n the
severer colours that were habitual to Shakespeare's fully developed art.
Caliban--Ariel's antithesis--did not owe his existence to any conscious
endeavour on Shakespeare's part to typify human nature before the
evolution of moral sentiment. {257a} Caliban is an imaginary portrait,
conceived with matchless vigour and vividness, of the aboriginal savage
of the New World, descriptions of whom abounded in contemporary
travellers' speech and writings, and universally excited the liveliest
curiosity. {257b} In Prospero, the guiding providence of the romance,
who resigns his magic power in the closing scene, traces have been sought
of the lineaments of the dramatist himself, who in this play probably
bade farewell to the enchanted work of his life. Prospero is in the
story a scholar-prince of rare intellectual attainments, whose engrossing
study of the mysteries of science has given him command of the forces of
nature. His magnanimous renunciation of his magical faculty as soon as
by its exercise he has restored his shattered fortunes is in perfect
accord with the general conception of his just and philosophical temper.
Any other justification of his final act is superfluous.

Unfinished plays. The lost play of 'Cardenio.'

While there is every indication that in 1611 Shakespeare abandoned
dramatic composition, there seems little doubt that he left with the
manager of his company unfinished drafts of more than one play which
others were summoned at a later date to complete. His place at the head
of the active dramatists was at once filled by John Fletcher, and
Fletcher, with some aid possibly from his friend Philip Massinger,
undertook the working up of Shakespeare's unfinished sketches. On
September 9, 1653, the publisher Humphrey Moseley obtained a license for
the publication of a play which he described as 'History of Cardenio, by
Fletcher and Shakespeare.' This was probably identical with the lost
play, 'Cardenno,' or 'Cardenna,' which was twice acted at Court by
Shakespeare's company in 1613--in May during the Princess Elizabeth's
marriage festivities, and on June 8 before the Duke of Savoy's
ambassador. {258a} Moseley, whose description may have been fraudulent,
{258b} failed to publish the piece, and nothing is otherwise known of it
with certainty; but it was no doubt a dramatic version of the adventures
of the lovelorn Cardenio which are related in the first part of 'Don
Quixote' (ch. xxiii.-xxxvi