And again, Gonzalo (another name for Kent and Flavius) having given him some books, he says:
"Of his gentleness, Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me From my own library, with volumes that I prize above my dukedom."
His daughter grieves lest she had been a trouble to him: forthwith Shakespeare-Prospero answers:
"O, a cherubim Thou wast, that did preserve me. Thou didst smile Infused with a fortitude from heaven, When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt Under my burden groan'd; which raised in me An undergoing stomach, to bear up Against what should ensue."
But why should the magician weep or groan under a burden? had he no confidence in his miraculous powers? All this is Shakespeare's confession. Every word is true; his daughter did indeed "preserve" Shakespeare, and enable him to bear up under the burden of life's betrayals.
No wonder Prospero begins to apologize for this long-winded confession, which indeed is "most impertinent" to the play, as he admits, though most interesting to him and to us, for he is simply Shakespeare telling us his own feelings at the time. The gentle magician then hears from Ariel how the shipwreck has been conducted without harming a hair of anyone.
The whole scene is an extraordinarily faithful and detailed picture of Shakespeare's soul. I find significance even in the fact that Ariel wants his freedom "a full year" before the term Prospero had originally proposed. Shakespeare finished "The Tempest," I believe, and therewith set the seal on his life's work a full year earlier than he had intended; he feared lest death might surprise him before he had put the pinnacle on his work. Ariel's torment, too, is full of meaning for me; for Ariel is Shakespeare's "shaping spirit of imagination," who was once the slave of "a foul witch," and by her "imprisoned painfully" for "a dozen years."
That "dozen years" is to me astonishingly true and interesting: it shows that my reading of the duration of his passion-torture was absolutely correct--Shakespeare's "delicate spirit" and best powers bound to Mary Fitton's "earthy" service from 1597 to 1608.
We can perhaps fix this latter date with some assurance. Mistress Fitton married for the second time a Captain or Mr. Polwhele late in 1607, or some short time before March, 1608, when the fact of her recent marriage was recorded in the will of her great uncle. It seems to me probable, or at least possible, that this event marks her complete separation from Shakespeare; she may very likely have left the Court and London on ceasing to be a Maid of Honour.