man who had
never seen a man. Suckling borrowed its spirits. Davenant and Dryden
added a man who had never seen a woman, a husband for Sycorax, and a
sister for Caliban. Mr. Percy Mackaye has used its scene, mythology, and
persons for his tercentenary Shaksperian Masque. Its suggestiveness has
extended beyond the drama, and aroused moral allegories and
disquisitions. Caliban has been elaborated as the Missing Link, and in
the philosophical drama of Renan as the spirit of Democracy, and in
Browning's poem as a satire on the anthropomorphic conception of Deity.

But apart from such commentaries by poets and philosophers, the poem has
lived these many generations in the imaginations of thousands. There,
the enchanted island has multiplied and continued its existence. Shelley
sang,

Of a land far from ours
Where music and moonlight and feeling are one.

Shakspere created that land as the possession of each of us. Not far
removed, but close to the great continent of our daily routine and
drudgery, lies this enchanted island where we may find music and
moonlight and feeling, and also fun and mischief and wisdom. There, in
tune with the melody and transfigured as by the charm of moonlight, we
may encounter the nonsense of drunken clowns, the mingled greed and
romance of primitive man, the elfishness of a child, the beauty of
girlhood, and the benign philosophy of old age. We may leave the city at
the close of business, and, if we avoid the snares of Caliban and
Trinculo, we may sup with Prospero, Ariel, and Miranda.

How did Shakspere discover this enchanted island? From what materials
did he create the "baseless fabric of this vision"? What had London
playhouses to do with these spirits of thin air? On what books or plays
were these dreams made? Out of the issues of rivalry and profit which
beset the King's company of players at the Globe and the Blackfriars,
how came this "insubstantial pageant"? We have been told that the
Sonnets are the key with which to unlock Shakspere's heart; and perhaps
if we could answer all these questions we might have the key to his
imagination. I do not believe, however, that his imagination was lockt
up. Rather it was open wide to many impulses, hospitable to countless
influences. This apparently is the opinion of Mr. Kipling, who suggests
that Shakspere's "vision was woven from the most prosaic material, from
nothing more promising, in fact, than the chatter of a half-ti