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The Probable Origin of Ariel
ROBERT R. REED, JR.
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62 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY
Kent. Near the beginning of the play, John is described as having the power
to "fetche swifte wingde spirits ... from the upper regions of the ayre".4 In a
variety of capacities, Shrimp answers to the description of an aerial demon.
Lithe of manner, he customarily skips onto the stage. When the rival sorcerer
John a Cumber, through art magic, has captured the princesses Sidanen and
Marian, John a Kent commands the help of Shrimp:
Sirra, get thee to the back gate of the Castell
And through the key hole quickly wring thee in,
Mark well, and bring me word what stratagem
This cunning John meanes next to enterprise.
The mercurial Shrimp replies, "I fly Sir, and am there already" (p. 31). The
attributes mentioned in this dialogue are those of a demon, probably of aerial
origin; a human magician, according to Elizabethan interpretation, did not
have the power to reduce himself to a diminutive size or to travel instantan-
eously from place to place.
The stratagems employed by Shrimp in winning back the stolen princesses
into the custody of his master are two in number; moreover, they are precise
prototypes of those magical feats which Ariel later performed and which, at
the same time, are not directly related to the traditional functions of an "ayrie
spirit". Like Ariel, Shrimp assumes an invisible form and then plays upon a
pipe so enchantingly that those who hear him are irresistibly compelled to fol-
low. In this manner he leads the two princesses and their escorts back from the
town of Chester to a "Chestnut tree hard by", a rendezvous designated by John
a Kent. Once the company has arrived at the chestnut tree, one of the escorts,
Oswen by name, is prompted to remark:
This sound is of some instrument;
for two houres space it still hath haunted us,
now heere, now there, on eche syde round about us,
And questionless, either we follow it,
Or it guydes us, least we mistake our way. (P. 34)
5 William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. i6i2). The Comedies, ed. by W. J. Craig (London,
I922), p. 22 (I. ii. 385).
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THE PROBABLE ORIGIN OF ARIEL 63
practice of Ariel. Once he has brought the travelers, after many miles of wan-
dering, to the chestnut tree, he renews his pipe-playing-but to another purpose.
With "dainty music", he lulls the two escorts into a heavy slumber and, in this
manner, brings about the escape of the two princesses, who remain fully con-
scious (p. 35). Thus, Munday precisely foreshadows Shakespeare's use of a clever
device: in both dramas, an air-like spirit, by playing soporific music, has
power to lull selected victims into sleep without affecting the other persons
who are present, and whom he wishes to stay awake. The concept of Ariel's
employment of music to cast Alonso and Gonzalo into a slumber, during which
Antonio and Sebastian remain fully awake, has no precedent in the pneuma-
tological theories of the Elizabethans; the only extant Elizabethan prototype
of this episode is Shrimp's stratagem-his selective inducement of sleep through
the force of music-as depicted by Munday.
In the restricted circle of the Elizabethan theatrical profession, Shakespeare
and Munday were certain to have been familiar with one another's plays. But
the manner in which Shakespeare acquired a comparatively exact knowledge
of John a Kent & John a Cumber is obscured by the uncertainty that attends
the date of composition of this comedy. The date is appended to the existing
manuscript, but only the month "Decembris" is clearly penned: the year has
been variously interpreted as I595, I596, and in recent times as I590. If we
accept I. A. Shapiro's conclusion that John a Kent & John a Cumber was first
produced prior to September I589,6 we are confronted by an unlikelihood,
namely, that Shakespeare, in writing The Tempest, recalled to mind a comedy
that had been performed almost a full generation in the past. But this unlike-
lihood, or disadvantage, is more apparent than real. Munday wrote principally
for the Lord Admiral's Company. This company, as we know, united with
Lord Strange's Company in the winter of I593-I594 and toured the outlying
provinces. It is probable that many older plays were revived during this tour,
including John a Kent & John a Cumber, a lively comedy. Shakespeare, as
a member of Lord Strange's Company, was almost certain to have been familiar
with the repertoire of the two itinerant companies. Indeed, the close resem-
blance of the amazed Ferdinand's utterances to those of Oswen, as is noted
earlier in this essay, suggests that Shakespeare actually played the part of Oswen
and, years later, recalled certain phrases to mind. On the other hand, I regard
Shapiro's conclusion as to the date of Munday's comedy as no more than a
plausible hypothesis. The comedy may have been written as late as I595. If we
accept this alternative hypothesis, the existing manuscript, the action of which
takes place in West Chester, England, is almost certainly a remodeling of
The Wise Man of West Chester, a play which opened at the Rose on December
2, I594, and which was performed at least thirty-two times;7 indeed, the manu-
script is very possibly a special draft of The Wise Mlan intended for a per-
formance at the court during the Christmas season of I595-I596. As a young
playwright in search of ideas, Shakespeare was almost certain to have been a
spectator at one, and probably more, of the thirty-two known performances
of The Wise Man. It is not unlikely that he "pirated" a few appealing passages
of dialogue, including the phrases that were later to be re-echoed by Ferdinand.
o See 1. A. Shapiro, "The Significance of a Date", Shakespeare Survey 8, pp. ioo-io8.
7 See E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, III, 446.
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64 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY
8 Anciently, the "books" of John a Kent and Sir Thomas More were, as my reader will recall,
bound from portions of the same vellum of a medieval manuscript entitled Compilatio Pima, a
treatise on Canon Law. In the present article, I have found it necessary to avoid an evaluation of
the relationship that anciently existed between these two plays. A brief mention of the significance
of this relationship is not possible; an acceptable evaluation necessitates a discussion of the various
theories that have been put forward by such critics as W. W. Greg, D. C. Collins, and R. C. Bald
in respect to the dates of the two dramas. My purpose, in this present essay, is confined solely to
pointing out the genesis of Ariel. The probability that Shakespeare was familiar with Munday's
John a Kent & John a Cumber tends, of course, to support the hypothesis that he had a compara-
tively important hand in the revision of the companion play, Sir Thomas More; at worst, it does
not detract from this hypothesis. But so complex is this problem that a discussion of it, within
the present essay, must assuredly lead to a disproportion and hence obscure my basic objective.
9 Donald Stauffer, Shakespearc's World of Images (New York, 1949), p. 305.
10 Furness, pp. 6-7.
11 Tempest, ed. Craig, p. i6 (I. ii. i98-200). This description could also have been suggested by a
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THE PROBABLE ORIGIN OF ARIEL
passage in Sir William Strachey's A True Repertory of the Wracke, written in i6io but not pub-
lished until i625. Strachey wrote: "Upon Thursday night [the night before the Sea-Venture was
shipwrecked upon the Bermudas] Sir George Sommers ... had apparition of a little round light
... streaming along with a sparkeling blaze, halfe the height upon the Maine Mast, and shooting
sometimes from Shroud to Shroud . . . running sometimes along the Maine-yard to the very end."
(Quoted from Charles M. Gayley, Shakespeare and the Founders of Liberty in America, I9I7, p.
II.) Even if Shakespeare did see Strachey's manuscript prior to i6I2, he was almost certain to be
conscious of the similarity of the foregoing description to a function commonly associated with
fire-inhabiting demons. He was not likely to assign to a spirit, such as Ariel, an attribute that he
did not associate with demonic potentiality.
12 Tempest, ed. Craig, p. IS (I. ii. 255-256).
13The six standard categories of demons, as I have discussed or alluded to them, are those
which are given special attention by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (i62I). In ad-
dition to the spirits which inhabit fire, air, water, and subterranean caves are those which frequent
the earth's surface (fairies, trolls, Robin Goodfellows, elves, and so on) and the infernal or damned
spirits. Of the two last-mentioned species, Arid appears to possess no well-defined characteristic,
with one possible exception: his ability to lead his victims wheresoever he chooses is not dissimilar
to the practice of terrestial demons, usually termed pucks, who were alleged to delight in leading
travelers astray. But there is a marked distinction in the methods of this practice. Ariel (in the
manner of Munday's Shrimp) enchants his victims through the medium of music and song, which
are becoming to his ethereal nature; the earthen puck, by contrast, was alleged to lead night travel-
ers astray by commonplace devices such as the counterfeiting of a companion's voice. (See Burton,
p. I70.) Also, unlike Ariel and Shrimp, the puck who misguided victims had no constructive ob-
jective in mind: he was motivated almost exclusively by his prankish humor.
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