Among the entertainments tonight the King's Men will perform a play of Shakespeare's, The Tempest, not a new play but newly mounted and with a Masque just composed and inserted by the author in honor of the royal match.

The author happening in that cold winter of the Wedding to be in London, buying property near the Blackfriars Theater. Not having walked those streets then for years; no, not since 1610, when he came to make complaint to Thorpe for his printing of the sonnets, the which Thorpe got from that thieving rascal W.H., no ‘twere best he think not on't. On that visit, two years and more ago, he had gone up the river too, for to call upon old Dr. Dee in his Mortlake house, old friend and teacher of players and stage carpenters, to consult with him upon the pains and weakness in his legs; to find that the doctor had died a twelvemonth. Standing in the great room wherefrom the books, glasses, stones, staves, globes, maps, and all had been sold or lost or taken. Dead: dead after years of silence. His daughter there alone, who had nursed him as best she could. I knew him long ago, he said to her; I came here as a boy; I loved him and I honor him. And he had gone thence back downriver, a sharp wind blowing, blow away vanitie; and he bethought him, how a wise man, great doctor, midwife of nature's wonders, untrammeled in his powers, charger of spirits, might be driven to silence, retirement, abnegation. No, not driven neither: his powers unlost, but only put away; the spirits at length released that he had commanded. Ile burn my books. No, not that, not burned; poor Kit, not burned.

Shipwreck. His mind harping on shipwreck those years, no marvel. A story of three realms—one of politic working, lords and plots and the world's business; one of magic such as Dr. Dee had talked of, had worked in too it may be, benign and fearsome, graves oped, noontime sun bedimmed; and one the realm of nature, plain, longed-for, impossible to restore.

A year after that, The Tempest was at Blackfriars, Burbage giving fire to the rattling thunder, the kettles beaten in the cellarage, the isle full of noyses. And now this year, at Christmas, at court, the marvels and wonders it called for would be the more marvelous and wonderful, since Mr. In-I-go Jones of the jesting name would be the master carpenter. Disappearing banquets and flitting spirits and transformations to music. And Burbage had asked the author for a new little Masque too, a demi-Masque, for the betrothal of Elizabeth and her German.

It was easily done. Waiting upon his lawyer in his chambers, he called for a pen and some paper. Nuptial blessings were certainly proper to the play, Ferdinand having passed all the tests set him by Prospero, including a solemn vow not to break Miranda's virgin knot before the wedding.

I must

Bestow vpon the eyes of this yong couple

Some vanity of mine Art. It is my promise,

And they expect it of me.

Cold airs from the lawyer's window corner; coldest winter in years. Ile break my staff. John Dee's was long broken now. His own was merely the stick he leaned on in these London streets, where the younglings hurried laughing by. He scribbled. Not many more short lines like these left to make, and very likely he would not finish all that he had begun; but that he could not finish was not reason he should not go on.

Now come my Ariell, bring a Corolary,

Rather then want a Spirit; appear, & pertly.

No tongue: all eyes: be silent. [Soft musick.]

Later that month in the torchlit hall behind Inigo Jones's cloudie skies, all blue canvas and lath, three court ladies in dresses of their own designing take a deep breath, touch their bosoms, smile at one another. Three goddesses: Iris, Ceres, Juno. They descend, to applause, they step forth.

Honor, riches, marriage, blessing,

Long continuance, and encreasing,

Hourely ioyes, be still vpon you,

Iuno sings her blessings on you.

Earths increase, foyzon plentie,

Barnes, and Garners, neuer empty.

Vines, with clustring bunches growing,

Plants, with goodly burthen bowing:

Spring come to you at the farthest,

In the very end of Haruest.

Scarcity and want shall shun you,

Ceres blessing so is on you.

Then enter certaine Reapers (properly habited:) they ioyne with the Nimphes, in a gracefull dance, towards the end whereof, Prospero starts sodainly and speakes.

I had forgot that foule conspiracy

Of the beast Calliban, and his confederates

Against my life. The minute of their plot is almost come:

Well done, auoid: no more.

After which to a strange hollow and confused noyse, they heauily vanish.

* * * *

They vanish. Heavily, which is sadly or sorrowfully. Blown away in the midst of.

Pierce, standing in the street before the Banqueting Hall—the new Banqueting Hall (1630) and not the old one, which has long been subsumed into the basements of the Ministry of Defence—said suddenly aloud, in grief and wonder, “He knew."

The Banqueting Hall was Closed for Renovations. Blue plastic tarpaulins clothed it, ballooning softly in the cold smoky air, as though the building were under sail. Cloud of traffic around him moving up and down. “He knew,” Pierce said again. “It's as though he knew."

It's as though he knew. As though Prospero knew, and therefore Shakespeare knew; as though he knew what he couldn't possibly have known.

Pierce wrote this in his red journal in a Lyons tea shop, its windows steamed with winter, clatter of mugs, and smell of bacon and toast. He had the Puffin paperback of The Tempest, just acquired at a WH Smith stall, open to Act IV.

Prospero remembers the conspiracy and crime afoot, and immediately he spoils his show, orders all of it away, even though he's just said to the children, Hush and be mute, or else our spell is marred. Which means the spell is marred. And when his new son-in-law Frederick, I mean Ferdinand, looks in movéd sort as if he was dismayed, then Prospero tells him that the revels now are ended; he says that the actors that blessed them were all spirits, not goddesses of love and plenty at all, and are vanished into air. Not only that but all his son-in-law's hopes and ambitions, and all the towers and palaces and temples, and the whole world—the great Globe itself, and all which it inherit—are no more substantial, and we are all such stuff as dreams are made on. How can he say that, what did he mean, didn't Shakespeare think who was listening just then? Was he talking to himself, or to them, and how could he know how that marriage and its hopes and plans would all end? That like this insubstantial pageant faded, it would leave not a rack behind.

It's probably only that thing that Shakespeare does, how he infuses the most standard dramatic necessities with so much feeling, too much feeling for what's required. Maybe all he meant to do, dramatically speaking, was to get the story back on track after this new masque; maybe in his day Prospero at this moment was played as a standard absentminded wizard, just catching up with his own plots. But that's not how it feels. No. It feels like the end of all blessing.

Aboard the North Sea ferry, bound for the Hook of Holland and the Continent, cold ocean not far below his bed, his three cabinmates gently snoring, Pierce with his own tiny lamp lit, reading then writing.

Why does Prospero abjure his magic?

Wouldn't great magic like his have been a big help back in Milan, where he's headed? To build a better world, a new world? Is everything that he knows applicable only to this story on this island, and useless everywhere else? Nowhere does the play say so. What did Shakespeare know, and to whom was his warning issued?