reated the high-spirited Paulina and the
thievish pedlar Autolycus, whose seductive roguery has become proverbial,
and he invented the reconciliation of Leontes, the irrationally jealous
husband, with Hermione, his wife, whose dignified resignation and
forbearance lend the story its intense pathos. In the boy Mamilius, the
poet depicted childhood in its most attractive guise, while the courtship
of Florizel and Perdita is the perfection of gentle romance. The
freshness of the pastoral incident surpasses that of all Shakespeare's
presentations of country life.

'Tempest.'

'The Tempest' was probably the latest drama that Shakespeare completed.
In the summer of 1609 a fleet bound for Virginia, under the command of
Sir George Somers, was overtaken by a storm off the West Indies, and the
admiral's ship, the 'Sea-Venture,' was driven on the coast of the
hitherto unknown Bermuda Isles. There they remained ten months,
pleasurably impressed by the mild beauty of the climate, but sorely tried
by the hogs which overran the island and by mysterious noises which led
them to imagine that spirits and devils had made the island their home.
Somers and his men were given up for lost, but they escaped from Bermuda
in two boats of cedar to Virginia in May 1610, and the news of their
adventures and of their safety was carried to England by some of the
seamen in September 1610. The sailors' arrival created vast public
excitement in London. At least five accounts were soon published of the
shipwreck and of the mysterious island, previously uninhabited by man,
which had proved the salvation of the expedition. 'A Discovery of the
Bermudas, otherwise called the Ile of Divels,' written by Sylvester
Jourdain or Jourdan, one of the survivors, appeared as early as October.
A second pamphlet describing the disaster was issued by the Council of
the Virginia Company in December, and a third by one of the leaders of
the expedition, Sir Thomas Gates. Shakespeare, who mentions the 'still
vexed Bermoothes' (I. i. 229), incorporated in 'The Tempest' many hints
from Jourdain, Gates, and the other pamphleteers. The references to the
gentle climate of the island on which Prospero is cast away, and to the
spirits and devils that infested it, seem to render its identification
with the newly discovered Bermudas unquestionable. But Shakespeare
incorporated the result of study of other books of travel. The name of
the god Setebos whom Caliban wors