ABSTRACT
The Tempest speaks to us, somehow, convincingly, as a pièce de circonstance, and the suggestion that it was addressed, in its brevity, its rich simplicity, and its free elegance, to court-production, and above all to providing, with a string of other dramas, for the “intellectual” splendour of a wedding-feast, is, when once entertained, not easily dislodged. A few things fail to fit, but more fit strikingly. The Tempest affects us, taking its complexity and its perfection together, as the rarest of all examples of literary art. The felicity enjoyed is enjoyed longer and more intensely, and the art involved, completely revealed to the master, holds the securest revel. The “story” in The Tempest is a thing of naught, for any story will provide a remote island, a shipwreck and a coincidence.
