stinct from
comedies, and he had no liking for fantastic medleys. Indeed, a few
years later he indulged in a scoff at Shakspere's "servant-monster" and
at "those who beget tales, tempests, and such like drolleries."
Shakspere, recalling some such discussion may have said to himself,
"Well, here is a play as fantastic as possible, and just to show
Benjamin what can be done, I will keep it in strict accord with his
classical Unities of Time and Place." For this or some other propose he
was for once at great pains to keep all the action within the time of
the stage-performance, tho in doing so he makes his one nautical error
by forgetting that the seaman's measure of time was a half-hour glass.
When Prospero first consults Ariel we are precisely told that it is two
o'clock in the afternoon, and just before the end of the drama we are
told that three hours have elapst.

It has taken me too long to enumerate some of the materials in addition
to those of Mr. Kipling's sailor with which Shakspere's fantasy worked.
I hope I may have suggested that almost always, as here in this
extraordinary flight of his imagination, he was writing as a playwright
and not without full use of the hints and opportunities which the
contemporary theater afforded. And I should like to suggest also that to
the playwrights of that theater there were open many and great
opportunities. Sailors home from a new world might cross the threshold
of the dramatist; and dramatists then could think of magicians and
monsters and fairies, of goddesses and drunken boors, of ideal
commonwealths, the three unities, and beautiful verse, all in terms of
the stage. Thru some such processes as have been rehearst, by some such
influences, Shakspere's imagination must have been led to the
construction of a spectacular play that would win applause both in the
Blackfriars playhouse and at court. Perhaps it is out of such varied
driftwood that all enchanted islands are created.

ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE.

(April 23, 1916).

How Shakspere Came to Write the 'Tempest'

How Shakspere Came to Write the 'Tempest'

_To the Editor of the Spectator._

SIR:--Your article on 'Landscape and Literature' in the _Spectator_ of
June 18th has the following, among other suggestive passages:--"But
whence came the vision of the enchanted island in the 'Tempest'? It had
no existence in Shakspere's world, but was woven out of such stuff as
dreams are made of."

May I cite Malo