Chapter VIII: Epilogue

As country vicars, when the sermon's done,
Run headlong to the benediction;
Well knowing, though the better sort may stay,
The vulgar rout will run unblest away:
So we, when once our play is done, make haste
With a short epilogue to close your taste.
In thus withdrawing, we seem mannerly;
But, when the curtain's down, we peep, and see
A jury of the wits, who still stay late,
And in their club decree the poor play's fate;
Their verdict back is to the boxes brought,
Thence all the town pronounces it their thought.
Thus, gallants, we, like Lilly, can foresee;
But if you ask us what our doom will be,
We by to-morrow will our fortune cast,
As he tells all things when the year is past.

THE

TEMPEST;

OR, THE

ENCHANTED ISLAND.

A

COMEDY.

THE TEMPEST.

In this alteration of the "Tempest," Dryden acknowledges his obligation to Sir William Davenant, whom he extols for his quick and piercing imagination. Sir William was the son of an inn-keeper in Oxford, whose house was frequented by our immortal Shakespeare; and hence an ill-founded tradition ascribed to him a paternal interest in young Davenant: But this slander on Shakespeare's moral character has been fully refuted in the Prolegomena to Johnson and Steevens' edition of his plays. Davenant was appointed poet laureat upon the death of Ben Jonson. During the civil wars, he distinguished himself on the royal side, was lieutenant-general of ordnance to the earl of Newcastle, and was knighted by Charles at the siege of Gloucester. He was afterwards much trusted by Henrietta, the queen-dowager; and was finally made prisoner by an English man of war, in attempting to convey a colony of loyalists to Virginia. After a long captivity in the Tower, he was liberated through the intercession of the lord-keeper, Whitelocke; the wisest and most temperate of the counsellors of the ruling power. Through his countenance, Sir William was protected, or connived at, in bringing forward certain interludes and operas, even during the rigid sway of fanaticism. After the restoration, he became manager of a company of players, called the duke of York's servants, in distinction to the king's company, which was directed by Killigrew. He introduced upon the stage much pomp in dress, scenery, and decoration, as if to indemnify the theatrical muses for the poor shifts to which they had been reduced during the usurpation. Sir William Davenant died in 1668, at the age of 63.

"Gondibert," his greatest performance, incurred, when first published, more ridicule, and in latter times more neglect, than its merits deserve. An epic poem, in elegiac stanzas, must always be tedious, because no structure of verse is more unfavourable to narration than that which almost peremptorily requires each sentence to be restricted, or protracted, to four lines. But the liveliness of Davenant's imagination, which Dryden has pointed out as his most striking attribute, has illuminated even the dull and dreary path which he has chosen; and perhaps few poems afford more instances of vigorous conceptions, and even felicity of expression, than the neglected "Gondibert.[C]"

The alteration of the Tempest was Davenant's last work; and it seems to have been undertaken, chiefly, with a view to give room for scenical decoration. Few readers will think the play much improved by the introduction of the sea-language, which Davenant had acquired during the adventurous period of his life. Nevertheless, the ludicrous contest betwixt the sailors, for the dukedom and viceroyship of a barren island, gave much amusement at the time, and some of the expressions were long after proverbial[D]. Much cannot be said for Davenant's ingenuity, in contrasting the character of a woman, who had never seen a man, with that of a man, who had never seen a woman, or in inventing a sister monster for Caliban. The majestic simplicity of Shakespeare's plan is injured by thus doubling his characters; and his wild landscape is converted into a formal parterre, where "each alley has its brother." In sketching characters drawn from fancy, and not from observation, the palm of genius must rest with the first inventor; others are but copyists, and a copy shews no where to such disadvantage as when placed by the original. Besides, although we are delighted with the feminine simplicity of Miranda, it becomes unmanly childishness in Hippolito; and the premature coquetry of Dorinda is disgusting, when contrasted with the maidenly purity that chastens the simplicity of Shakespeare's heroine. The latter seems to display, as it were by instinct, the innate dignity of her sex; the former, to shew, even in solitude, the germ of those vices, by which, in a voluptuous age, the female character becomes degraded. The wild and savage character of Caliban is also sunk into low and vulgar buffoonery.

Dryden has not informed us of the share he had in this alteration: It was probably little more than the care of adapting it to the stage. The prologue is one of the most masterly tributes ever paid at the shrine of Shakespeare.

From the epilogue, the Tempest appears to have been acted in 1667. Although Dryden was under engagements to the king's company, this play was performed by the duke's servants, probably because written in conjunction with Davenant, their manager. It was not published until 1670.

Footnotes.

[Footnote C: An excellent critical essay upon the beauties and defects of Davenant's epic, may be found in Aikin's Miscellanies. Those who are insensible to theme rits of the poem, may admire the courage of the author, who wrote some part of it when he conceived himself within a week of being hanged. A tradition prevails, that his life was saved by Milton, whose life, in return, he saved at the Restoration. Were the story true, how vast was the requital!]

[Footnote D: As, "Peace and the But," &c.]