Appendices
CHAPTER 30.
AS YOU FROM CRIMES WOULD PARDONED BE
Many commentators agree in the belief that The Tempest is the last creation of Shakespeare. I will
readily believe it. There is in the Tempest the solemn tone of a testament. It might be said that, before
his death, the poet, in this epopee of the ideal, had designed a codicil for the Future.
--Victor Hugo
The Tempest, although traditionally considered the last play written by Shakespeare, appears first
among those plays published in the 1623 folio. The reasons for this placement have not been ascertained, or
for the most part even considered, by Shakespearean critics¹. This chapter will consider some possible
reasons for that placement and argue that the play enacts a parable of alienated authorship which becomes
fully intelligible only from a heretical "Oxfordian" perspective.
In considering the Tempest we must, however, attempt to clarify certain chronological matters. The
orthodox view of Shakespearean authorship leans heavily on the Tempest as a chronological proof against the
"Oxfordian" theory. Indeed, the claim that the play was written long after De Vere's death in 1604
constitutes a sort of magical fetish employed by practitioners of the orthodox school of Shakespearean
authorship: in some places it is believed that, by waving this alleged "fact" around in public, the enemy can
be put to rout and the world made safe for conventional belief. For reasons detailed in Appendix L, this
chronological consideration seems far less significant, to say the least, than is frequently contended.
Oxfordians tend to support the traditional view of The Tempest
as the author's farewell to the stage, but
disagree with orthodox academicians about the date at which this leave-taking took place. Both the 1611 and
1
The theory that the Folio displays an architectonic structure in which the first and the last plays of the book -- The Tempest and Cymbeline -- are
placed in those positions for artistic purposes (most probably by folio editor Ben Jonson) has previously been argued by the present writer in
brief in the Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter (Fall 1998 (34:3), 16-17).
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