Part 38 (1/2)

Miranda is only fifteen years of age Shakespeare turned Juliet, it will be reirl of sixteen into one of fourteen; now, though the sensuality has left him, he makes Miranda only fifteen; clearly he is the saht as he enty years before Then Prospero tells Miranda of himself and his brother, the ”perfidious” Duke:

”And Prospero, the prinity, and for the liberal arts Without a parallel; those being all my study”

He will not only be a Prince now, but a master ”without a parallel” in the liberal arts He th, how he allowed himself to be supplanted by his false brother, and speaks about hi worldly ends, all dedicate To closeness, and the bettering ofso retired, O'erprized all popular rate, in ood parent, did beget of hireat As my trust hich had, indeed, no lilecting worldly ends,” had dedicated hioes on to tell us explicitly how Shakespeare loved books, which ere only able to infer from his earlier plays:

”Me, poor ain, Gonzalo (another naiven hi I loved my books, he furnished me From my own library, with volurieves lest she had been a trouble to him: forthwith Shakespeare-Prospero answers:

”O, a cherubim Thou wast, that did preserve me Thou didst smile Infused with a fortitude from heaven, When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt Understoainst what should ensue”

But why should the roan under a burden? had he no confidence in his miraculous powers? All this is Shakespeare's confession Every word is true; his daughter did indeed ”preserve”

Shakespeare, and enable him to bear up under the burden of life's betrayals

No wonder Prospero begins to apologize for this long-winded confession, which indeed is ”hto hi us his own feelings at the tiician then hears from Ariel how the shi+pwreck has been conducted without har a hair of anyone

The whole scene is an extraordinarily faithful and detailed picture of Shakespeare's soul I find significance even in the fact that Ariel wants his freedoinally proposed Shakespeare finished ”The Tempest,” I believe, and therewith set the seal on his life's work a full year earlier than he had intended; he feared lest death ht surprise him before he had put the pinnacle on his work Ariel's tor for ination,” as once the slave of ”a foul witch,” and by her ”imprisoned painfully” for ”a dozen years”

That ”dozen years” is to : it shows thatof the duration of his passion-torture was absolutely correct--Shakespeare's ”delicate spirit” and best powers bound to Mary Fitton's ”earthy” service from 1597 to 1608

We can perhaps fix this latter date with some assurance Mistress Fitton married for the second time a Captain or Mr Polwhele late in 1607, or some short tie was recorded in the will of her great uncle It seems to me probable, or at least possible, that this event marks her complete separation from Shakespeare; sheto be a Maid of Honour

Shakespeare is so filled with himself in this last play, so certain that he is the most ied with inti than any other in all his works

And when Ferdinand coe Shakespeare lends hier interest him; he is careless of characterization Ferdinand says:

”Thisboth their fury and my passion With its sweet air”

Music, it will be remembered, had precisely the saht” Ferdinand, too, is extraordinarily conceited:

”I am the best of them that speak this speech

Myself am Naples”

Shakespeare's natural aristocratic pride as a Prince reinforced by his understanding of his own real importance Ferdinand then declares he will be content with a prison if he can see Miranda in it:

”space enough Have I in such a prison”

Which is Hamlet's:

”I could be bounded in a nutshell, and countof infinite space”