SOURCE: “The Tempest as Pastoral Romance,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 4, Autumn 1959, pp. 531-39.

In the following essay, Gesner argues that William Shakespeare's The Tempest is primarily a pastoral play, and that in composing the work Shakespeare used the Greek pastoralist Longus's Daphnis and Chloe as an immediate source.

The problem of the source of The Tempest has long intrigued scholars, because a single entirely satisfactory work has never been uncovered to account for its origin. Many significant contributions to the solution of the problem have, however, been offered. In 1817 Ludwig Tieck pointed to Die schöne Sidea, a play by Jacob Ayrer, as a source or close analogue. Its plot parallels The Tempest in that it centers on a prince-magician, served by a spirit, father of a daughter whose hand is won when the son of an enemy carries logs. Die schöne Sidea was surely written...