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We build the new worlds of our knowledge out of the dust of worlds already swinging in space; the stately homes of our imagination, rise on foundations of the common earth. Prospero's island was made of common soil; flowers, trees, and grass grow on it as they grow about the homes of work and care.
The cramped old routine, dogged, if you choose to call it so, was enough for him: you could tell that by a glance at his earnest, stolid face; you could see that it need not take Prospero's Ariel forty minutes to put a girdle about this man's world: ten would do it, tie up the farm, and the dead and live Scofields, and the Democratic party, with an ideal reverence for "Firginya" under all.
"It will be in the Gazetteer, of course," said the old chemist with a happy thought; "and you'll find that in the Free Library." "Gazetteer" "Free Library." To Tilda these were strange words names of wide oceans, perhaps, or of far foreign countries. But the boy caught at the last word: he remembered Prospero's "Me, poor man, my library Was dukedom large enough,"
How could bare boards conjure up a vision of Juliet's garden, of the wood "outside Athens" in which Titania and Oberon met, of Prospero's island, of the Forest of Arden? How could any boy, however smoothly spoken, present a Rosalind, a Juliet, a Miranda, or Cordelia?
"a woman Dowered by God with power of life or death Now cry for coarser tools," and seek to exchange the ballot for Prospero's wand? Like other savages, she would exchange fine gold for guns and hatchets. A woman of power once said she had rather reign than govern. But reigns, with male St. Clairs, so soon are over! Mercedes' dynasty had ended. She knew it before St.
Quite at the back were the servants. At five minutes to eight the band struck up the overture to 'Zampa, and in the midst of it in sailed Mrs Martin and a score or two of fashionably-dressed people, male and female. The curtain ascended and Prospero's cell was seen. Alonso and his companions were properly grouped, and Prospero began, 'Behold, Sir King, The wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero.
Is there not something of self-consciousness in the breaking of Prospero's wand and burying his book, a sort of sad prophecy, based on self-knowledge of the nature of that man who, after such thaumaturgy, could go down to Stratford and live there for years, only collecting his dividends from the Globe Theatre, lending money on mortgage, and leaning over his gate to chat and bandy quips with neighbors?
How do you explain Ariel's irrelevant rejoinder: 'Yes, Caliban, her son'; and Prospero's angry, 'Dull thing, I say so, etc.? Do you think Moulton right in supposing that Prospero governs 'this incarnation of caprice by outcapricing him'; Rolfe, in supposing that Prospero is irritable because under the strain and suspense of conducting affairs within three hours perfectly, and upon which accuracy hangs his future and the happiness of his daughter?
But what makes men poets rather than men of science is precisely that they never limit themselves to the mere clear statement of the concept, but always express its human significance as well. A theory of human destiny is expressed in Prospero's lines We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep; but with overtones of feeling at the core.
For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded all: his existence was a bright, soft element of Joy; out of which, as in Prospero's Island, wonder after wonder bodied itself forth, to teach by charming. "Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down from Heaven into the Earth.
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