Chapter II: Act I: SCENE 1. Page 9

ANT. We are _merely_ cheated of our lives----

Mr. Steevens has remarked that _merely_ in this place signifies _absolutely_. His interpretation is confirmed by the word _merus_ in Littelton's dictionary, where it is rendered _downright_.

SCENE 2. Page 10.

MIRA. ... a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some _noble creatures_ in her.

There is a peculiar propriety in this expression that has escaped the notice it deserved. Miranda had as yet seen no other _man_ than her father. She had perceived, but indistinctly, some living creatures perish in the shipwreck; and she supposes they might be of her father's species. Thus she afterwards, when speaking of Ferdinand, calls him _noble_.

SCENE 2. Page 11.

MIRA. ... or _e'er_
It should the good ship, &c.

This word should always be written _ere_, and not _ever_, nor contractedly _e'er_, with which it has no connection. It is pure Saxon, æꞃ. The corruption in Ecclesiastes cited in the note, is as old as the time of Henry the Eighth; but in Wicliffe we have properly "_er_ be to broke the silveren corde," and so it is given by Chaucer.

SCENE 2. Page 20.

PRO. Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepar'd
A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast----

The present note is more particularly offered to the admirers of ancient romances, and to which class Shakspeare himself, no doubt, belonged. It is well known that the earliest English specimen of these singular and fascinating compositions is the _Geste of king Horn_, which has been faithfully published by the late Mr. Ritson, who has given some account of a French copy in the British Museum. He did not live to know that another manuscript of this interesting romance, in the same language, is still remaining in private hands, very different in substance and construction from the other. One might almost conclude that some English translation of it existed in Shakspeare's time, and that he had in the above passage imitated the following description of the boat in which Horn and his companions were put by king Rodmund at the suggestion of Browans,

"Sire, fet il purnez un de vos vielz chalanz
Metez icels valez ki jo vei ici estanz
Kil naient avirum dunt aseient aidanz
Sigle ne guvernad dunt il seint vaianz."

l. 58.

That is,

"Sir, said he, take one of your old boats, put into it these
varlets whom I see here; let them have no oars to help them, sail
nor rudder to put them in motion."

SCENE 2. Page 26.

ARI. ... sometimes I'd _divide_
And burn in many places; on the top-mast,
The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then _meet and join_----

This is a very elegant description of a meteor well known to sailors. It has been called by the several names of the fire of _Saint Helen_, _Saint Elm_, _Saint Herm_, _Saint Clare_, _Saint Peter_, and _Saint Nicholas_. Whenever it appeared as a single flame it was supposed by the ancients to be _Helena_, the sister of Castor and Pollux, and in this state to bring ill luck, from the calamities which this lady is known to have caused in the Trojan war. When it came double it was called Castor and Pollux, and accounted a good omen. It has been described as a little blaze of fire, sometimes appearing by night on the tops of soldiers' lances, or at sea on masts and sail-yards whirling and leaping in a moment from one place to another. Some have said, but erroneously, that it never appears but _after_ a tempest. It is also supposed to lead people to suicide by drowning.

Further information on the subject may be collected from Plin. _Hist. nat._ 1. ii. c. 37. Seneca _Quæst. nat._ c. 1. Erasm. _Colloq. in naufragio._ Schotti. _Physica curiosa_, p. 1209. Menage _Dict. etym._ v. _Saint Telme._ Cotgrave _Dict._ v. _feu_, _furole_. Trevoux _Dict._ v. _furole_. _Lettres de_ Bergerac, p. 45. Eden's _Hist. of travayle_, fo. 432 b. 433 b. Camerarii _Horæ subsecivæ_ iii. 53. Cambray _Voy. dans la Finisterre_ ii. 296. Swan's _Speculum mundi_ p. 89. Shakspeare seems to have consulted Stephen Batman's _Golden books of the leaden goddes_, who, speaking of Castor and Pollux, says "they were figured like two lampes or cresset lightes, one on the toppe of a maste, the other on the stemme or foreshippe." He adds that if the light first appears in the stem or foreship and ascends upwards, it is good luck; if _either lights begin at the top-mast, bowsprit_ or foreship, and descend towards the sea, _it is a sign of tempest_. In taking therefore the latter position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands of Prospero to raise a storm.

SCENE 2. Page 28.

ARI. From the still-vext _Bermoothes_----

_The voyage of Sir George Sommers_ to the Bermudas in the year 1609 has been already noticed with a view of ascertaining the _time_ in which _The tempest_ was written; but the important particulars of his _shipwreck_, from which it is exceedingly probable that the outline of a considerable part of this play was borrowed, has been unaccountably overlooked. Several contemporary narratives of the above event were published, which Shakspeare might have consulted; and the conversation of the time might have furnished, or at least suggested, some particulars that are not to be found in any of the printed accounts. In 1610 Silvester Jourdan, an eyewitness, published _A discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise called the_ ISLE OF DIVELS: _By Sir Thomas Gates, Sir Geo. Sommers, and Captayne Newport, with divers others._ Next followed Strachey's _Proceedings of the English colonie in Virginia_ 1612, 4to, and some other pamphlets of less moment. From these accounts it appears that the Bermudas had never been inhabited, but regarded as _under the influence of inchantment_; though an addition to a subsequent edition of Jourdan's work gravely states that they are _not inchanted_; that Sommers's ship had been _split_ between two rocks; that during his stay on the island several _conspiracies_ had taken place; and that a _sea-monster in shape like a man_ had been seen, who had been so called after the _monstrous tempests_ that often happened at Bermuda. In Stowe's Annals we have also an account of Sommers's shipwreck, in which this important passage occurs, "Sir George Sommers sitting at the stearne, seeing the ship desperate of reliefe, looking every minute when the ship would sinke, hee espied land, which according to his and Captaine Newport's opinion, they judged it should be that dreadfull coast of the _Bermodes_, which iland were of all nations said and supposed to bee _inchanted and inhabited with witches and devills_, which grew by reason of accustomed monstrous thunder, storm, and _tempest_, neere unto those ilands, also for that the whole coast is so wonderous dangerous of rockes, that few can approach them, but with unspeakable hazard of _ship-wrack_." Now if some of these circumstances in the shipwreck of Sir George Sommers be considered, it may possibly turn out that _they_ are "the particular and recent event which determined Shakspeare to call his play _The tempest_,"[1] instead of "the great tempest of 1612," which has already been supposed to have suggested its name, and which might have happened after its composition. If this be the fact the play was written between 1609 and 1614 when it was so illiberally and invidiously alluded to in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew-fair.

SCENE 2. Page 30.

PRO. What is't thou can'st demand?

ARI. ... My liberty.

PRO. Before the time be out? no more.

The spirits or familiars attending on magicians were always impatient of confinement. Thus we are told that the spirit Balkin is wearied if the action wherein he is employed continue longer than an hour; and therefore the magician must be careful to dismiss him. The form of such a dismission may be seen in Scot's _Discovery of witchcraft_, edit. 1665, folio, p. 228.

SCENE 2. Page 35.

PRO. ... My _quaint_ Ariel.

Quaint here means _brisk_, _spruce_, _dexterous_. From the French _cointe_.

SCENE 2. Page 35.

CAL. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholsome fen,
Drop on you both! a south-west blow on you,
And blister you all o'er!

The following passage in Batman _uppon Bartholome his booke De proprietatibus rerum_, 1582, folio, will not only throw considerable light on these lines, but furnish at the same time grounds for a conjecture that Shakspeare was indebted to it, with a slight alteration, for the name of Caliban's mother Sycorax the witch. "The raven is called corvus of CORAX ... it is said that _ravens birdes_ be fed with _deaw_ of heaven all the time that they have no black _feathers_ by benefite of age." Lib. xii. c. 10. The same author will also account for the choice which is made, in the monster's speech, of the _South-west wind_. "This _Southern wind_ is hot and moyst.... _Southern winds_ corrupt and destroy; they heat and maketh men fall into sicknesse." Lib. xi. c. 3. It will be seen in the course of these notes that Shakspeare was extremely well acquainted with this work; and as it is likely hereafter to form an article in a Shakspearean library, it may be worth adding that in a private diary written at the time, the original price of the volume appears to have been eight shillings.

SCENE 2. Page 36.

PRO. ... _urchins_
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee.

Although _urchins_ sometimes means hedge-hogs, it is more probable that in this place they denote fairies or spirits, and that Mr. Malone is right in the explanation which he has given. The present writer's former note must therefore be cancelled, as should, according to his conception, such part of Mr. Steevens's as relates to the hedge-hog. The same term both in the next act, and in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, is used in a similar sense.

Mr. Steevens in a note on this word in the last mentioned play has observed that the _primitive_ sense of _urchin_ is a hedge-hog, whence it came, says he, to signify any thing dwarfish. There is however good reason for supposing it of Celtic origin. _Erch_ in Welsh, is _terrible_, and _urzen_, a _superior intelligence_. In the Bas Breton language _urcha_ signifies to _howl_. "_Urthinwad Elgin_," says Scot in his _Discovery of witchcraft_, p. 224, edit. 1665, "was a spirit in the days of King Solomon, came over with Julius Cæsar, and remained many hundred years in Wales, where he got the above name."

The _urchin_ or _irchin_, in the sense of a hedge-hog, is certainly derived from the Latin _ericeus_; and whoever is desirous of more information concerning the radical of _ericeus_ may be gratified by consulting Vossius's _Etymologicon_ v. _erinaceus_. With respect to the application of urchin to any thing dwarfish, for we still say a _little urchin_, this sense of the word seems to have originated rather from the circumstance of its having once signified a fairy, who is always supposed to be a diminutive being, than from the cause assigned by Mr. Steevens.

It is true that in the ensuing act Caliban speaks of Prospero's _spirits_ as attacking him _in the shape of hedge-hogs_, for which another reason will be offered presently; and yet the word in question is only one out of many used by Shakspeare, which may be best disposed of by concluding that he designed they should be taken in both or either of their senses.

In a very rare old collection of songs set to music by John Bennett, Edward Piers or Peirce, and Thomas Ravenscroft, composers in the time of Shakspeare, and entitled _Hunting_, _hawking_, _dauncing_, _drinking_, _enamoring_, 4to, no date, there are, the _fairies_ dance, the _elves_ dance, and the _urchins_ dance. This is the latter:

"By the moone we sport and play,
With the night begins our day;
As we friske the dew doth fall,
Trip it little _urchins_ all,
Lightly as the little bee,
Two by two, and three by three,
And about goe wee, goe wee."

SCENE 2. Page 40.

CAL. It would control my dam's God _Setebos_.

In Dr. Farmer's note it should have been added that the passage from Eden's _History of travayle_ was part of Magellan's _Voyage_; or in Mr. Tollet's, that Magellan was included in Eden's collection.

SCENE 2. Page 42.

ARI. Those are pearls, that were his eyes.

We had already had this image in King Richard the third, where Clarence, describing his dream, says:

"... in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 'twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems."

SCENE 2. Page 44.

MIRA ... What is't, a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form.

The incident of Miranda's surprise at the first sight of Ferdinand, and of her falling in love with him, might have been suggested by some lost translation of the 13th tale in the _Cento novelle antiche_, and which is in fact the subject of _father Philip's geese_, so admirably told by Boccaccio and Lafontaine. It seems to have been originally taken from the life of Saint Barlaam in _The golden legend_.