[In the following essay, Gesner argues that William Shakespeare's The Tempest is primarily a pastoral play, and that in composing the work Shakespeare used the Greek pastoralist Longus's Daphnis and Chloe as an immediate source.]

The problem of the source of The Tempest has long intrigued scholars, because a single entirely satisfactory work has never been uncovered to account for its origin. Many significant contributions to the solution of the problem have, however, been offered. In 1817 Ludwig Tieck pointed to Die schöne Sidea, a play by Jacob Ayrer, as a source or close analogue. Its plot parallels The Tempest in that it centers on a prince-magician, served by a spirit, father of a daughter whose hand is won when the son of an enemy carries logs. Die schöne Sidea was surely written before 1605, the date of Ayrer's death, but since it went unpublished until 1618, seven years after the composition of The Tempest, a common ancestor is conjectured for the two.¹ The Italian commedia dell' arte, a form of entertainment very popular in Shakespeare's England, is also thought to have been a suggestive force for The Tempest. Several of the comedies dealt with the theme of men shipwrecked on an island ruled by a “Mago”. Love intrigues between the crew and the natives formed the plot materials, and often the greed of the sailors provided the comic situation.² A possible source for the political intrigue which resulted in Prospero's banishment has been found in William Thomas' History of Italy.³ The plot has also been linked to the Spanish Noches des Invierno of Antonio Eslava, in which a dethroned king raises a magic castle in mid-ocean, where he lives with his daughter until, also by magic, he brings about a marriage between her and the son of an enemy.⁴ The AEneid of Virgil is credited with inspiring both the storm and the meeting of the lovers.⁵ Many contemporary accounts of storms and shipwrecks have also been offered as sources for the storm of the first act, and in many there can be found a few similarities to the storm of the play.⁶

Even after careful study of all these suggested influences, different as each may be, none seems to rule out another, for the prime factor in Shakespeare's art is its marvelous composite quality. Indeed, a realization of its composite nature is the essential key to the understanding of his genius; thus, it is without questioning the value of these recognized sources or analogues that Longus' romance of Daphnis and Chloe is suggested as another important influence on the genesis of the play.

As early as 1916 Edwin Greenlaw showed clearly that Daphnis and Chloe was the ultimate parent of the chief elements in the plot of a type of pastoral which was used by Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare.⁷ From a study of these sources he singled out what he described as a composite pastoral plot, the essentials of which are as follows:

(1) A child of unknown parentage, usually a girl, is brought up by shepherds. As a variant, the heroine may be living in seclusion among shepherds.

(2) A lover is introduced. He may be a foundling or a man of high birth in guise of a shepherd or forester.

(3) The love story is complicated by a rival shepherd, usually a rude, bumbling, or cowardly person. He functions as a foil to the hero and supplies the comic element.

(4) Melodramatic incidents—the attack of a lioo or a bear—give the hero opportunity to prove his prowess.

(5) A captivity episode is usually introduced. The heroine is abducted; the hero comes to the rescue.

(6) It finally develops that the heroine is of high birth and may marry the hero.

(7) A malcontent or melancholy shepherd is introduced to the plot from Italian or Spanish sources.

The presence of some of these stock pastoral elements, Greenlaw clearly demonstrates in the plots of As You Like It, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale, but always with the accurate implication that Shakespeare was depending on the established pastoral tradition, derived ultimately from Longus, rather than on Longus as an immediate source. That The Tempest is primarily a pastoral play, the plot of which fits easily into the stock framework, Greenlaw does not recognize, but this may be readily demonstrated:

(1) Miranda, unaware that she is the daughter of the rightful Duke of Milan, is reared in pastoral seclusion on a desert island.

(2) Ferdinand appears in the role of her lover and undertakes pastoral labors to win her. (Carries logs.)

(3) Caliban replaces the blundering shepherd. Before the play opens he has made an attempt against Miranda's honor:

          [Prospero to Caliban] … I have us'd
thee,
          Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodg'd
thee
          In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
          The honour of my child.

(I. ii. 345-348)⁸

The comedy scenes between Caliban and the crew members, Trinculo and Stephano, provide humor and reveal Caliban as a bumbling coward. He is, however, the foil to Ariel rather than to the hero.

(4) The traditional melodramatic elements supplied by an attack of a lion or a bear are omitted, unless the storm be designated melodrama.

(5) The captivity episode is represented by the plot of Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano to kidnap Miranda. The plot is not successful, but the captivity motif is present.

(6) When the identity of Miranda and her father is revealed to the strangers, a reconciliation is effected and the lovers make plans for marriage.

The seventh element of the stock pastoral plot, the melancholic or philosophic shepherd—represented by Jacques in As You Like It, Philisides in Sidney's Arcadia—is not obviously present; for this Renaissance tradition of melancholy or discontent has been passed over and the thoughtful character, represented in The Tempest by Prospero, reverts to the earlier purely philosophic type as represented by the shepherd Philetas in Daphnis and Chloe. But significantly present in The Tempest is another important feature of the Daphnis and Chloe plot, supernatural direction, a feature which was not included in the stock pastoral as it developed during the Renaissance. In Daphnis and Chloe, Pan and the nymphs handle the problem of motivation and preside over the peripeties, while Eros personally conducts the love story. In The Tempest the supernatural control is in the hands of Prospero, but is executed by Ariel.

If it is agreed that The Tempest embodies elements of the Longus romance which were the typical pastoral material of the Renaissance, the problem now becomes one of determining just how direct the influence of Longus is on the play. The stock features as outlined could have been derived from almost any pastoral composition of the period. The omission of any melancholy or malcontent element in Prospero's characterization—the so-called Italian or Spanish feature of the stock plot—and the addition of the supernatural machinery point directly to Longus rather than to an intermediary source, except that omission can not be a conclusive argument, and supernatural direction abounds in classical literature. Other close parallels with Longus do, however, exist, and these, coupled with the Greek features of the plot, lead one to suggest that Shakespeare was familiar with Daphnis and Chloe before he wrote The Tempest, an idea bolstered by Samuel Lee Wolff's recognition of Daphnis and Chloe as a primary source of the pastoral sections of The Winter's Tale.⁹

But first, an examination of the bibliographic accessibility of Daphnis and Chloe to Shakespeare. In 1559 Jacques Amyot brought the romance into the Renaissance orbit by the publication of a French translation at Paris. This was reissued in 1594, 1596, and 1609. Rome in 1569 and again in 1581 saw the publication of the Expositorum ex Longo libri IV of Laurentius Gambara. A second French translation of the romance was published by “L. L. L.” at Paris in 1578. In 1587 Angel Day published his English translation: Daphnis and Chloe excellently describing the weight of affection, the simplicity of love, the purport of honest meaning, the resolution of men, and disposition of Fate, finished in Pastorall, etc. A Greek and Latin text prepared by Raphaelis Columbanius was issued in 1598 at Florence. Another prepared by the scholarly Juda and Nicolae Bonnuitius was published in 1601 at Heidelberg, and in 1605 appeared at Hanover another such edition by Gothofredus Jungermannus.¹⁰The Tempest is almost always dated 1611¹¹; thus any of these publications presumably were accessible to Shakespeare, although the French translation of Amyot and the English translation of Day would seem to be the sources which could be most readily utilized.

But to turn to an examination of the romance and the play: First, there is a general parallel in theme and setting. Both Daphnis and Chloe and The Tempest take as their central topic the idea of celebrating the innocence of youth. Miranda and Ferdinand, Daphnis and Chloe are blessed innocents as lovers. Further, both works are island stories: in each the locale of the action is a sea-surrounded paradise. Nature plays a significant part in the background and becomes a part of the intangible atmosphere in both novel and play. The characters refer frequently to nature and seem to be aware of it as a kind of presence.¹²

Second, there is a general correspondence in the characters. Daphnis and Ferdinand are both pretty youths who engage in pastoral labors, and, although Daphnis is country bred and Ferdinand court bred, both approach the heroines with innocent and reverent love. There is no more trivial sophistication in the love of Ferdinand for Miranda than in the pasture-bred love of Daphnis for Chloe. Further, Daphnis is led to Chloe by the supernatural agency of Eros:

So nowe haue I [Eros] … in … charge … Daphnis and Chloe, … this morning [I] brought them together vnto the downes.¹³

And Ferdinand is led to Miranda by the supernatural agency of Ariel:

Re-enter ARIEL invisible, playing and singing;
FERDINAND following

Ariel literally sings Ferdinand to his bride!

Chloe and Miranda are both reared in pastoral seclusion, ignorant of their high births. Both are characterized as innocent of the world and of love—Miranda has seen no man but her father and the semi-man Caliban before she beholds Ferdinand. Chloe does not understand her emotions which are aroused by the sight of Daphnis in his bath. Chloe helps with Daphnis' herds; Miranda begs to carry logs for Ferdinand. Both have a high regard for their pastoral rearing. At the end of the novel, Chloe's city-born aristocratic background has been established; nevertheless, she and Daphnis return to the country for their wedding and settle there for a long life of pastoral delight. When Miranda hears of her former high estate, she says to her father:

What foul play had we that we came from thence?
Or blessed was't we did?

(I.ii.60f.)

Philetas of the novel and Prospero of the play generally coincide. Philetas is a philosophic shepherd who supervises the love affair of Daphnis and Chloe and acts as judge when Daphnis is tried for trouble created by city gallants. He is generally respected and is a kind of presiding patriarch of his island home. Prospero is also a philosopher, although he combines the philosophy with magic. By magic he instigates the love affair of Miranda and Ferdinand. At the end of the play he serves in a judge-like capacity when all identities are revealed and the knots of the plot are untied. He, like Philetas, is the deeply respected patriarch of an island.

Eros is the supernatural instigator and director of the loves of Daphnis and Chloe; Philetas only supervises and instructs. Invisible to the lovers, Eros leads them together. He is associated with gardens, sunlight, laughter:

… there is no nightingale, thrush, or other kinde of bird whatsoeuer, that haunteth either woods or hedge-rowes, that euer gaue foorth the like, or carried in hir tunes, so delightfull a melodie.

(p. 57)

In the novel Eros is a semi-allegorical character. His presence is felt; his work is recognized; but he is invisible to all except Philetas. Matching him in The Tempest is Ariel, the supernatural sprite who leads Miranda and Ferdinand together. Prospero instigates the plans for this love, but Ariel executes them. Thus, the roles are reversed. Like Eros, Ariel is associated with the pleasant and sunny aspects of nature. His coming seems to create music. He is at will invisible to all but Prospero, but others feel his presence and seem to be aware of his influence. The actual derivation of his name is from the Hebrew Cabala, where he is the Prince of the Angels,¹⁴ yet the verbal correspondence between Ariel and Eros is suggestive.

An incidental correspondence between Daphnis and Chloe and The Tempest may rest in Prospero's command to Ariel: “Go make thyself like a nymph of the sea” (I. ii. 301). The reason for the command has been questioned, since there is no obvious advantage presented in the play by the proposed transformation.¹⁵ But nymphs figure in Daphnis and Chloe as the guardians of the heroine, and they play an important role in the supernatural machinery of the novel. On the supposition that Shakespeare was familiar with the pastoral traditions established by Longus, it is here suggested that Ariel in the role of a nymph simply suggested itself, since he was to be the supernatural agent to accomplish in The Tempest much of what the nymphs accomplish in Daphnis and Chloe.

Dorco functions in the novel as the rude, bumbling shepherd, the rival of Daphnis, who supplies the comedy in his uncouth efforts to win Chloe. As part of his suit he supplies her with abundance of country gifts (p. 23). When these fail to win her, he disguises himself in a wolf skin and attempts rape. Caliban corresponds closely with Dorco, except that his “wolf skin” is a part of his nature. He is a kind of half-man, half-beast, frequently represented on the stage dressed in an animal skin. In the play he is referred to variously as a cat, puppy-head, fish, or tortoise. Thus, he can be interpreted as any animal-like man-monster, or as a very uncouth man. Before the play opens he has tried to rape Miranda; he functions in the comic scenes with Trinculo and Stephano, and to win their friendship offers them a profusion of country gifts.¹⁶

There are a few incidental correspondences between novel and play which suggest that the pastoral influence on The Tempest might have had its source in Longus. An incursion of foreigners occurs in both, and in both instances is associated with a great storm at sea. In Danhnis and Chloe, gallants of Mytilene come to the island to hunt. They make trouble, are punished, and in revenge kidnap Chloe. At this, Pan deliberately creates a fearful storm and commotion at sea. Angel Day translates the storm passage thus:

… it seemed at night in the middest of their banqueting, that all the land about them was on fire, and a sodaine noise arose in their hearing as of a great fleete, and armed nauie for the seas, approching towardes them. The sound whereof and dreadfull sight, made some of the to crie Arme Arme, and others to gather together their companies & weapons. One thought his fellowe next him was hurt, an other feared the shot that he heard ratling in his eares, this man thought his companion slaine hard by his side, an other seemed to stumble on dead carcasses. In briefe, the hurrie and tumult was so wonderfull and straunge, as they almost were at their wittes endes. … A dreadful noise was heard from the rocks, not as the sound of any naturall trumpets, but far more shril and hideous, … about the middest of the day, … Pan himself in a vision stoode right before him, and beeing as he was in the shape vnder the Pine before described, [orders him to return Chloe] … The Captaine … caused present serch to be made for Chloe … and shee being found with a chapelet of the Pine tree leaues uppon her head, hee declared vnto them the expresse commaundement and direction of the god: … Chloe was no sooner parted out of the vessel where shee was, but they heard from the hie rockes a sound againe, but nothing dreadfull as the other, but rather much sweete, melodious, and pleasing, such as the most cunning sheepheards use before their flockes and heards,¹⁷

In The Tempest, Neapolitan and Milanese noblemen and their retainers come ashore on the island as the result of a great storm created by the supernatural direction of Prospero and executed by the supernatural agency of Ariel. The storm is described as follows:

[Miranda] The sky, it seems, would pour down
          stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to th' welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out.

(I. ii. 3ff)

[Ariel] I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam'd amazement: sometime
I'd divide
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards, and boresprit, would I flame distinctly
Then meet, and join: Jove's lightnings, the precursors
O' the dreadful thunder-claps,
more momentary
And sight-outrunning were not: the fire and cracks
Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune
Seem to besiege and make his bold waves tremble,
Yea, his dread trident shake.
…
                                                                                Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad and play'd
Some tricks of desperation. All but
mariners,
Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,
Then all a-fire with me: the king's
son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring,—then like reeds, not hair,—
Was the first man that leap'd, cried, ‘Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.’

(I. ii. 196-206, 208-215)

Fer. [dinand] Where should this music be? i' th' air,
          or th' earth?
It sounds no more;—and sure, it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wrack,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury, and my passion,
With its sweet air: thence I have
follow'd it,—

(I. ii. 385-391)

[Prospero]                                        —I
have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth
the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war: to the dread-rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's
stout oak
With his own holt: the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and
let them forth
By my so potent art.

(V. i. 41-50)¹⁸

Thus do the situations parallel: an incursion of foreigners to a sea island is associated with a supernaturally created storm. The storms are accompanied by darkness during daylight hours, illusions of fire, supernatural visions of dead men, and desperate behavior on the part of those trapped in the fray. Both tumults are compared to war, and both end on a strain of sweet music. Ultimately it is found that no harm has occurred to the unfortunates involved in them. The parallels in the descriptions of the storm are indicated by italics, but to assert that the Day version of Longus contributed to Shakespeare's thinking is unsound, for Amyot's French translation is equally suggestive:

… soubdainement advis que toute la terre devint en feu, & entendirent de loing tel que seroit le flot d'une grosse armée de mer, qui fust venuë contre eulx: l'un cryoit à l'arme, l'autre appelloit ses compagnons, l'un pensoit estre jà blessé, l'autre cuydoit veoir un homme mort gisant devant luy; … & entendoit-on le son d'une trompe du dessus d'une roche haulte & droicte, estant à la crime de l'escueil, [promontory or cliff] au pied duquel ilz estoyent à l'abryt; mais ce son n'estoit point plaisant à oüyr, comme seroit le son d'une trompette ordinaire, ains effroyoit ceux qui l'entendoyent, ne plus ne moins que le son d'une tromperte de guerre la nuict: … que l'on entendit derechef le son de la trompe dedans le rocher, mais non plus effroyable ne maniere de l'alarme, ains tel que les bergers ont accoustumé de sonner quand ilz menent leurs bestes aux champs.¹⁹

If one accept these passages as evidence that Shakespeare knew Longus, it would be impossible to decide whether from Day or Amyot. Certainly the French version was the more accessible of the two, for although Day's would be the easier to read, Amyot's had gone through four editions between 1559 and 1609, while the English version appeared but once in 1587. The 1578 French translation of “L. L. L.” was also buried in one edition.²⁰ There is, however, evidence in the marriage festivities that if Shakespeare was influenced by Daphnis and Chloe when writing The Tempest, he probably had read a version other than Day's, or had read Day's as well as another.

Whatever may have been the contemporary reason for interrupting the action of The Tempest with the marriage masque of Act IV, its appropriateness to the play cannot be denied, for the masque was a major attraction at many wedding festivities involving people of royal or noble rank during the Elizabethan period, and it serves in the play to elucidate the pastoral nature of the love of Miranda and Ferdinand, and to give a kind of pastoral blessing to their projected union. First Ceres, “most bounteous lady … Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and peas (IV. i. 60f.)” is called in by Iris, “Who with … saffron wings … Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers (IV. i. 78f)” to Ceres' “bosky acres (IV. i. 81)”. Then Juno enters and with Ceres sings a wedding song to Miranda and Ferdinand.²¹ Next the nymphs “of the wandring brooks” (IV. i. 128) are called. They enter, followed by “sun-burn'd sicklemen, of August weary” (IV. i. 134). The nymphs and reapers join together in a dance just before the masque vanishes.

Nothing else in the play proclaims its essential pastoral nature so positively as does the masque. The structure of the stock pastoral plot is nearly perfect, but it is hidden from the unobservant behind the conventional romance of the situation and the elements of magic in Prospero's characterization. The same air of magic tends to conceal the pastoral quality of the island setting. It is as though Shakespeare saw this and would loudly and clearly proclaim the play pastoral by the device of the masque.

The pastoral blessing on the marriage of Miranda and Ferdinand may have been suggested by the country wedding of Daphnis and Chloe:

… Her father gave Chloe away in the presence of the Nymphs, … and regaled [the villagers] … luxuriously. … the entertainment was all of a rustic and pastoral kind. One sang the song the reapers sing, another cracked the jokes the vintagers crack.

(p. 97)

Day, perhaps tired when he reached the final page, omits the wedding from his translation, but Amyot (p. 156 f.) follows his source more closely.

Thus it can be seen that if the nymphs and reapers dancing in Shakespeare's bucolic marriage masque were suggested by the nymphs and reapers of Daphnis and Chloe's wedding, they probably derive from Amyot. Of course the Greek editions would not have been beyond Shakespeare's reach, but they certainly are less obvious considerations.

The conclusion that Longus is an ultimate influence on The Tempest is based on the presence of the elements of the stock pastoral plot, from which it deviates in only one instance. The conclusion that Longus is a direct, a primary influence, is not so surely established, but the coincidences of the chief characters, the striking coincidences in the storms, and the similarities in the wedding festivities certainly suggest that Shakespeare was familiar with Longus at first hand. In connection with this it is well to recall Wolff's conclusion that Longus is a primary source of The Winter's Tale, a play written probably no more than a year before the composition of The Tempest.²²

Notes

1. See A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Tempest, ed. H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1920), pp. 324-341, for a discussion of the coincidences and a reprint of Ayrer's play.

2. E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (Oxford, 1930), I, 493f., reviews the theory.

3. J. M. Nosworthy, “The Narrative Sources of The Tempest”, RES, XXIV (1948), 282.

4. Nosworthy, pp. 383f.

5. Nosworthy, pp. 287-293.

6. Reviewed in the Variorum Tempest, pp. 308-315, 320-324.

7. “Shakespeare's Pastorals”, SP, XIII (1916), 122-154.

8. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, ed. W. J. Craig (London, 1947). All further citations of Shakespeare are from this edition.

9. S. L. Wolff, The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction (New York, 1912), pp. 447-455.

10. The Renaissance bibliography of Longus is cited in detail in my Greek Romance Materials in the Plays of Shakespeare (University Microfilms, 1956), pp. 333f.

11. See Robert Adger Law, “On the Dating of Shakspere's Plays”, Shakespeare Association Bulletin, XI (1935), 46-51. Law publishes a convenient tabulation of the conclusions of J. Q. Adams, R. M. Alden, T. Brooke, O. J. Campbell, H. Craig, and T. M. Parrott as to the dating of Shakespeare's plays.

12. For example, see Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe”, Three Greek Romances, tr. Moses Hadas (New York, 1953), pp. 21, 30, 36, 58f; and The Tempest, ed. Craig, I. ii. 336ff; II. i. 49-52, 55f; II. ii. 173f; III. ii. 147-150. All quotations are from this edition.

13. Longus, Daphnis and Chloe: The Elizabethan Version from Amyot's Translations by Angel [Illegible Text] Reprinted from the Unique Original, ed. Joseph Jacobs (London, 1890), p. 58. Quotations are from this edition.

14. See Nelson Sherman Bushnell, “Natural Supernaturalism in The Tempest”, PMLA, XLVII (1932), 690, and W. S. Johnson, “The Genesis of Ariel”, SQ, II, 205-210.

15. The Tempest, ed. Furness, p. 64, reviews the question. See also Irwin Smith, “Ariel as Ceres”, SQ, IV, 430-432.

16. See II. ii. 173f, 180-185.

17. Day, pp. 74-77. My italics except “Arme Arme.”

18. My italics except “Fer.”

19. Longus, Les Amours Pastorales de Daphnis et Chloé, tr. Jacques Amyot. (n.p., 1731), pp. 61-64.

20. I have been unable to obtain this edition for examination.

21. See IV. i. 110-117.

22. Law dates The Winter's Tale between 1610 and 1611.