 would, as King, be hurried across that very spot where 
 he was then sitting, out into the street — to the block ! 
 y^ This earlier Banqueting House, though inferior in 
 I architedture to its successor, was yet a fine building. 
 It was some 160 or 170 feet long by 50 or 60 feet 
 wide; with a richly carved and decorated open roof, 
 supported by columns, between which on both sides 
 were galleries with raised tiers of seats for the specSlators. 
 It was reared expressly for the exhibition of plays and " 
 masques and shows, being in efFeft, though not in name, 
 a theatre, differing in little from our modern public 
 theatres, and still less from those of the later years of 
 the seventeenth century as well as of the eighteenth 
 century. Its stage was very large — larger than most 
 of those of the public theatres of the time, such as the 
 ' Swan,' the ' Curtain,' the ' Rose,' the Blackfriars,' or 
 die ' Globe,' being 40 feet square, and standing 3 feet 
 high..! Moreover it seems to have had sides of solid 
 partitions and something of a proscenium also; and 
 
6 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 being thus — unlike the open-air theatres — detached from 
 the audience, which sat entirely in front of it, it must 
 have afforded full scope for scenic illusion and the 
 presentment of ' tableaux ' on a scale and in a setting of 
 unprecedented splendour. It was thus in every way 
 suitable for the presentation of such a play as The 
 Tempest^ with its frequent spectacular eifefts — storms 
 with thunder and lighting and rain, spirit appearances 
 and ' monstrous shapes,' phantom banquets, ' marvellous 
 sweet music' 
 
 Then at the disposal of the a6tors were all the pro- 
 perties, scenery, and dresses of the Revels Office, and all 
 the resources and contrivances invented by Inigo Jones 
 for the Royal Masques. 
 
 Not that we are to infer from all this that The Tempest 
 was specially composed for performance, in the first 
 instance, at Court. On the contrary, it seems certain, 
 for many reasons, that none of Shakespeare's later plays 
 were first produced on any other stage than that of one 
 or other of the two theatres owned by his company — 
 ' The Globe ' or ' Blackfriars,' Only after a piece had 
 received the stamp of public approval and had under- 
 gone the perfecting process of frequent public a6ling 
 was it presented before the Sovereign. There are many 
 considerations, indeed, rendering it almost certain that 
 it was at the ' Blackfriars ' which stood, as is well 
 known, on the cxad: site of the present offices of ' The 
 Times ' newspaper — that The Tempest was first put on 
 the stage, in the spring or early summer of 1611. 
 Little more than a year before this the Burbages, who 
 were the freeholders, had bought out their lessee, ' The 
 Master of the Queen's Children of the Revels ' — ' The 
 Boy Players ' — and resumed possession and ' placed in 
 it,' as their descendants phrased it some four-and-twenty 
 years later, ' men players ' — ' those worthy men ' — 
 ' which were Hemynges, Condall, Shakespeare, etc' 
 Glad, indeed, must they all have been to displace the 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 7 
 
 ' aery of children, little eyases,' who had so long trenched 
 on their profits, and to acquire a house affording fuller 
 scope than ' The Globe,' for gratifying the growing 
 taste for spectacular display. 
 
 For this reason, if for no other, it is exceedingly 
 probable that when Shakespeare wrote The Tempest he 
 did so with the view of its being afted before the higher 
 class of playgoers who frequented the ' Blackfriars ' — 
 the first of the closed, roofed-in houses, called 'Private' 
 Theatres, of which the prototypes in structure and 
 general conditions were the Great Halls of Greenwich, 
 Hampton Court and Whitehall. Already, in fad, it 
 would seem, 'The Globe' on the Surrey side was 
 beginning to be looked upon as the home of transpon- 
 tine, rather than of high-class drama. 
 
 It is likely enough, indeed, that The Tempest — with« 
 the Winter s Tale — was Shakespeare's contribution to- 
 wards the Burbages' new venture, and the consideration 
 for the ' Founders' Shares ' — as they were in efFedl — 
 allotted to the dramatist by his fellow shareholders — the 
 'adventurers' as they were then called, the 'promoters,' 
 as we should call them now — if, indeed, he was not 
 himself the chief promoter and chairman of the syndi- 
 cate — in the ' Blackfriars sub-company,' an off-shoot 
 of the ' Parent ' Company of the King's Comedians. 
 Put in this way, it will be seen that Shakespeare was 
 up to, if he was not the original inventor of, the most 
 modern and astute of the devices of our financial experts 
 in the City of London. 
 
 Also, it may be noticed — though this is a mere piece 
 of negative evidence — that Dr. Simon Forman, the 
 astrologist and quack dodlor, who described in his 
 note-book performances of four of Shakespeare's plays 
 witnessed by him at 'The Globe' in April and May, 
 i6ii,^makes no mention of The Tempest at all. More 
 convincing, however, if not conclusively so, is the 
 statement of Dryden, writing in 1669, in the preface to 
 
8 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 his own mangled version of the play, that Shakespeare's 
 original composition 'had formerly been adled with 
 success at the Black Fryers.' It seems probable, there- 
 fore, almost to the point of certainty, that it was on the 
 very spot where now stand the offices of ' The Times ' 
 newspaper that those immortal beings, Prospero and 
 Antonio, Miranda and Ferdinand, Ariel and Caliban, 
 were first introduced to the people of London by their 
 creator, just about six months earlier than they made 
 their appearance at Whitehall before the King and 
 Queen. 
 
 Apart from all its matchless qualities as a superb 
 piece of dramatic invention, sublimated by poetic 
 imagery, the play doubtless owed much of its imme- 
 diate success and popularity, not only to the musical 
 and scenic efFefts with which it was mounted, but also, 
 and perhaps as much, to the topical nature of many of 
 its incidents and allusions — in which were refle6ted the 
 thoughts and feelings then uppermost in the mind of 
 the public, equally with the Court. For although, as 
 has been already shown, its composition can have had 
 nothing to do with the wooing of the Princess Eliza- 
 beth by the Prince Palatine, Royal marriages were in 
 the air. Already suitors were numerous for the hand 
 of the little Princess, and many alliances were being 
 offered also for the young Prince of Wales. This 
 appears from the despatches of the foreign Ambassadors 
 in England, which are full of the subjedt, especially in 
 the few weeks previous to the play's being adled at 
 Court. They are likewise full, as are also the private 
 letters of the time, of the wrecking of Sir George 
 Somers' flagship, bound for the plantation of Virginia, 
 on the Bermudas — ' the still-vexed Bermoothes.' The 
 ideas and phrases adopted by Shakespeare from several 
 of the pamphlets about that event, which appeared in 
 the autumn of 1610, prove that he shared the popular 
 excitement, or at least made use of it for giving a 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 9 
 
 topical flavour to his new play. That he was keenly 
 interested, also, in every particular of the terrible 
 tempest, and the adventures of the wrecked crew, for 
 ten months castaways on the ' He of Divils,' is likewise 
 proved by his having read, as we know he must, in 
 the original manuscript now in the British Museum, 
 William Strachey's journalistic letter — or ' true repor- 
 tory,' as he termed it — written from Virginia on 15th 
 July, 1610, to some 'excellent lady' in London. For 
 phrase after phrase that occurs in the play is to be 
 found in the ' repertory,' though it was not printed 
 until fifteen years after by Purchas in his ' Pilgrimes,' 
 
 When Strachey, who, by the way, was himself a bit 
 of a poet, as well as a descriptive reporter, came back 
 to London towards the end of 161 1, he stayed in a 
 'lodginge in the Blacke-friars,' close to where The 
 Tempest was then being afted, and close to where 
 Shakespeare soon after purchased a house. It was, 
 probably, therefore, by the courtesy of a common friend 
 that Shakespeare was able to read Strachey's private 
 letter about the great tempest of 1609 and the wreck 
 off the Bermudas. 
 
 The great interest aroused in London by all this 
 ' Newes from Virginia,' and ' Newes from the Bermudas,' 
 can have moved no one more than the young Prince 
 Henry, who, with his imagination already fired by the 
 narratives of maritime adventure and stories of desert 
 islands and the mysterious dangers of the Western seas, 
 was himself planning a proje6l for a new expedition to 
 the colony — a projeft mentioned by the Venetian 
 Ambassador in a letter to the Doge and Seignory on 
 the very day the play was produced at Whitehall. No 
 one, therefore, was more likely than him to desire to 
 see The Tempest afted; and the Lord Chamberlain 
 would have had this in mind when consulting about a 
 suitable play for Hallowmas Night with the Master of 
 the Revels and Burbage or Shakespeare. Between 
 
lo SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 them, with the assistance of Inigo Jones and his men 
 from the Office of Works, they would have made all 
 the necessary arrangements in the Banqueting House, 
 which, from its large size and regular stage and fittings 
 — as already described — was just the sort of theatre 
 required for a spedlacular piece like this. 
 
 The general theatric conditions of the performance 
 of one of Shakespeare's plays before the Court, and the 
 particular circumstances of the staging of The Tempest, 
 now require to be noticed. 
 
 To begin with, it may here be remarked that the 
 fa(5l of all representations of plays at Court taking place 
 at night, is one of the chief and most pregnant of several 
 differences, distinguishing them from performances in 
 the public theatres ; strongly influencing the subsequent 
 development of the arts both of playwright and players ; 
 aiding, in fa<5l, that gradual transformation of the 'drama 
 of rhetoric ' into the more detached, emotional and 
 piftorial presentations of modern times. In this process, 
 the effeft of the use of artificial lighting on the stage, 
 resulting — as it surely must — in stimulating the senses 
 and exalting the imagination of the speftator, while 
 heightening the theatrical illusion, was the most 
 obvious, if not one of the most potent of them all. 
 
 Moreover, there is the fadi that the Banqueting 
 House was — owing to its solid walls and reverberant 
 roof — an admirable place for hearing ; and, therefore, 
 certain to modify the players' method of delivery, 
 substituting for that loud, declamatory, blatant style of 
 histrionics, so common on the public open theatres, that 
 "• tearing a passion to pieces,' which so greatly distressed 
 the Lord Hamlet, and which would have been as much 
 out of place as inefFeftive in the refined atmosphere 
 of a performance before the Court — a restrained and 
 quieter style, wherewith the more delicate gradations 
 of thought, and the subtler shades of feeling, could be 
 more intimately suggested. 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT, ii 
 
 Finally, the oblong shape of the Banqueting House, 
 with the stage at one end, and the audience in front of 
 it, tended towards that shrinking of the platform towards 
 the proscenium or inner stage, which thenceforth pro- 
 ceeded unremittingly until our day. Already, even in 
 the time of Queen Elizabeth, as well as in the earlier 
 years of James I, before the full influence of the elaborate 
 spedlacular Court Masques had made itself felt, the 
 mise-en-scene at the Palace was the very antithesis of that 
 mere platform, entirely bare of any scenery or acces- 
 sories, and devoid of all mechanism, imagined for us 
 by some critics as the invariable condition under which 
 all Shakespearian representations took place, until the^ 
 suppression of the theatres in 1642. Disregarding 
 other evidence, how should we otherwise explain the 
 explicit statements of successive Masters of the Revels 
 {R.O. Audit Office Accounts — Various. Bundles 12 13, 
 etc.) that among their chief duties was the : 
 
 fFurnishing, fitting and setting foorthe of sundry Tragedies, 
 Playes, etc., with theier apte howses of paynted canvas and 
 properties incident suche as mighte most lyvely expresse the 
 efFed of the histories plaied 
 
 and also the providing of: 
 
 apt howses made of canvasse, fFramed fFashioned and paynted 
 accordingly as mighte beste serve theier severall purposes. 
 
 Can we suppose that among the 'painted cloths for 
 the Musick House and stage at Court,' specially made 
 and provided by the Master of the Revels in this 
 particular year, there were not some that ' might most 
 lively express the efFeft of The Tempest ? Or that the vast 
 collection of such 'painted cloths' and 'framed canvasses,' 
 as were stored in the Office-House of the Revels — 
 including such things as trees, clouds, mountains, woods, 
 forests, caves, rocks, etc., — were not requisitioned, ' as 
 
12 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 they might best serve the purpose ' of exhibiting Pros- 
 pero's enchanted island ? When we find that in a play 
 a6ted before Queen Elizabeth in the Great Hall of 
 Hampton Court 'a wilderness' was represented by 
 three dozen forest trees, are we to believe that Shake- 
 speare's Tempest ^nt on the great stage of the Banqueting 
 House at Whitehall 30 years later was not mounted 
 with an equal regard for realism ? 
 
 The truth, indeed, seems to be not so much that 
 there was no scenery as that there was little, if any, 
 change of scene — the various localities of the whole play 
 being all shown simultaneously — known as ' multiple 
 setting ' or ' Decor simultane ' — so that the utmost 
 adaptation that could be attempted was the occasional 
 drawing of a ' painted cloth,' illustrative of a different 
 place, in front of such portions of the setting as were 
 not then applicable. In this respeft, however. The 
 Tempest— siA its adlion going on in the open air on an 
 island — can have ojffered but few difficulties to Shake- 
 speare's or Sir George Buc's scene-shifters. 
 
 Turning now to describe the particular scenery set 
 up for this play that night, we may say for certain that 
 at the back of the main part of the stage was the usual 
 'inner stage,' which would have served for Prospero's 
 cell ; while overhead was probably the place where 
 Prospero appeared in person more than once 'above 
 invisible' — as the stage direction puts it — perhaps 
 through a transparency. Not far from it must have 
 been the rock from which Caliban comes forth, and 
 which was evidently a visible tangible thing ; for it is 
 referred to distinctly by Prospero — ' wherefore thou art 
 deservedly confined in this rock,^ and, pointedly, also, 
 by Caliban ; — ' Here you sty me in this hard rock, 
 while you do keep from me the rest of the island.' On 
 ; another side may have been represented ' the lime-grove 
 that weather fended his cell ' — by practical trees. And 
 the efforts of the Revels men may not have ended 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 13 
 
 there "; for they perhaps even showed a distant landscape, 
 and 'the rocky marge' and 'yellow sands' of 'the 
 never surfeiting sea.' 
 
 In this play, therefore, there would had been little 
 need for those ' locality boards ' which frequently were 
 put up for the information of the audience ; and of 
 which Mr. W. J. Lawrence has given us an account 
 in his two exceedingly interesting volumes on 'The 
 Elizebethan Stage,' — one of the valuable publications, 
 by the way, of the Shakespeare Head Press. 
 
 Scenes in ' another part of the island ' would have 
 been quite sufficiently notified by drawing across the 
 mouth of the cell or cave a ' traverse,' painted or plain. 
 Such devices and ' locality boards ' were resorted to, as 
 much owing to the absence of programmes as to the 
 inadequacy of the scenery. To the King and Queen, 
 however, were usually presented a fine illuminated 
 ' table,' or synopsis of the characters and plot ; and 
 occasionly, also, a copy of the words of the songs. 
 
 Across the top of the stage—' highest and aloft ' — to 
 use a phrase of the Revels men — would have been 
 fixed a large title-board with the name of the play — 
 The Tempest — decoratively painted on it. ,' 
 
 Here again, I can claim the authority of Mr. 
 Lawrence's admirable works in confirmation and ampli- 
 fication of my own researches. 
 
 Now, the suggestions just made made as to the 
 scenic conditions under which Shakespeare's last play 
 was presented at Court are so far rather presumptions 
 than ascertained fafts. But it is possible, I think, to 
 arrive at a more precise and definite idea of the general 
 setting of the stage on that night. 
 
 For we happen to have a description of a scenic 
 arrangement for three masques afted a year and three 
 mbnths after in the same Banqueting House, and for one 
 two years after, and on the same stage, which it seems 
 highly probable was nearly the same, if not exadly the 
 
14 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 same, as that used for The Tempest. The masques were 
 Thomas Campion's Masque of Lords, Chapman's of the 
 Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, and Beaumont's of the 
 Inner Temple and Grays Inn, all three presented in 
 February, 1 6 1 3 ; and another of Campion's, at the end 
 of the same year — on St. Stephen's night — in honour 
 of the marriage of the Earl of Somerset to Lady Eliza- 
 beth Howard, the divorced wife of the Earl of Essex. 
 
 A full description of the scenery in this last is to be 
 found in Campion's own preface. That in it we may 
 see a pifture of the stage as it appeared on Hallowmas 
 night, 1 6 1 1 , is the more likely, in that a very similar 
 scene is described in Prince Henry's masque of Oberon, 
 by Ben Jonson, presented in the Banqueting House 
 ten months before The Tempest — not to mention like 
 similarities in the less important masques in the interval 
 between these dates, affording us good reason for sus- 
 pecSting that the arrangements were more or less per- 
 manent, or, at any rate, that the scenery for each play 
 or masque was made up from stock stuff belonging to 
 the Office of Revels, there being in the descriptions of 
 all of these masques mention of rocks and a seashore; 
 clouds, a cave and a wood. 
 
 Campion, after noting that the upper part of the 
 house, where the Royal dais or ' state ' was placed, was 
 ' theatred with pillars, scaffolds and all things answer- 
 able to the sides of t>he room,' proceeds to describe how 
 at the lower end 
 
 before the sceane, was made an arch tryumphall, passing 
 beautiful!, which enclosed the whole works — 
 
 evidently like a modern proscenium. He goes on to 
 say: 
 
 The sceane itself, the curtaine being drawne, was in this 
 manner divided — on the upper part there was formed a 
 skye with cloudes very arteficially shadowed ; on either side 
 of the scene below was set a high promontory . . . one" 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 15 
 
 bounded with a rocke standing in the sea, the other with a 
 wood ; in the midst betweene them appeared a sea in per- 
 spedlive with ships, some cunningly painted, some artifically 
 sayling. 
 
 • And now comes a rather remarkable thing. Campion • 
 was not by any means satisfied with this scenery, so 
 described by him, for his masque. He had at first 
 instrufted an Italian architedl, M. Constantine, to pro- 
 vide something finer and more elaborate. But they 
 fell out. The Italian ' failed in the assurance he gave,' 
 and declining ' to be drawn to impart his intentions,' 
 the poet dispensed with his services and had to content 
 himself with a less ambitious scheme, falling back 
 evidently on what was already at hand on the stage of 
 the Banqueting House, and which he describes in the 
 words just quoted. 
 
 Significant, too, is it that in apologising for these 
 shortcomings, as he thought them, in the scenery, he 
 gives as one of the causes : 
 
 That our modern writers have rather transferred their 
 fidbions to the persons of Enchanters and Commanders of 
 Spirits — 
 
 so that 
 
 in imitation of them he had founded his whole invention upon 
 enchantments and severall transformations. 
 
 Here, surely, is as plain a reference to the influence 
 of Shakespeare's Prospero and his enchanted island as 
 one might very well expedt to have. Further than 
 this the speeches of Campion's masques abound in 
 phrases and ideas evidently inspired, if not copied, from 
 The Tempest — such as ' a storme confus'd against our 
 tackle beat, severing the ships ' . . . ' about our deckes 
 and hatches ' . . . ' all was husht, as storme had never 
 beene' . . . 'for while the Tempest's fiery rage 
 increast.' There are even two or three words here 
 and there reminiscent of the stage directions in the 
 
1 6 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 First Folio, which, taken with the parallel passages in 
 the text, almost make one suspedt the existence of an 
 unknown quarto of The Tempest^ of which some lurking 
 copy may yet be discovered. 
 
 Considering next the lighting of the auditorium and 
 the stage : these were alike brilliantly illuminated with 
 candelabra, candle-rings and ' fairy lights,' ' pendant by 
 subtle magic ' from invisible wires, stretched overhead, 
 from rafter to rafter, of the roof; and shedding a soft 
 glow, ' as from a sky ' ; though, at the same time, we 
 know that occasionally the whole house was darkened 
 to heighten the tragic effedt. As it happened in this 
 particular year, in view, perhaps, of this very produc- 
 tion, and of that of The Winter s Tale four days after, 
 there was a complete renovation of all the lighting 
 arrangements of the theatre at a cost equivalent to 
 about ^AfOQ at the present day. 
 
 Another important element in this first performance 
 of The Tempest at Whitehall was the ' Musick-Howse ' 
 by the stage, in which were stationed the King's band 
 of some thirty or forty musicians. Here they played 
 not only during, but also between, the adls. For what- 
 ever may have been the custom in the public theatres, 
 the evidence bearing on the adting of plays at Court 
 gives as little countenance to the theory of invariable 
 ' continuous action ' as it does to that of a scene-less 
 stage. Sometimes this ' inter-a6l music ' was accom- 
 panied by the handing round of refreshments to the 
 audience — especially when there were foreign guests 
 present ; some of whom, understanding little of the 
 dialogue, probably enjoyed these interludes a good deal 
 more than the play. 
 
 It may be observed, moreover, of The Tempest, that 
 its divisions into a(5ts, even scenes, are very far from 
 being arbitrary or fortuitous : but that, on the contrary, 
 they correspond with definite stages in the adtion and 
 progress of the drama. 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 17 
 
 A more important fundtion of the King's musicians 
 in their 'Musicke Howse' was to play all that incidental 
 ' solemn and strange music,' ' marvellous sweet music,' 
 ' heavenly music,' of which so much is interspersed in 
 The Tempest. During most of the aftion of the play 
 the musicians in their gallery were evidently curtained 
 off and unseen, breathing low, murmuring music from 
 ' flutes and soft recorders ' and lutes and ' sagbuttes,' 
 thus enhancing the mysteriousness. In the Revels' 
 Accounts, indeed, for this year (161 1) in which The 
 Tempest was produced at Court, there happens to be 
 noted a special provision of ' a curtain of silk for the 
 Musick House at Whitehall' — silk because, while 
 effectively screening the musicians and singers from 
 view, it would have offered but little obstruction to 
 those strains of magic melody, heard by Ferdinand as it 
 crept by him ' upon the waters,' and afterwards above 
 him : ' those sounds and sweet airs that give delight and 
 hurt not,' those ' thousand twangling instruments ' that, 
 humming about the slumbering ears of Caliban, made 
 him — when waking — but ' cry to dream again.' All 
 this music was doubtless composed by some of the 
 King's musicians, among whom were several excellent 
 composers, such as Ferrabosco and Nicholas Laniere, 
 whose works are still delighted in by the lovers of old- 
 time melodies. 
 
 An equally, if not more, important task of theirs was 
 playing the accompaniment to those most exquisite 
 lyrics, the Very quintessence of poetry — Ariel's songs. 
 Of two of these, it is interesting to note, that we may 
 still hear the very airs sung that night three hundred 
 years ago in Shakespeare's presence at Whitehall. 
 
 For there happen to have survived to us in Dr. John 
 Wilson's ■• Cheerfull Ayres or Ballads,' published in 1 660, 
 his harmonised scores of the beautiful original setting 
 for ' Full Fathom Five,' and ' Where the Bee sucks," 
 attributed by him in his manuscript to Robert Johnson, 
 
1 8 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 a well-known lutenist, who was in the service of Prince 
 Henry in this very year, 1611. These two fadis have 
 been already known for some little time, but I have 
 discovered from a reference to Johnson in the accounts 
 of the 'Treasurer of the Chamber' that he became 'one 
 of the consortes of his Mat'" musicyans' in this same 
 year — affording confirmation, if any were needed, of 
 Wilson's statement, and suggesting that he was taken 
 into the King's service in connexion with his music 
 for this particular performance of The Tempest. Johnson's 
 beautiful melodies, it may be noted, were sung at the 
 meeting of the British Academy at Burlington House 
 in July, 1 9 10, when M. Jusserand, now the French 
 Ambassador at Washington, delivered his address on 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 The first Ariel to sing those enchanting songs was no 
 doubt ' the principal boy ' at the new ' Blackfriars,' 
 ptobably one of the ' Children of the Queen's Majesty's 
 Revels,' taken over into Shakespeare's Company when 
 they resumed possession of that theatre. This part, 
 indeed, ought never to be played at all except by a boy' 
 in his early 'teens. •' Shakespeare and his fellow-aftors, 
 could they revisit the London stage, would probably 
 have much more difficulty in understanding our 
 modern ineptness of setting a grown-up young woman 
 to personate that ' spirit of air,' than we can have in 
 understanding their pradlice of entrusting Miranda's 
 part to ' a squeaking boy,' for which could, at any rate, 
 be pleaded the inexorable prejudices of the times — first 
 broken down, be it remembered, at Court by the ladies 
 performing in the Masques. 
 
 Of the ' dressing ' of the play that night we can form 
 a very fair impression. Prospero's costume we get 
 hints of from the text and stage directions — ' Pluck my 
 magic garment from me,' ' Resumes his mantle,' ' Enter 
 Prospero in his magic robes,' — probably with cabalistic 
 signs embroidered on it. That Trinculo's dress was the 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 19 
 
 fool's conventional motley we likewise gather from the 
 text : ' What a pied ninny's this ! ' ' Thou scurvey patch ! ' 
 cries Caliban to the 'jesting monkey.' Stephano's, too, 
 offers no great difficulty ; nor the mariner's either ; 
 Caliban's clothing seems to have been traditionally a 
 ' bear's skin,' and over it the ' gabardine,' which Trinculo 
 creeps under to shelter himself from the storm, and which 
 Cotgrave defines as ' a Cloake of Felt for rainie weather.' 
 As for the ' garments . . . fresher than before ' worn 
 by Alonso and his followers, they would certainly have 
 been of the Italian fashion, and not of the English of 
 James's Court. Here again the records of the Revels 
 come to prove that, contrary to the too generally 
 accepted opinion, a great deal of care was devoted in 
 all dramatic representations, to accuracy in costume, so 
 as to make it accord with the nationality, as well as 
 with the rank, profession or station, of each charafter, 
 appearing in the piece. Not only were the ancients 
 dressed in classical or ' antick ' attire — as it was called 
 — but Venetians in their ' Venetian weed,' and senators 
 and councillors in the robes appropriate to their offices ; 
 while 'Almains,' 'Turks,' 'Moors,' Patriarchs and such- 
 like, appeared in distinftive 'garmentes, vestures and 
 apparelL' Not, of course, that Shakespeare and his 
 fellow aftor-managers, or the Masters of the Revels — 
 ' The Producers ' of the Court Performances — were as 
 scrupulously archaeological in ' dressing ' a play as are 
 our present-day stage artists ; but they strove after the 
 greatest correftness possible, with such knowledge and 
 means as they found at their disposal. For this purpose 
 there was available, in faft, an enormous assortment of 
 ' stuff' in the charge and custody of the Master of the 
 Revels — ' sundry garments of the store of the office ' — 
 as he phrased it — which were constantly being altered 
 and translated, and which were always at the disposal 
 of Shakespeare's company to supplement their own 
 scarcely less rich and ample wardrobe. 
 
20 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 From one or other of these ' fripperies ' would have 
 been brought out some ' glistering apparel ' for Ariel. 
 What his dress was on the night in question we may 
 gather in a general way from Inigo Jones's sketch, now 
 preserved at Chatsworth, of a costume for an 'Aery 
 Spirit ' in some play or masque, and from Ben Jonson's 
 description of a very similar costume for 'Jophiel, an 
 Airy Spirit,' in his masque of 'The Fortunate Isles' 
 acted in 1626. These two authorities taken together 
 suggest a close-fitting tunic of silk in rainbow colours, 
 wings tinftured in harmony with it, a scarf over his 
 shoulders, buskins or blue silk stockings, and on his 
 head a chaplet of flowers — not unlike the costume 
 worn by Charles I when as Duke of York, and only eleven 
 years old, he afted the charadler of Zephirus in Daniel's 
 ' Tethy's Festival ' — the great Masque of Britain's Sea- 
 Power — presented the year before The Tempest on the 
 same spot in the Banqueting House — to wit, green 
 satin, embroidered with golden flowers, with silver 
 wings and a garland of flowers on his head. 
 
 Of the actual adling of the play that night there is 
 little else to record : and not much about the spectators 
 either. Prominent among them were, of course. King 
 James and his Queen, seated in the middle of the house 
 in chairs of State on a dais, covered with fine oriental 
 carpets and under a rich canopy, and perhaps curtained 
 off on either side. By them would have sat their 
 children ; and gathered around them all the most 
 famous, great and illustrious men in England at that 
 time — Bacon, Salisbury, Nottingham, Northampton, 
 Pembroke, Montgomery, Southampton — whether resi- 
 dent in the Court or in their own houses in the Strand 
 or about Holborn ; with their wives also, of course ; as 
 well as all the most beautiful and fashionable women 
 that London could then show. The best places were 
 reserved for ' the best people ; ' while for any guests 
 who were specially favoured, there were the private 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 21 
 
 boxes — for the foreign ambassadors, particularly, who 
 eagerly competed for invitations for all the great shows 
 at Court. 
 
 As to the appearance of the audience, needless to say 
 that the gorgeousness of the costumes on the stage was 
 more than matched by the splendour and extravagance 
 of the dresses of the King and his courtiers. James I, 
 who, as Wilson said of him ' was ever of all men the 
 moste taken with fyne clothes,' and who loved above all 
 things to see his minions — at that time James Hay, 
 Earl of Carlisle and the infamous Robert Carr, Earl of 
 Somerset — superbly clad in the richest silks and velvets, 
 and resplendent in the jewels of fabulous price which 
 he showered upon them, himself led the fashion. ' The 
 imagination ' — wrote the Venetian ambassador a few 
 days after this performance of The Tempest — ' could 
 hardly grasp the gorgeousness of the spedlacle. The 
 King's own cloak, breeches and jacket were all sewn 
 with diamonds, a rope and jewel of diamonds also in his 
 hat of inestimable value.' The Queen, nothing loth to 
 follow the lead of the men, ' had in her hair a very 
 great number of pear-shaped pearls, the largest and 
 most beautiful in the world ; and there were diamonds 
 all over her person, so that she was ablaze.' All her 
 ladies, naturally, and the whole Court followed suit. 
 
 Besides all these leading courtiers there would also 
 have been among the spectators the whole Royal 
 Household, including the minor officials of the Court 
 — gentlemen ushers, grooms of the chamber, even 
 porters, yeomen, tiremen, etc. — together with such of 
 their friends and relations as they could, by hook or by 
 crook, and under the guise of all sorts of subterfuges, 
 manage to smuggle into odd nooks and corners of the 
 house or the stage — all eager to see, without having to 
 pay for the privilege, the much-talkcd-of new play — 
 ' the latest and most excellent and pleasant conceited 
 comedie' — as they would have called it — 'made by 
 
22 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 that famous and most witty poet and player Master 
 Shaxpere and his worthy fellow that renowned tragedian 
 Dick. Burbage.' 
 
 We can imagine these denizens and hangers-on of 
 the Court gathered together next day talking it all 
 over, 'sitting at a round table by a sea-coal fire' in the 
 Watching Chamber of old Whitehall 'on All Souls' 
 night ' in the year of our Lord, i6i i. 
 
 We can imagine them telling their friends all about 
 ' the magician King and his Enchanted Island, and the 
 terrible Tempest — like unto that which wrecked Sir 
 George's Somers' great ship off the Bermoothes, with 
 the thunder and the lightning and the rain, all like 
 unto real thunder, and real lightning and real rain, and 
 the mysterious spirits, which float about and then of 
 a sudden vanish into air ; and the monstrous shapes, 
 which dance around the magic banquet with mops and 
 mows, and many other phantom things, which awe and 
 amaze ; and the marvellous magical music, so sweet and 
 beautiful, which seems to come from nowhere; and the 
 dazzling lights and then the black darkness ! And who 
 has not heard of the wrecked King's ridiculous drunken 
 butler, who thought to be himself King of the Island, 
 and of the fool in his motley, with his witty sayings; 
 and the strange wild man and his wicked imaginings — 
 truely a fearsome monster with a face like a man, but 
 daws like a bear and fins like a fish; and the talkings 
 of these three together, which ever called forth shrieks 
 of laughter, so that the players could scarce proceed ! ' 
 
 ' Then how the rightful King gets back his throne 
 and how his fair sweet daughter weds the bad old 
 King's son and how all are happy ever after. Of a 
 surety, never before was ever beheld scenes so fair, and 
 dresses so comely, more like unto fairyland than any 
 theatre's stage — rocks and trees and flowers, and glister- 
 ing apparel of silk and velvet and broidery. They tell, 
 indeed, at the Revels' Office at St John's, how worthy 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 23 
 
 Sir George Buc and his men were at work both night 
 and day, for many a day, making ready all things needful 
 thereto — more as if 'twere one of the Queen's Majesty's 
 Royal Masques than a mere common player's Comedy.' 
 
 Thus ' would, or could or should ' have gossiped such 
 of the hangers-on of the Court as had been lucky enough 
 to be squeezed in by kind friends into the Banqueting 
 House the night before. 
 
 That the play was received by every seftion of the 
 audience with approval, applause and delight, we have 
 every reason to believe, knowing that it was again 
 produced at Court, if not very soon after, certainly 
 fourteen or fifteen months later. This was at the • 
 beginning of February, 1613, in honour of the marriage 
 of the Princess Elizabeth to the Eledtor Palatine, 
 already referred to at the beginning of this article. In 
 this connection it may be observed that I have found 
 a note in the accounts of the Master of the Revels for 
 this year, of a special charge 'for rehearsalls and making 
 choice of plaies and comedies, and for reforminge 
 playes to be presented at the courte agaynst the 
 marriadge of the Ladye Elizabeth to the Prince 
 Palatine.' Among these plays and comedies as many 
 as twenty were afted by the King's Company, no less 
 than eight of them being Shakespeare's; and as we 
 happen to know that he was in London on private 
 business in the early part of the year, it is likely enough 
 that he personally superintended their produ6tion at 
 Court — the longer ones, perhaps, being ' reformed ' by 
 the Master of the Revels into shorter Court versions. 
 
 That among them The T'empest may have been sub- 
 je6led to some ' reformation ' is possible ; though this 
 would scarely have been in the way of curtailment, as 
 has been suggested by Fleay and other commentators. 
 For the play, as we have it in the First Folio, is so 
 rigidly construfted, so compa6l:ly knit and so well- 
 balanced, with no signs anywhere of any gaps in it — 
 
24 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 in this respeft very unlike Macbeth — that there seems 
 no ground for supposing any part of Shakespeare's 
 original text to have dropped out of it and been lost, 
 although it is the shortest but one of any of his plays. 
 This is the more certain owing to the fadl that i!he 
 Tempest is almost the only one of them of which it can 
 be said that the dramatic ' unities ' are striftly observed 
 in it ; still more so that this observance was evidently 
 intentional and designedly made plain on the part of the 
 dramatist, emphasized by him, as it is, several times in 
 the course of the play, not only by the significance of 
 the adtion being confined to a small island, but also by 
 reiterated references to ' What's the time of day,' and 
 the insistence by Prospero that the time-limit of his 
 work, leading to the denouement of the drama, must 
 not exceed ' three glasses.' 
 
 The 'reforming' of The Tempest, however — if it was 
 reformed at all — although unlikely to have been by 
 way of abridgement, may well have been in that of 
 addition. Indeed, there is every ground for suspedting 
 that the masque in the fourth a6l as we have it now, 
 ostensibly as an integral, though really a subsidiary part 
 of the play, was an addition interpolated into the 
 original text of 1 6 1 1 , for the performance at Court in 
 1 6 1 3 — interpolated, in faft, in honour of the nuptials 
 of the young Princess and her affianced husband the- 
 Count Palatine. It was by that very acute critic 
 Fleay, in his 'Chronicle History of the Life and Works 
 of Shakespeare,' published in i886, that currency was 
 first given to this idea of the origin of the masque. 
 To this extent, we may, indeed, admit that Tieck, Dr. 
 Garnett and the rest were on the right tack : though 
 this is, of course, a very different thing from accepting 
 their theories as to the origin and date of the whole play. 
 
 On this poin^ of the origin of the masque : I doubt 
 whether any one interested in the question, who should 
 take down Nichols' ' Progresses of James I ' and read 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 25 
 
 through, in the second volume, the three several 
 masques performed in honour of that marriage, with 
 all the curious descriptions of them, and the letters of 
 the time about them, could come to any other con- 
 clusion but this : that the masque in The 'Tempest — 
 that is to say its spoken verse — is likewise connedled 
 with that event by the closest links. The similarities 
 — not to say identities — in ideas, expressions, phrases, 
 poor, indeed, as they are in all four masques, are un- 
 mistakeable : convincing one that whoever may have 
 been the author of this particular masque worked on 
 common lines of conventional compliment with the 
 others. Moreover, many of the characters represented 
 in these masques are the same classical deities, and 
 their procedure adluated by the same devices. Every- v 
 thing, in faft, seems definitely to exclude any proba- 
 bility that this masque in Shakespeare's play — certainly 
 the part of it in which Iris and the two goddesses 
 converse — can have been composed in 1 6 1 1 , or indeed, 
 for any occasion whatever, or for any purpose what- 
 ever, other than ' a contract of true love to celebrate,' 
 ostensibly, no doubt, the one between Miranda and 
 Ferdinand, but primarily and by plain implication, the 
 one between Elizabeth and Frederick as well. That 
 such a contract was of the very essence of the scheme 
 and plot of the play as originally written, was, on this 
 supposition, a mere coincidence, of which advantage 
 was taken in 161 3 to enhance the topical interest of 
 the piece. 
 
 All this, however, does not answer the further ques- 
 tion that has been raised, as to whether Shakespeare 
 himself was really the author of this masque at all — a 
 distindl and very much more difficult problem. Here 
 again Fleay was the first formally to propound a doubt 
 on the subjeft ; and he was followed by the editors of 
 the ' Cambridge Shakespeare' in 1891. Before Fleay, 
 however, a great many people, and since Fleay, a great 
 
26 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 many more, have felt that in its pointless, rather banal 
 dialogue, and its halting, rhymed decasyllabics, we have 
 something very far removed from any of Shakespeare's 
 usual styles, altogether most unworthy and unlikely 
 stuff to have come from the pen of the poet, who was 
 capable, at the same time, of writing so superb and 
 incomparably beautiful a dramatic poem as The Tempest. 
 
 Fleay's theory — often quoted with approval since by 
 competent critics — was that Beaumont was the real 
 author of this Tempest masque, citing in support of it 
 several very striking parallel passages between it and 
 that dramatist's ' Inner Temple and Gray's Inn ' masque, 
 ' whereof S' Fra. Bacon was the chiefe contriver,' 
 written for Shrove Tuesday, i6th February, though 
 not afted until Saturday, the 20th. 
 
 A more recent suggestion is that of the Right Hon. 
 J. M. Robertson, M.P., who, in his remarkable book 
 on 'Shakespeare and Chapman' (published in 19 17) 
 puts forward a strong casie for Chapman as the author. 
 In support of it he analyses the sixty-eight rhymed 
 lines of the masque, and finds no less than eighteen 
 words, which do not occur anywhere else in the plays 
 attributed to Shakespeare, though most of them are to 
 be found in Chapman's works. Further, he finds 
 similar coincidences and many singular resemblances in 
 the compound words, which are so noticeable a pecu- 
 liarity of this masque, and which, though not occurring 
 anywhere else in any of the plays, are, many of them, 
 paralleled, if not exaftly to be found, in Chapman's 
 works. 
 
 This theory and these arguments of Mr. Robertson's 
 may, I think, be reinforced by parallel passages — almost, 
 if not quite, as remarkable as those in Beaumont's 
 masque — in Chapman's ' Memorable Masque of the 
 Two Honourable Hovses or Innes of Court, the Middle 
 Temple and Lyncolnes Inne,' presented at Whitehall 
 on Shrove Monday, the 15th of February, 161 3. 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 27 
 
 Whatever weight — or whether any weight at all — 
 should be given to these several points, the supposition 
 on either of these theories would be that Chapman — or 
 Beaumont — with or without Shakespeare's assent — even 
 without his cognizance if he happened to be absent 
 from London at that time — was employed, either by 
 Hemynges or Burbage on behalf of the King's Company, 
 or, otherwise, by the Master of the Revels when 
 'reforming' 'The Tempest — to insert in it a topical masque 
 in honour of the Royal nuptials. Then, once having 
 formed part of the play, there would naturally have 
 arisen among the ' Blackfriars ' audiences a desire to 
 witness the masque, invested, as it would have been, 
 with the prestige of having been a6led before the Court. 
 In this way it would have become permanently incor- 
 porated in the prompter's acting copy of the text. This, 
 in brief, is the case for another hand but Shakespeare's. 
 
 Other distinguished scholars, however, such as Pro- 
 fessor Morton Luce in his analysis of the play in the . 
 ' Arden ' edition, referred to at the beginning of this 
 article, and Professor Boas, in his most cogent and 
 illuminating study of the play in the 'Warwick' edition, 
 have not been disposed to endorse Fleay's scepticism, or 
 to admit any other but Shakespeare's own handiwork 
 in the masque — though, it must be remembered, they 
 wrote before Mr. Robertson had put forward his claim 
 for Chapman. 
 
 'Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere litcs.' 
 But I may, perhaps, venture to submit with diffi- 
 dence, a theory of my own, which, to a certain extent, 
 would seem to reconcile the various divergent views of 
 so many learned and acute commentators, leaving to 
 them to determine what value it may possess. 
 
 Briefly, my proposition is this : that though the 
 rhymed verses and the song in the Masque were inter- 
 polated in 1613 into the original text, there was at this 
 point, in the fourth a6t, from the very first produdlion 
 
28 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 of the play at the Blackfriars, revelling and dancing of 
 spirits. 
 
 Fleay's idea was that 'the mythological personages 
 in the original play afted in dumb show'; and in 
 support of it, he referred to the stage diredlion ' Juno 
 descends' at line 8i, while in the added verses the 
 words are ' great Juno comes,' and Ceres knows ' her by 
 her gait' — as if implying that originally Juno came 
 down from the skies, lowered, he seems to suggest, ' in 
 a creaking throne the boys to please,' while in the 
 amended Masque she merely walked on. But in this 
 Fleay betrays ignorance of the almost invariable pro- 
 cedure in masques with classical charafters, which was 
 that the gods or goddesses or other characters were beheld 
 some little time before they came on to the stage 
 proper, descending from on high at the extreme back 
 of the Inner Stage by means of 'winding staires by 
 whose greeces (steps) the persons above might make 
 their descents and all the way be scene.' These words 
 are taken from the descriptive introdudlion to Chapman's 
 ' Memorable Masque,' and as there were such stairs at 
 the back of the Inner Stage of the Banqueting House, 
 they would apply equally well to the entry of Juno, 
 if not to that of Ceres also, in the 'Tempest Masque. 
 
 The convention had its origin in the first true 
 Jacobean Masque ever acted — Daniel's ' Vision of the 
 Twelve Goddesses ' presented in the Great Hall at 
 Hampton Court on Sunday, 8th January, 1604 — a 
 Masque, by the way, which Shakespeare must have 
 witnessed, for he was staying in the Palace at the time; 
 and which the writer of The Tempest Masque — who- 
 ever he may have been — must have been well acquainted 
 with, especially as it had been printed and published 
 in 1 604, and because there are several points of marked 
 resemblance between the two masques. 
 
 Altogether, there really seems no adequate reason for, 
 nor any particular probability in, Fleay's suggestion that 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 29 
 
 the classical charafters in this masque were originally 
 adled in dumb show : every reason, indeed, as I shall 
 show, that they never did anything of the sort. 
 
 At the same time, it would not — even if proved — 
 render in the least less likely the theory I have ventured 
 to put forward, namely, that a show of spirits, revelling 
 and dancing, formed part of the original play. Several 
 phrases in Prospero's and Ariel's speeches indeed seem 
 clearly to point to this. Thus, Prospero, at the 
 beginning of the fourth adt, just before the masque, 
 says to Ariel : 
 
 ' Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service 
 Did worthily perform ; and I must use you 
 In such another trick — ' 
 
 evidently referring to the bringing in and removing of 
 the magic banquet at the end of the third scene in the 
 third aft, by ' several strange shapes ' — ' of monstrous 
 shape,' says Gonzalo — who are there referred to by 
 Prospero as ' my meaner ministers ' and by Ariel as ' my 
 fellow ministers.^ 
 
 They appear, it will be remembered, twice in the 
 third act, bringing the banquet in and dancing about 
 it ' with gentle aftions of salutation,' — as the stage 
 dire6lion in the first folio says — and afterwards carrying 
 the table out, and dancing with '■mocks and mows' Now 
 this exactly corresponds with the words in which Ariel 
 in the fourth adl receives Prospero's charge, just before 
 the masque : 
 
 Each one, tripping on his toe 
 Will be here with mop and mow. 
 
 Again, Prospero instructing Ariel how he is to 
 perform ' such another trick,' says to him : 
 
 Go bring the rabble. 
 O'er whom I gave thee power, here to this place : 
 Incite them to quick motion. 
 
30 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 Can Prospero and Ariel, I would ask, have been 
 anticipating in all this the solemn stately Masque of 
 mythological charadters that follows in the play as we 
 now have it — the 'most majestic vision,' as Ferdinand 
 afterwards calls it ? Can they, when using these words 
 and phrases, have been thinking — or rather can Shake- 
 speare have been thinking when he put them into the 
 mouths of his aftors — of anything else, or of preparing 
 his audience for anything else, but a dumb show of a 
 rabble of ' monstrous shapes,' dancing in ' quick motion ' 
 and with ' mops and mows ? ' 
 
 Yet, as we now have the Masque, we have instead 
 of a rabble — even if the meaning of the word is only a 
 'crowd,' a 'gathering,' or a 'company,' with no contemp- 
 tuous implication in it — three stately characters; and 
 instead of ' quick motion ' we have their dignified ap- 
 proach — Juno especially, ' highest Queen of State,' 
 ' known by her gait.' 
 
 Again, at the end, after the Masque has been dissolved, 
 Prospero says : ' Our revels now are ended.' But mas- 
 ques, especially of the classical and stately sort, were 
 not often, if ever, called 'revels.' The phrase was 
 always ' masques and revels.' The word ' revels,' in 
 faft, was applied rather to dancing, rollicking, ' mops 
 and mows ' and such like ; and of these but little sur- 
 vives in the ' revels ' in the fourth aft, as we now have 
 them, except perhaps the ' Country footing ' — of the 
 nymphs and reapers '— j:dfi5cribed in the stage direftions, 
 as 'a graceful dance.', Does not all this seem plainly 
 .// to point to, and is it not all very simply explicable by, 
 the theory that the masque was just botched into the 
 play, and substituted for the original revellings, with 
 scarcely any alteration of the text? If so, it would 
 reinforce the supposition that there was another hand 
 rather than that of Shakespeare, who, one would presume, 
 would have adapted the old to the new less clumsily, 
 when the ' most majestic vision ' was inserted out of 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 31 
 
 compliment to the Lady Elizabeth's marriage, in place 
 of the ' revels ' of Shakespeare's own original concep- 
 tion, which would have been appropriate enough, while 
 not interrupting, as does the existing Masque, the pro- 
 gress and a(5lion of the play. 
 
 Yet one more point : Prospero, just as the masque 
 is beginning, says to Ferdinand, ' No tongue, all eyes, 
 be silent' — which seems to indicate that the show 
 was to be something to look at only, not to listen to. 
 Can such discrepancies between the dialogue before 
 or during the masque, and the spoken masque itself, 
 be explained on any other theory but the one just 
 propounded ? 
 
 Leaving, however, theories and literary problems to 
 be pronounced upon by experts, let us turn to more 
 material and positive problems. One of the first of 
 these, which demand solution, is : on what part of the 
 stage was the masque presented ? As to this, there 
 can be little doubt that it was presented on the Inner 
 Stage, which, in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, at 
 any rate, certainly had a regular proscenium, and was 
 treated separately from the rest of the stage in the 
 way of scenery and decoration ; and was revealed by 
 the drawing aside of 'traverses' or curtains, or, perhaps, 
 in this case, by a suddenly illuminated scene, perceived 
 through a transparency. 
 
 It was, in fad;, composed as a set-piece, though small, 
 very like any of our modern solid-sided interiors. The 
 development, in truth, of our present framed pidlure-stage 
 may be traced quite as well by looking on it as an advance 
 and encroachment of the Inner Stage on the old plat- 
 form-stage — which it eventually absorbed altogether — as 
 by considering it as a shrinking of the platform-stage 
 backwards, until it was withdrawn entirely behind the 
 proscenium, which is the usual way of presenting the 
 case. This tendency first showed itself in the perform- 
 ances at Court, where it was originally and mainly due 
 
32 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST* AS 
 
 to the scenic exigences of the pidlorial element in the 
 speftacular masques. 
 
 Next, as to the floor of the Inner Stage, on which 
 the masque was represented. This, it would seem, 
 was raised two or three steps above the main stage ; 
 and it was, doubtless, covered, according to the usual 
 practice in masques in the royal theatres, with some 
 sort of green cloth or baize for the dancing. That this 
 was so for the T'empest masque we have something 
 more than custom to convince us. For the references 
 in it to such a counterfeit plot of grass are too plain 
 and frequent not to be unmistakeable. Thus : 
 
 Here on this grass-plot, in this very place, 
 
 says Iris when summoning Ceres; who, in answer, 
 enquires : 
 
 Why hath thy Queen 
 Summoned me hither to this short-grassed green ? 
 
 And Iris again, when calling the nymphs, bids them 
 come to : 
 
 This green land. 
 
 Such pointed expressions, three times repeated, would 
 scarcely have been used except of a physical feature 
 patent to the eyes of the audience. 
 
 Next, as to the probable ' dressing ' of the charaflers 
 in the masque. These, there can be no doubt, appeared 
 in appropriate costumes, something like those of the 
 same personages in Daniel's ' Vision of the Twelve 
 Goddesses,' already referred to. As described by that 
 author himself, in his preface, Iris appeared 'deckt like a 
 rainbow,' Ceres 'in a straw-colour and silver imbroidery, 
 with eares of corne,' and a head-dress of the same and 
 carrying a sickle. Juno was attired ' in a skie-colour 
 mantle imbroidered with gold and figured with peacocks' 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 33 
 
 feathers, wearing a crown of gold on her head,' set 
 with jewelled stars, and carrying a sceptre. 
 
 Thus staged, the masque, though adding nothing to 
 the dramatic interest or poetic beauty of the play, 
 must have greatly delighted the not very discriminating 
 Court audience of 1613. 
 
 And now all that gave life and brilliance to that 
 night's scene more than 300 years ago have passed into 
 ' the dark backward and abysm of Time.' Of those 
 who witnessed that performance the very names of 
 most of them are forgotten. Only those of a very few 
 of the small group, who formed the centre of the bright 
 throng, now evoke even a faint echo. The Earl of 
 Pembroke and his brother Montgomery are, it is true, 
 still remembered : but why ? Merely because they 
 v/cre 'the incomparable paire of brethren' to whom 
 the First Folio was dedicated, and who share the 
 eternal honour of having ' favoured the authour living.' 
 Southampton was there : but who would trouble now 
 about the comings and goings, or even the existence, 
 of an Earl of Southampton, were he not known to have 
 befriended the struggling aftor and playwright William 
 Shakespeare? And the King's son Henry — is he as 
 much, or anything like as much to us to-day as ' the 
 King's son Ferdinand' ? The Princess Elizabeth, indeed, 
 still awakens some thrill of emotion in us as that 
 'Queen of Hearts,' to whom Sir Henry Wotton addressed 
 his beautiful poem — 'Ye meaner beauties.' Yet how 
 dim does her figure seem through the mists of the long 
 years past, compared with her who through all ages will 
 ever shine radiant — ' so perfect and so peerless, created 
 of every creature's best' — Miranda! King James, 
 Salisbury and Northampton are gone, but Prospero, 
 Gonzalo and Antonio still remain with us as living 
 entities. As for Anne of Denmark, would not the 
 world prefer that all memory of her should be blotted 
 out, or that she had never lived, than that we should lose 
 
34 SHAKESPEARE'S 'TEMPEST' AS 
 
 a single speech of Caliban's? Alone of that night's 
 audience Bacon lives with us and speaks to us, in his 
 own writings, with something of the vividness, with 
 which Prospero lives with us and speaks to us through 
 Shakespeare's deathless page. 
 
 And this is our great dramatist's most wondrous 
 triumph — that he has endowed these mere creatures of 
 his imagination with a reality, a vividness, and a 
 persistence, outliving and transcending the ever fading 
 remembrance of all mortal beings. 
 
 Such, then, were the circumstances — so far as I have 
 been able to reconstruft them from the old records — in 
 which the 'Tempest was performed before the Court at 
 Whitehall in the years i6ri and 1613. The indica- 
 tions may be considered to be slight, and not very 
 precise. Yet, such as they are, they may, I hope, help 
 towards the understanding of the problem to which I 
 referred at the beginning of this article, and which is 
 of great interest to all Shakespearean students, and of 
 present practical moment to all those concerned — 
 whether as spedlators or producers or stage managers 
 — in the afting of our great dramatist's plays to-day — 
 namely, the mode of their presentation on the modern 
 stage. Otherwise, in truth, what are all these old 
 things and these ancient topics to us ? Why go search- 
 ing in musty records and faded parchments ? Why go 
 grubbing among the old foundations and broken walls 
 of a long vanished palace, except that, by such means 
 interpreting the past, we Jiiay be helped towards correct 
 adlion in the present, which is ours, and which holds 
 for us the priceless and ever-enduring treasures the poet 
 has bequeathed to all mankind ? 
 
 If then, by tracing out these exa6t circumstances, 
 and, with such fragmentary matter as remains to us, 
 we try to evoke a vision, as it were, of the surroundings 
 in which Shakespeare's marvellous imaginings were 
 originally set forth before the world, it is with the 
 
ORIGINALLY PRODUCED AT COURT. 35 
 
 hope also that we may thereby the better apprehend 
 the pregnant thoughts and the inspiring truths, which, 
 more and more, all men of every race, and of every 
 clime, acclaim in the pages of him, who, more intensely 
 than any other poet, moves vibrating the most intimate 
 chords of the soul of man ; who, deeper than any other 
 mortal being, has sounded the inmost recesses of the 
 human heart. Halls and banqueting houses, stages and 
 theatres, adlors and spedtators, what are they ? They all 
 
 Are melted into air, into thin air : 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision. 
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces. 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind — 
 
 — even as the hand that wrote those words, and the 
 brain that conceived the whole wonderful fabric of the 
 plays, with their multitudinous pageantry of life, are 
 alike dust in a narrow grave at Stratford. 
 
 Yet the poet's thoughts live on — the penetrating 
 truths, the wide philosophy, the exquisite felicities and 
 fancies, the enchanting rhythm and music of the verse 
 — live on, and spread through all the nations of the 
 globe ; become, indeed, for ever the universal heritage, 
 stamped on the mind of man with an impress that will 
 last as long as this world shall endure. 
 
THE DE LA MORE PRESS LTD. 32 GEORGE 
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