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fidelity than judgment and industry; but his memory failing in his last calamitous indisposition, he probably gave me the name of one novel for another. I remember he added a circumstance, which may lead to a discovery,— that the principal character of the romance, answering to Shakespeare's Prospero. was a chymical necromancer, who had bound a spirit like Ariel to obey his call, and perform his services. It was a common pretence of dealers in the occult sciences to have a demon at command. At least Aurelio, or Orelio, was probably one of the names of this romance, the production and multiplicity of gold being the grand object of alchymy. Taken at large, the magical part of the Tempest is founded on that sort of philosophy which was practised by John Dee and his associ ates, and has been called the Rosicrucian. The name Ariel came from the Talmudistic mysteries with which the learned Jews had infected this science. T. WARTON.

Mr. Theobald tells us, that The Tempest must have been written after 1609, because the Bermuda Islands, which are mentioned in it, were unknown to the English until that year; but this is a mistake. He might have seen in Hackluyt, 1600, folio, a description of Bermuda, by Henry May, who was shipwrecked there in 1593.

It was however one of our author's last works. In 1598, he played a part in the original Every Man in his Humour. Two of the characters are Prospero and Stephano. Here Ben Jonson taught him the pronunciation of the latter word, which is always right in The Tempest:

"Is not this Stephåno, my drunken butler ?”

And always wrong in his earlier play, The Merchant of Venice, which had been on the stage at least two or three years before its publication in 1600:

My friend Stephano, signify I pray you," &c.

So little did Mr. Capell know of his author, when he idly supposed his school literature might perhaps have been lost by the dissipation of youth, or the busy scene of public

life!

FARMER.

This play must have been written before 1614, when Jonson sneers at it in his Bartholomew Fair. In the latter plays of Shakespeare, he has less of pun and quibble than in his early ones. In The Merchant of Venice, he expressen- ly declares against them. This perhaps might be one criterion to discover the dates of his plays. BLACKStone.

See Mr. Malone's Attempt to ascertain the Order of Shakespeare's Plays, and a Note on The cloud-capp'd towers, &c. Act IV.

STEEVENS

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.
TRINCULO, a jester.

STEPHANO, a drunken butler.

Master of a ship, Boatswain, and Mariners.

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Other spirits, attending on Prospero.

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

*This enumeration of persons is taken from the folio 1623.-Steevens

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