Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 4 THE TEMPEST. readings recently proposed by eminent contemporary Shake- spearians; and in these, as I can hardly have any self-partiality to warp my judgment, so I feel more confident as to the result. Date of the Writing. It has been ascertained beyond question that The Tempest was written at some time between the years 1603 and 1613. On the one hand, the leading features of Gonzalo's Commonwealth, as described in Act ii., Scene i, were evidently taken from John Florio's translation of Montaigne, which was published in 1603. As the passage is curious in itself, and as it aptly illustrates the Poet's method of appropriating from others, I subjoin it together with the original: ? Had I plantation of this isle, my lord, And were the King on't, what would I do ? I' the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things: for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No occupation; all men idle, all, And women too, but innocent and pure; No sovereignty: All things in common Nature should produce Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony, Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine, Would I not have; but Nature should bring forth, Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance, To feed my innocent people. I would with such perfection govern, sir, T' excel the golden age. In Montaigne's essay Of the Cannibals, as translated by Florio, we have the following: Meseemeth that what inINTRODUCTION. 5 those nations we see by experience doth not only exceed all the pictures wherewith licentious Poesy hath proudly embellishe...