Figure One hundred and eight:
Isaiah 29.10-12 in STC 2106.
Figure One hundred and seven:
The Bolbeck Crest: A lion
brandishing (shaking) a broken
spear. Could this be the
inspiration for the choice of the
name "Ariel" for Prospero's
spirit?
the 1604 solution, as appendix L demonstrates, depend upon circumstantial, intrinsically inconclusive,
evidence.
Genius is often its own harshest critic. According to ancient tradition, Virgil on his deathbed called
for his manuscripts, with the intent of burning the Aeneid; he was only contradicted on the authority of
Augustus. Prospero's declaration of intent to "drown" his book in another tempest (5.1.57), like that in
which he has brought his enemies to the shores of his deserted island,
may merely refer to the author's own compulsive perfectionism and his
literal 11th hour wish to destroy his own work. Certainly, as a literary
character, Prospero owes much to Dante's Virgil: the exiled magus and
personification of reason who will rescue the sinner by leading him to
salvation through the winding paths of the bowels of hell.
But if we turn to the book of Isaiah XXIX in the Geneva Bible
an intriguing alternative reading immediately becomes apparent. This
is the chapter from which Shakespeare derived the name "Ariel,"
defined in a Genevan marginal note as a word which "signifieth the
Lyon of God" (Slater 1972). In the same chapter we also read the
prophet's testimony that "I wil beseige thee as a circle" -- possibly one
source of Prospero's image of the magic circle, so prominent in the
play.
Indeed, the closer one examines Isaiah XXIX, the more apparent its myriad influences on The Tempest
become. Anne Pasternak Slater argues that the two texts "agree in their shared thematic movement from sin,
to punishment involving a trance-like state, to the final coming of understanding, justice and joy" (128).
Details of action and idiom, of which Slater cites a large number based on the first ten verses of Isaiah 29,
also connect the two texts. "It is almost as though Isaiah xxix were the lesson, and The Tempest a dramatic
sermon embodying its theme," concludes Slater. “The impression is certainly not that of a sought-out source,
but of the Isaiah chapter providing a yeast-like impulse to the growth of the play" (128). The prophet
promises that "Thou shalt be visited of ye Lord of hostes with thundre, and shaking, & a great noyse, a
whirlewide, and a tempest, and flame of devouring fire" (29.6: italics added). In lines which seem to have
inspired the many curious episodes of sleeping which punctuate
the play's action (1.2.187; 2.1.186, 194-300), Isaiah declares that
"the Lord hathe covered you wt a spirit of slomber, & hathe shut
up your eyes" (figure one hundred and eight). Comments Slater
on this theme: "This is fundamental to the play. Here every
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