REMARKS.
This is one of the last plays which Shakspeare
wrote.
Dr. Warburton says of it—“This play, and ‘Midsummer
Night's Dream,’ are the noblest efforts of
that sublime and amazing imagination, peculiar to
Shakspeare, which soars above the bounds of nature,
without forsaking sense; or, more properly, carries
nature along with him, beyond her established limits.”
Shakspeare had now written more than thirty
plays, and, like other hackneyed authors, he began
to be weary of his employment. But he had a resource
in fancy, to which others apply in vain. Tired
of the same dull round of forming men and women,
he said—“Let there be spirits, fairies, goblins, and
monsters.” At his word, these supernatural things
had dramatic existence.
But, however the learned may admire the poet's
grand conception, and the complete execution of all
that they can conceive he meant to do, to make this
play perfection; it would never have become a favourite
on the stage, without the aid of Dryden's alteration.
The human beings in the original drama
had not business enough on the scene, to make human
beings anxious about them: and the preternatural
characters were more wonderful than pleasing; for,
whilst an auditor or a reader pours forth his praise
before the Creator of Caliban, he loathes the creature.
Ariel, opposed to this monster, is one of those
happy contrasts, which Shakspeare deals in; yet,
this airy and mild spirit cannot charm an audience,
except by singing. Nor could the love scenes produce
much sympathy, but from the artlessness of
the objects concerned. Ignorance of what their own
sensations mean, is the charm which alone elevates
those pleasing characters, above the common order
of insipid lovers.
“The Tempest” contains some of the author's best
poetry—the noted passage of “cloud-capp'd towers”
is here; also some exquisite descriptions of wild rural
scenery; and there is a sublimity in the pinches,
cramps, and aches, of Caliban; his bogs, fens, flats,
moles, barnacles, and apes—as well as in the oaks,
rocks, winds, sea, earth, and air, of Prospero.
Dr. Warburton's praises of “The Tempest,” are
thus supported by Dr. Johnson's following eulogium:
“In a single drama are here exhibited princes,
courtiers, and sailors, all speaking in their real characters.
There is the agency of airy spirits, and of
an earthly goblin; the operation of magic, the tumults
of a storm, the adventures of a desert island,
the native effusion of untaught affection, the punishment
of guilt, and the final happiness of the pair, for
whom our reason and our passions are equally interested.”
All these things are doubtless comprised in “The
Tempest,” except the last implied quality—one, of all
others, which an audience can, perhaps, the least dispense
with. This drama does not interest the passions.
Less variety might have engaged them; but
here genius has been too much expanded. Exercised
on fewer objects, its force had been concentrated,
and more effectual.
The senses are, indeed, powerfully engaged by the
grandeur of the spectacle in a London theatre—and
the senses highly gratified, are sometimes mistaken,
by the possessor himself—for the passions.
