The

Tempest"

more and more absorbed in the details of country life, and less and less inclined to write for the stage. His hand is most discernible in the first and fifth acts. **All the passages," says Mr. Lee, “for which he can on any showing be held responsible develop the main plot, which is drawn from Chaucer's Knight's Tale." The omission of the play from the Folio is not a proof that Shakespeare had no share in it, for the editors left out Pericles, and, as Mr. Fleay makes probable, were on the point of omitting Timon.

After Hamlet, The Tempest has the most personal interest of any of Shakespeare's works, for as his last important production it gives his latest views on life and mankind. It follows out the same tendency as has been remarked in Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, to large and liberal views of life, serene tranquillity, contented acquiescence in the lot of man, tolerance of imper

HEERE LYETH INTERRED THE BODY OF ANNE WIFE
OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WHO DEPTED THIS LIFE THE
G-DAY OF AVGV:1623-BEING OF THE AGE OF 67-YEARES
Vbera, tu mater, tu fac, vitamq dedisti
Væ mihi pro tanto munere saxa dabo
Quam mallem Amoueat lapidem, bonus Angl? ore
Exeat christy corpus imago tua

Sed nil vota yatent venias cito Christe refurget
Claufa licet tumulo mater et Astra petet

The Inscription on the grave of Shakespeare's Wife in Stratford Church

fections and forgiveness of injuries. All these precepts are impersonated in Prospero, whose situation as a person raised above common humanity by his transcendent knowledge and his sway over the unseen world enables him to announce them with the authoritative solemnity of a messenger from heaven. That they represent Shakespeare's ultimate conclusions cannot be doubted, for the play, which bears every token of Shakespeare's latest manner, cannot have been written until after the appearance of Sylvester Jourdain's account of the tempest at the " Bermoothes," published in October 1610. There is not the least reason to suppose that Shakespeare immediately founded a drama upon this pamphlet. The improbability of his having done so is shown by the likelihood that A Winter's Tale, brought out in the late winter or early spring of 1611, was then in preparation. Shakespeare would not take up another theme till this was off his hands. The Tempest, then, can in no case be earlier than 1611, and the present writer thinks he has almost proved it to have been written in 1612-1613 for performance at Court on occasion of the nuptials of James's daughter Elizabeth with the Elector Palatine, a view