Prospero's Book

Author(s): Barbara A. Mowat

Source: Shakespeare Quarterly , Spring, 2001, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 1-33
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3648645

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 Prospero's Book
BARBARA A. MOWAT

I BEGIN WITH AN ASSUMPTION ABOUT THE TEMPEST that opens onto a set of
related questions. The assumption is that among the highly valued books that
Prospero brought with him into exile is one book essential to his magic, the one
that he goes offstage to consult before the series of spirit spectacles begins in Act
3, the same one that near the end of the play he promises to drown as he abjures
his magic. Though Peter Greenaway, in his film Prospero's Books, did not include
such a book among the twenty-four he decided were necessary for Prospero's sur-
vival,1 the text indicates that Prospero not only has a magic robe and a magic staff
(both of which are explicitly called for2), but, like Friar Bacon and Doctor
Faustus and other stage magicians before him, he also has a magic book. Further,
the play presents Prospero's always-offstage book as crucial to his rule over the
island, the magical instrument that enables him to control the spirits who come
from their confines when Prospero calls, who torment Caliban and keep him
obedient, and who assume as needed the shapes of Greek mythological figures or
vicious hunting dogs.
Granted, the play emphasizes Prospero's use of spirits much more than it does his
dependence on a particular book for the power to so use them. By the time he says"I'll
to my book, / For yet ere suppertime must I perform / Much business" (3.1.113-15),
we know without a doubt that Prospero employs materialized spirits to carry out his
commands. Not only have we witnessed his early dealings with Ariel; we have also
observed Miranda's response to seeing Ferdinand:"What is 't? A spirit? ... It carries a

1 Noting that "Prospero's power is held in relationship to his books;' Greenaway decided that
Prospero's library should be made up of"[t]wenty-four volumes"-"bestiaries, a herbal, cosmogra-
phies, atlases, astronomies, a book of languages, a book of utopias, a book of travellers' tales, a book
of games .... a pornography, a book of motion, a book of love, a book of colours and a book of
'Architecture and other Music"' (Prospero's Books: A Film of Shakespeare's The Tempest [New York:
Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991], 9 and 12). For Greenaway, it was the combination of these vol-
umes that "not only kept Prospero and Miranda alive, well and sane on their island but also made
Prospero so powerful he could command the dead and make Neptune his servant" (12).
2 See, e.g., the entrance direction for 5.1 ("Enter Prospero in his magic robes") and Prospero's lines at
5.1.60-63:"when I have required / Some heavenly music, which even now I do, / To work mine end
upon their senses that / This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff..." Quotations of Shakespeare
follow the New Folger Library Shakespeare The Tempest ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1994).

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 HAKESPEARE
UARTERLY

ttrto

jamapd sL

,1Eibnt

P6? ;6n4i,4?

Published by the Folger Shakespeare Library

in cooperation with
The George Washington University

Volume 52 Spring 2001 Number 1

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2 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

brave form. But 'tis a spirit" (1.2.488-90). Her comment ma

materialized spirits are a familiar sight. Prospero's reply,"No,
and hath such senses / As we have, such" (11. 491-92), is prem
ing basic distinctions between the faculties of spirits and tho
we have heard Caliban in soliloquy describe the spirits Pros

His spirits hear me,

And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' th' mire,
Nor lead me like a firebrand in the dark
Out of my way, unless he bid 'em. But
For every trifle are they set upon me...
Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me
For bringing wood in slowly.
(11. 3-8, 15-16)

Prospero's spirit magic is thus established early and unequiv

see groups of spirits actually appear. In contrast, not until Pr
my book;' at the end of 3.1 does the text point to a specif
Prospero's magic"business:' Further, in only one speech is P
its explicitly linked to his book, and that speech refers to his

Remember
First to possess his books, for without them
He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not
One spirit to command. They all do hate him
As rootedly as I. Burn but his books.
(3.2.100-104)

The use here of the plural seems to argue against the sign
book-though surely it is relevant that the speech gives us
of Prospero's use of his library, and that Prospero himself, in
instruments that have made possible his magic, uses the s
my staff, / ... And deeper than did ever plummet sound
(5.1.63, 65-66)-a promise he seems, by play's end, to have
himself in the Epilogue as being in much the state that Ca
ed, without one spirit to command.
Because the evidence in the play is tantalizing rather t
want to argue on the basis of that evidence alone that Pros
tained a book for summoning and controlling spirits. I am
argument, first, because, until the twentieth century, it was
had such a book, and, second, because considerable external
modern conjurors having had such books and for the po

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 3

known about them. Keith Thomas,

Magic, points out that"magic books
cunning man or wise man (the num
to [those of] the parochial clergy")
recent work in medieval and early
tion that a Prospero at whose comm
into thin air" (4.1.167), would have
such power.4

The first and most obvious question that Shakespeare scholars will ask is why, if
the play suggests even equivocally that Prospero has a magic book for the control of
spirits, is there so little scholarly curiosity about this book today? While part of the
answer lies in the current focus on The Tempest as a colonialist document,5 the larg-
er part can be found in the difficulty many have in taking Prospero's magic seriously.
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars discussed Prospero's book within the
context of historical anecdotes about necromancers and their books of magic, and
they cited romances and plays featuring magicians and their books;6 they raised
questions about"the real book which was presumed to invest the necromancer with
his power";7 and they exchanged queries and possible answers about what Joseph
Hunter called"a curious point in bibliography," namely, "what specifically the books
of the Magicians were" and why "not one (as far as is known) has come down to our

3 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 245
and 228-29. On"[t]he common resort to sorcerers and white witches" in sixteenth-century England,
see also George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,
1929), 70-72, esp. 71; and Alan Macfarlane, "Cunning folk and witchcraft prosecutions" in his
Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A regional and comparative study (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1970), 115-34, esp. 115 and 120-21. As late as 1656, Thomas Ady, in his attempt to expose
"cunning men,' refers to them as "conjurors (So commonly prated of by silly people)" (A Candle in the
Dark: Or, A Treatise concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft ... [London, 1656], 63).
4 See, e.g., Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989) and
Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century (University Park: Pennsylvania State
UP, 1998). See also Claire Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic
(University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1998).
5 Later in this essay (29-32), I show how Prospero's book can lead to a convergence of magician
and explorer/conqueror.
6 Edmond Malone, e.g., writes:"In the old romances the sorcerer is always furnished with a book,
by reading certain parts of which he is enabled to summon to his aid whatever daemons or spirits he
has occasion to employ. When he is deprived of his book, his power ceases" (The Plays and Poems of
William Shakespeare, 10 vols. [London, 1790], 1:63). Malone then goes on to quote from works in
which "'bur author might have observed this circumstance much insisted on" (1:63). See also James
O. Halliwell, ed., The Works of William Shakespeare, 16 vols. (London, 1853), 1:307, 333-34, and 447.
7 Halliwell, ed., 1:448.

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4 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

times:'8 But, as Robert West points out, whereas earlier

Tempest "magic has standing in and for itself-has as mu
Prospero's dukedom does, and of course far more promine
ars "incline to view the magic as comprehensive analogy o
stands for some such abstraction as government, art, or sc
ported by Stephen Orgel's 1987 edition, which describes Pr
one hand, "Royal science" and, on the other, as "theatre,
magic is not considered"real,' the magic book is easily igno
But even those twentieth-century scholars who tried to
tended to be silent about Prospero's book.11 Following th
Walter Clyde Curry, and Frank Kermode in seeing Prosper
(since I include myself here) no doubt imagined him consu
as those by Ficino, lamblichus, or Cornelius Agrippa,12 t

8 Joseph Hunter, New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of

1845), 1:179-85, esp. 181n. Hunter's question was cited and responde
Howard Furness, ed., The Tempest, A New Variorum Edition of Sh
Lippincott, 1892), 167-68n; and Halliwell, whose response is quoted i
9 Robert H. West, Shakespeare & the Outer Mystery (Lexington: U
West actually places this shift in understanding of the magic at the end o
this error testifies primarily to the comparative unavailability of ninet
Shakespeare. In the nineteenth century, Shakespeare editions began to
iorum" accumulation of editorial commentary that extends through M
ready access to specialized rare-book libraries is limited (in the case of
tions included in Furness's 1892 New Variorum edition of the play.
Orgel, describing Prospero's art as "Baconian science and Neoplato
"Royal science represents one aspect of Prospero's magic. Another is le
sionism, the unserious delight implied in Prospero's characterization
of mine art"' (The Oxford Shakespeare The Tempest [Oxford: Claren
20-21). Orgel goes on, however, to comment on Prospero's magic in hel
play's refusal to make"easy distinctions between white and black magic
and qualifications that are continually expressed about both the centr
10 In using the word real, I am paraphrasing West's comment about
Tempest, few of whom, he writes, "now trouble to consider that Arie
magic were literally intended" (80).
11 See, e.g., D. G. James, The Dream of Prospero (Oxford: Clarendo
Craig, "Magic in The Tempest," Philological Quarterly 47 (1968): 8-1
Comedies: 'The Tempest' and 'The Alchemist'," Shakespeare Sur
Woodman, White Magic and English Renaissance Drama (Rutherford
1973), 64ff; Robert Egan, "This Rough Magic: Perspectives of Art a
Shakespeare Quarterly 23 (1972): 171-82; and Barbara A. Mowat, "Pr
Pocus,"' English Literary Renaissance 11 (1981): 281-303.
12 See Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Ne
Paul, 1964) and Shakespeare's Last Plays: A New Approach (London: Rou
Walter Clyde Curry, Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns (Baton Rou
Frank Kermode, ed., The Arden Shakespeare The Tempest (London:

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 5

such books include little or nothing

controlling spirits.13 This image of
sometimes problematically called, a"
to think in terms of printed books,
about Prospero's magic to ignore (or
conjuror-namely, manuscript bo
described as essential for a summon
with the utmost secrecy by their o
other officials and by conjurors when

describes such books as the theoretical wor

cal works. He writes that the literature of
academic, expounding the theory of magic;
operandi of magic" (The Invisible World: A S
Georgia P, 1939], 11; see also 6-7).
A sense of the availability of sixteenth-cen
gathered from the holdings of the Folger S
Ficino, fifteen by Cornelius Agrippa, and s
Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum [15
13 Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occu
the reader in the summoning and binding o
and 33 of Book 3) are both brief and genera
ing instructions. The theoretical bias of the
Henry Cornelius Agrippa. His Fourth Book
1655]), available in manuscript in the sixtee

In our Books of Occult Philosophy, we have ...

sons of Magick it self . . ; but . . . in those
Practically.... Therefore in this book, which
and Key of our other books of Occult Philoso
thee the documents of... Inexpugnable and U
and delectable experiments of the sacred Dei
Occult Philosophy, thou maist earnestly covet
this book, thou shalt truly triumph.
(32-33)
14 On the designation"white magician:' see, e.g., David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare,
4th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 1,526; and Hallett Smith, ed., The Tempest in The Riverside
Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1,606-38, esp. 1,606. This
designation is problematic on the simplest level because, first, while in the literature of the period one
finds the term white witch, one does not find, so far as I can determine, white magician; and, second,
because, as West pointed out in 1968, questions about how Prospero controlled the spirits and about
what kinds of spirits they were"besmirch a little [the play's] Neo-Platonic'whiteness'" (Shakespeare &
the Outer Mystery, 85). On the problematic nature of the whiteness of Prospero's magic, see also
Margreta de Grazia, "The Tempest: Gratuitous Movement or Action Without Kibes and Pinches,'
Shakespeare Studies 14 (1981): 249-65, esp. 255; and Orgel, ed., 20-23.
15 Thomas, 229. Hunter gives an instance of an astronomer in sixteenth-century England who
"burned all his books" after being accused of being a sorcerer. Hunter then writes,"It is a rule laid
down in the Summa Angelica ... that a necromancer is not to be considered purged, unless he has

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6 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

Thomas thought that these books tended to remain in ma

the risk inherent in printing them, "since for much of the peri
spirits was a capital offence.'16 E. M. Butler and Grillot de Gi
differently, with Butler writing that "the real deterrent" t
books"lies in the fact that printed texts are useless. They mu
[magician] himself with a consecrated pen on consecrated pa
The Tempest the important point is that these conjuring bo
print. Thus, while treatises that expound the theory of ceremon
well known and have been linked to Prospero, the conju
remained generally inaccessible, are much less familiar.18 In
the best single explanation for scholarly silence about Prospe
As I noted earlier, recent scholarship about medieval and
magic is rapidly changing the state of knowledge about manu
1923, when Lynn Thorndike published volume 2 of his eigh
Magic and Experimental Science, he was able to list and descr
(including one that he had traced to the library of Ben Jonson);
to magic books in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century legal and
ings, and he wrote, with marked tentativeness, that"these same

burned his books" (181n), to which J. 0 Halliwell responded: "To this, p

the great rarity of those books of the magicians" (1:448). For instances of
conjuring books, see, e.g., Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages
1990):"The Dominican inquisitor ... reported ... that he had confiscated
Solomon ... from the magicians themselves, and after reading these boo
public .... An inquisitor in Italy had a book with'diabolical figures' reduced
another copy can never be made"' (156-57). See also E. M. Butler, R
Cambridge UP, 1949), 47-48.
16 Thomas, 229.
17 Butler, 48. Grillot de Givry makes the same argument:"Printed edition
Tradition demands that a self-respecting sorcerer should possess the [book
as far as possible, in his own hand" (Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy, trans.J
George C. Harrap, 1931], 102). The special character of the magic bo
Tempest criticism. Frank Kermode, whose influential Arden2 edition ot
Prospero's magic book, includes, as a note to Prospero's insistence on "abso
the statement that"The book, so highly valued by Prospero and Caliban, a
all demonology, popular and learned; they were required to be of virginal
18 A. E. Waite points out that the magic books were "inaccessible to t
remained in rare printed books and even rarer manuscripts" (The Book of Cer
Grimoire, 3rd ed. [Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press, 1973], xxvi). Among th
1655 printing of several magic books, among them influential works attrib
and Peter of Abano (Henry Cornelius Agrippa. His Fourth Book of Occult Philos
a discussion of the manuscript magic books, see West, The Invisible World,
Reginald Scot and Renaissance Writings on Witchcraft (Boston: Twayne Press,

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 7

still extant in manuscripts in Europ

Alchemy, de Givry included a chapt
gives a valuable account of the "fai
magic books are called in France an
l'Arsenal in Paris. He points out th
possessed copies" of the grimoires,
hidden in some secret nook of his
lished her Anatomy of Puck, she coul
estimate the number of magical ma
the country [of England] in the six
notes in passing that one such man
of what [Prospero's book] was like:
By 1971 enough information was
vide a good general description of
directing the interested reader to sev
However, it was still possible in th
to write "I know of no such books

19 Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and

our Era, 8 vols. (New York: Columbia UP, 1
notes that the British Library's manuscript
document,"Salomonis opus sacrum ab Honorio
uscript, was Ben Jonson's copy (281n). Da
magica, ab Honorio ordinatum," in his Ben
Carolina P, 1974).Jonson also drew heavily
Peter of Abano; see Ben Jonson, The Alc
1967), 39 (1.3.65-66).
20 De Givry, 95-114, esp. 102. While the t
juring books of the sixteenth century and
entire body of manuscript conjuring books
Rosemary Ellen Guiley (New York and O
21 De Givry, 95.
22 K. M. Briggs, The Anatomy of Puck:
Contemporaries and Successors (London: Ro
many grimoires archived"in the great libra
lections and in the possession of individu
23 Briggs describes Bodleian e Mus. 173, w
crating the magician's implements ..., the
and writes: "Prospero's book would be a mo
notion of what his was like" (115).
24 See Thomas, 229-30 and 236.
25 Elton's comment about the "books
Cromwell's time goes on to say:"but from
magic] told of such things as 'finding out
wherein a child shall look and see many thin

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8 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

possible for manuscript magic books to be completely igno

would expect to find them discussed-in Wayne Shum
Sciences in the Renaissance, for example, and in Frances
Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age.26 It will be harder to ig
however. With such scholars as Richard Kieckhefer, F
Watson, and Claire Fanger turning the spotlight on magic
early modern magic will be forced to include conjuring bo
occult theory and practice.

This new interest in conjuring books raises the next qu

book-namely, if we grant the likelihood that Prospero ha
uscript magic book, what are we to imagine that the book
toward a tentative answer by looking first at the content
though we will see later that Prospero's putative book dep
them. Generalizing about these manuscripts is difficult, s
every other. Klaassen notes this great variability as a distingu
uscript conjuring books.27 While in other kinds of magi
image magic, for example-scribes were rather meticulou
and were proud to cite their sources, with the conjuring book
combined, added, and deleted material. As Klaassen writes,
largely anonymous content, the lineage of which would be ve
Despite this fluidity, however, the grimoires share many r
tics. All of those that I have examined are, first of all, uniform
the"master,' as he is called, summoning spirits only after sup
God's aid, and using God's holy names as the major source of

in the Age of Thomas Cromwell [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972], 46-

James Siemon for this reference.
26 See Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance: A St
(Berkeley: U of California P 1972); and FrancesYates, The Occult Philos
(London: Routledge, 1979).
27 Frank F. Klaassen, "Religion, Science, and the Transformatio
Magic 1300-1600," Dissertation, Department of History, University
with great generosity, shared his just-completed dissertation and his f
tronically. Some of his findings appear in his essay"English Manusc
Preliminary Survey" in Fanger, ed., 3-31. Unless otherwise noted, quo
from this essay.
28 Klaassen, 20-21.
29 The manuscripts I refer to here include Folger MS Vb26 and the f
British Library, some of which include more than one grimoire: Sl
3847, Sloane 3849, Sloane 3851, Sloane 3853, Sloane 3884, Sloane 38
contains several grimoires), Lansdowne 1202, and Lansdowne 1203.

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 9

There is no trace of Manichaeism

angels just as he rules everythin
Faustus makes this feature of th
defying God in conjuring Mephi
pletely devoted to the materials
They are filled with pentagrams
for elaborate ritual prepara
suffumigations); and, most import
formulas for binding and dismis
mundane matters as the purpose f
conjurations, threats, and pleas ma
come, you may ask of him what

30 Norman Cohn, in his Europe's Inner D

Chatto-Heinemann for Sussex UP, 1975
conjuration itself followed a resolutel
magic, is there a hint of Satanism. Now
the demonic hosts.... The demons are
no
manded; and this is to be done throug
human beings. Throughout, the attitu
God for help in his undertaking. Indee
no prospect of success unless the magic
ness" (169-70).
31 Marlowe's Doctor Faustus presents a significant complication to any discussion of the grimoires,
since, as West points out, the play"resolves the masterful operation of the magician into the affinity
of the witch, the ceremony into the pact" (The Invisible World, 118). In other words, Marlowe puts
Faustus first into the camp of the necromancer/magician, then, having him sign a pact with the
devil, moves him into the category of witch. (Interestingly, James I, too, presents magicians as mov-
ing beyond magic and into pacts with the devil. See his Daemonologie [Edinburgh, 1597], 18-23.) If
Marlowe was acquainted with the grimoires, then his having Faustus sacrifice to demons and call
upon Lucifer rather than God can be interpreted as a deliberate flouting of the theology of the gri-
moires. In any case, comments about the extant grimoires will seem always to have been contra-
dicted by Marlowe's play. An analysis of the relationship of Marlowe to the grimoires and therefore,
perhaps, to The Tempest is matter for another study.
32 Some manuscripts do include lengthy passages instructing the conjuror in specific"experiments"
for particular ends. The magic book examined by Kieckhefer, for example, has among its"illusionist
experiments" a "procedure to conjure forth a lavish banquet" and another to create"the illusion of a
castle in which an unnamed emperor may hold out against demonic troops" (Forbidden Rites, 42-68,
esp. 47). Kieckhefer ends his commentary on the manuscript's illusory banquet with a citation of
Prospero's "revels" speech, adding the interesting comment: "But of course the books from which that
experiment derived have not survived for comparison" (Forbidden Rites, 50). I am grateful to Claire
Fanger for reminding me about this material in Kieckhefer.
33 In Folger MS Vb26, for example, at the conclusion of ten pages of prayers and conjurations for
the spirit Oberion, one reads:"When he is come, say ... I charge thee N & commaunde thee ... that
thou showe truly & openly unto me all things that I shall demaunde of thee. Then demaund of him
what thou wilt" (199).

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10 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

faith in the power of words and images to call forth and contro
are the most powerful of the conjuror's tools, and the maste
into his book the reassuring message to himself that the re
conjuration thick with divine names will call forth the spir
bound in chains-and if the spirit is so tightly bound that
come, at the sound of these names he will at least send a messen
Within this larger context of shared common content amo
finds interesting-and major-differences. Some docume
Latin; others, beginning in the sixteenth century, are primarily
Some manuscripts hew closely to the fiction that Solomon w
ur-grimoire, so that the names of God and the biblical anecd
in Old Testament limits; but some, while continuing to
author, depend heavily on New Testament and Roman C
stories. Some manuscripts-again, beginning in the sixteent
primarily on the Clavicula Salomonis (Key of Solomon), whi
ter's preparatory rituals; others are based instead on the Le
of Solomon) with its extensive catalogue of principal spirits
their offices, and the legions of lesser spirits that they com
Because it is so hard to generalize about the structure or the c
books, I will focus briefly on two specific such books, both
sixteenth century and both written primarily in English. The f
so far as I know, that was published in England in the sixte
ironically, as Book 15 of Reginald Scot's The discouerie of witch

34 See, e.g., "the booke of King Salomon called the Key of Knowledg
Additional 36674, fols. 5-63, esp. fol. 6r; and the Clavicula Salomonis in
3847, fols. 2-66, esp. fol. 10"
35 For manuscripts in the Key of Solomon tradition, see, e.g., British L
fols. 2-66; Additional 36674, fols. 5-22; Additional 10862; Lansdowne 1
See also The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis), ed. S.L.M. Ma
1972). Mathers follows the Clavicula Salomonis in British Library MS A
contracted Latin, and consults four other manuscripts, including Lans
1203, drawing on them for material not present in Additional 10862. For
Lemegeton, see, e.g., British Library MSS Sloane 2731 and Sloane 3825
Lesser Key of Solomon the King. Lemegeton, Book I, Clavicula Salomonis
MacGregor Mathers, ed. Aleister Crowley and Hymenaeus Beta (York B
1995). Mathers draws on "several MS. Codices" for this edition of Book
36 I say"ironically" because Scot's The discouerie of witchcraft ... (London
on witchcraft beliefs, and it is startling to find there a printed grimoire.
among the conjurations, circles, and pentangles harsh attacks on conjuro
rituals and priests. Book 15 of Scot's Discouerie is actually represented ons
1619 The Two Merry Milkmaids, ed. G. Harold Metz (New York and Lon
Addressed by a would-be conjuror as "gentle Booke" (1.1.27), it is used

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Figure 1: Names with which to conjure (beginning with"the names with which Josue made the sun
stand still") and a list of "dayes most expedient to woorke any marveiles end.' Folger MS Vb26, pag
From the Folger Shakespeare Library Collection.

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12 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

turns away from his attack on witch-hunters in order

writes,"passe the degree of witches" in that conjurors"are n
to worke with a baggage tode or a cat, as witches doo; but
with authoritie they call vp by name, and haue at their com
nine principall and princelie diuels.'37 In attacking these co
diuels out of hell, and angels out of heauen," who "take vp
tempests, and earthquakes;' Scot in effect creates a mag
bining two documents, a translation of Johan Weir's Pseud
a magic manuscript Scot identifies marginally as"the work
letters of red & blacke vp6 parchment, and made by him,
The second, Folger MS Vb26, is a book of more than
pages written almost entirely in a single late-sixteenth
Like Scot's Book 15, MS Vb26 includes a catalogue of sp
legions of servants. (Since Scot's catalogue is a translation o
Daemonum, it essentially duplicates lists found in
Lemegeton. MS Vb26 reproduces the same form-that
princelie diuels," with the description of the offices th
which they appear to the conjuror, and the numbers o
but the names of the spirits rarely duplicate those in
Lemegeton.) Where Scot's"T. R." manuscript is broadly C
conjurations, MS Vb26 is fiercely Roman Catholic, inc
tion of the Roman Catholic faith "which except a man
be saved."'40

Both MS Vb26 and Scot's "T. R." text are typical grimoires in consisting pri-
marily of prayers, conjurations, maledictions, magic circles, and charts; they differ
from most grimoires in manifesting a great interest in the fairy world, a feature that

Asmody. In this first scene a pretend Asmody appears; later in the play the real spirit Asmody gives
the ring of invisibility to the conjuror whose book this is. (At 1.1.32-75 The Two Merry Milkmaids
quotes Book 15, chapters 2, 3, 4, 10, and 12 of Scot's Discouerie.) I am grateful to Leslie Thomson for
directing me to this play.
37 Scot, sig. 2F5.
38 Scot, sigs. 2F5r and 2G5r. Weir's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum was printed in the 1577 edition of
his De praestigiis daemonum ... (Basel, 1577) as sigs. 2N1r-202r. I am grateful to Georgianna Ziegler
(Louis B. Thalheimer Head of Reference at the Folger Shakespeare Library) for her help in locating
this elusive document.
39 The date of 8 May 1577 is included a quarter of the way through the book (on page 51), and
the date 1583 appears about halfway through (on page 105). It seems not impossible to me that the
writer worked on the construction of the book for at least a decade. I am grateful to both Laetitia
Yeandle and Heather Wolfe (Curator of Manuscripts Emerita and Curator of Manuscripts at the
Folger Shakespeare Library, respectively) for their generous assistance.
40 Folger MS Vb26, page 28.

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 7:77

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Figure 2:"Diuels or spirites,"' their physical images, functions, and the numbers they command. For Oberion,
or Oberyon, see number 81. Folger MS Vb28, page 80. From the Folger Shakespeare Library Collection.

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14 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

Butler singles out as characteristic of English conjuring

example, includes conjurations for the fairy Sibylia and he
includes Micob, queen of the fairies, and her court of f
Fata, Falla, Afria or Africa, Julya, and Venalla),43 but, mo
tion (pages 165-200), which consists of lengthy conjur
specific spirits (Bilgall, Asassiell, Bethalar, Annabat
Romulon, Mosacus, and Oberion), concludes with an
Oberion, who is described in the manuscript more
fairies." The manuscript's presentation of Oberion, tho
to The Tempest, is worth pausing over, both because it
specific pages of a conjuring book, and because Oberion
has a fascinating dual background in romance literature
demonstrating, among other things, how porous that p
When Oberion first appears as one of the eighty-two
Vb26's"Offices of Spirites," he is described as follows:

he appeareth like a kinge with a crowne one his heade. he i

of the [sun] and [moon]. he teacheth a man knowledge in p
the nature of stones herbes and trees and of all mettall. h
kinge and he is kinge of the fayries. he causeth a man to b
where hiding treseuer is and how to obtain the saime. he t
past and to come: and if he be bounde to a man he will car
of the sea....45

In this description the clause"he is kinge of the fayries

who came into English poetry and drama through Lord
century translation of the French prose romance Huon
traces back to a thirteenth-century chanson de geste. Ober
as an exquisitely beautiful dwarf king-of-fairyland w
power; he becomes by the 1590s the Oberon of A Midsumm
1611, the hero of Jonson's masque.46 The drawin

41 See Butler, 251-52.

42 See Scot, sig. 2H3v.
43"These 7 sisters is for to shewe and teache a man the nature of
phisicke. Also they will bringe a man the ringe of Invissibillity. th
fayryes" (Folger MS Vb26, page 81 [Fig. 3]).
44 One suspects that the Folger Shakespeare Library purchased
on Oberion, who is identified in the Folger catalogue record as"Obe
45 Folger MS Vb26, page 80 (Fig. 2).
46 For a history of Oberon, see The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeu
Bourchier, Lord Berners and printed by Wynkyn de Worde about 1534
English Texts Society, 1882), xxviii-xxxiii.

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Figure 3: A second list "Of Spirrittes," beginning with Baal, and prefaced by a description of Mycob,
queene of the fayres,' who"is of the same office that Oberyon is of." Folger MS Vb26, page 81. From
the Folger Shakespeare Library Collection.

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Figure 4: "Invocationem Oberyon":' Folger MS Vb26, page 192. From the Folger Shakespeare
Library Collection.

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 ~~~~~~~~.. . ....... i...... ..ii ...i ... .....i~i iii!iii
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? ii ili ! !! i i i i ~ ~ ~~~

Figure 5: Oberyon and his coun

Library Collection.

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18 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

suggests, in the spirit's vaguely Eastern turban/crown, fea

whose kingdom lay in the Orient (see Figure 5 and cove
But the Oberion of MS Vb26, though in part Oberon,
er sort with a quite different history. Oberion appears,
court record of a man pilloried in England for summon
whyche was callyd Oberycom";47 and the Archiepiscopa
that, in 1510, a"certain demon, Oberion" (along with"fo
was one'") was conjured by a group in search of a dem
group including the former lord mayor of Halifax an
owned the magic book used for the conjuration.48
Oberion reappears in 1529 at another group conju
attempt to summon spirits with knowledge of buried treas
juration is told in a letter to Cardinal Wolsey from a
wrote to Wolsey because the duke of Norfolk had pre
(and I quote Stapleton) "whether I ever heard that you
nay.'49 Stapleton writes, "I said I never knew no such t
that he had told the duke about an earlier incident in w
to a spirit called Oberion. In the story Stapleton told N
the letter to Wolsey), a certain parson of Lesingham, in co
Leiston and others, used a powerful magic book alo
obtained from Sir Thomas More"to call up [three spirits
and Inchubus." Stapleton writes,'And when they were all ra

wise speak. And then the parson of Lesingham did dem

why Oberyon would not speak to them:' And Andrew M
son from an earlier conjuration, replied that Oberion
Oberion served Cardinal Wolsey exclusively-or, in Stap
Malchus made answer, for because [Oberion] was bound

47 Quoted here from Briggs, 114.

48 Quoted here from Kittredge, 208 and 519n. Storax appears i
four "counselors" of Oberion. His name is included on page 185 (Fig
he is himself conjured on page 195 as one of the"4 angels and great
diaries with their "lord Oberion."
49 All quotations of Stapleton's letter to Wolsey follow the trans
appendix (255-61).
50 Kittredge, who discusses this story, hazards the guess that'Andrew
of"the name of Adram(m)elech, one of the gods to whom the Sephar
(2 Kings, xvii, 31)'" (210; see also 110 and 208-10). I would offer as an
'Andrew Malchus" the name of the spirit 'Andromalius," which appe
manuscript published by S.L.M. Mather as The Goetia, and in Britis
he is described as being able to"discover treasure that is hidden" [fol. 1
Sloane 3829, where he is summoned in an"experiment for finding out

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 19

This story of Oberion and Car

MS Vb26 with a fascinating his
modern England is more strang
Cardinal" Wolsey suspected by t
"Sir Thomas More, knight," inv
spirits seem far removed from
Shakespeare think we know. But
for example, the language of Rich
reads about the "huge, mightie,
ministeriall imployment" on beh
en angels that labor "by all me
[God's] lawes"-the same "wick
Gods."51 Such language makes
appalled to hear his name ment
fact posits on behalf of the esta
posed by conjurors of spirits.
My point is that, in terms of
Vb26 or Scot's"T. R." were not in
or necessarily evil-though they
proving preachers and theologia
up demons and have them answ
orthodox, the grimoires' foundati
power was, in fact, accepted th
doubts about the existence of demons was to invite the accusation of atheism.53

Further, the assumption that certain words and names have power, like the belief

In both Sloane manuscripts the secretary hand could easily be misread as'Andromalcus." For an even
more complicated story of a series of incidents in 1531-32 involving Cromwell, Wolsey, magic books,
and threatened treachery, see Elton, 50-56.
51 The Folger Library Edition of The Works of Richard Hooker, W. Speed Hill, gen. ed., 6 vols. (Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press, 1977-98), 1:69-72, esp. 69 and 72.
52 See, e.g., Johan Weir, De praestigiis daemonum translated as Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the
Renaissance, ed. George Mora (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991),
110-13.James I called the magic books"the Deuilles Schoole" (Daemonologie, 16).
53 See Thomas, 476. As late as 1659, Meric Casaubon, in his introduction to the diaries of John
Dee's conversations with angels, again and again asserted the necessity of belief in demons, saying at
one point, "upon due consideration of the premises ... I cannot satisfie my self how any Learned
man, sober and rational, can entertain such an opinion (simply and seriously) That there be no
Divels nor Spirits"; and he gives as his reason for publishing Dee's diaries his desire to convince
'Atheists and such as do not believe that there be any Divels or spirits" (A True and Faithful Relation
of What passed for many Yeers Between Dr.John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Eliz. and King James

their Reignes) and Some Spirits [London, 1659], sigs. Alr-IIv, esp. sigs. [B4v] and [H3r]).

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20 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

that praying to angels is efficacious, was not only central

moires but underlay much of the ritual and many of the s
Catholic Church (as Reginald Scot delighted in pointing o
thinking, even the Anglican liturgy was still so dependent
to seem"nothing but an impure mass of conjuring and char
Further, the line between the miracles sought by the m
those described in the Judeo-Christian Bible is more blurr
master-in MS Vb26 and other grimoires-uses biblica
encourage God to repeat His past interventions. On page
6), for instance, the master, urging God to behave as in t
His driving evil spirits into swine, of Moses' calling of th
God's dividing the Red Sea, of Joshua's commanding of th
still, and of Elijah's calling down of fire and Elisha's mir
bears. (In the miracles of the fire and the bears, he confla
a single "Helias": "let all such spirits which I shall call or
avoid from anie place be ... as obedient to obey my will a
the beares and fier were by thy will ready to obay the com
In each case the master beseeches God to "let all such spir
obedient unto me" as the spirits or the plagues or the fire
or Helias. And often the spirits invoked have good biblical
begs for the assistance of "thy holy mighty and blessed Au
Anaell, Raphaell, Eassell, Sachiell, and Samaell, or some one
with me in this my worke and busines, which I undertake
power." He then goes on to ask that

as thy holy and blessed Aungell Raphaell was guid to yo

Journey, against the monstrous Fish and devouringe spirit A
same Asmodeus was constrained bound and avoided by thy w
thy mighty Aungells, soe my god Eloy, Eloy, Eloy, let all su
me given, may be forced to come and obey me and to fulfi
maundmente faithfully and truly to the uttermost of their pow

As these prayers indicate, for the grimoire masters the

ceased, and what was done by God and his prophets and b
could still be done if God would only hear the prayers of
give him power over clean and unclean spirits.

54 Ady, in commenting on the conjurors' success in making people"bel

vertue of words," traces this practice to"the Popish rout" from whom
55 Quoted here from Thomas, 62. See also The Writings of Henry Bar
Carlson (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), 94; and Thomas Jacks
originall of unbeliefe... (London, 1625), 236.

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 7Zi~ iiii i i ?, . ... ...

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ilili~~~~iiiiii[I ~

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Figure 6: Lines 33-53 of Folger MS Vb26, page 15. From

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 ~~4

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AAl4

Figure 7: "To knowe yf A man or woman be sicke whether he or shee shall lyve or dye:' Folger MS Vb26,
page 65. From the Folger Shakespeare Library Collection

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VW?_
4,41 _o? vvii:
-:-ii-'-~iiiiiiii~ili~i~ ~ :-i::i::-:i:??:_ S~iT:3?ii'VkA*i

Figure 8: Page 15, the first extant page of Folger MS Vb26. The initials of the astrologe
owned the manuscript in the nineteenth century, appear in the margin. From the
Library Collection.

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24 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

The connections between the grimoires and Hooker on

grimoires and the Bible on the other suggest that, if we are e
moires accurately, we must be conscious of the context in
and used. From the viewpoint of post-Enlightenment rat
Briggs describes them, an "impious ... elaborate rigma
Maclntyre famously wrote,"To say that a belief is rationa
stands in relation to other beliefs."57 Stuart Clark, using this
ing point for his investigation of European witchcraft, h
body of ideas about witches that dominated Europe for t
make a "kind of sense,' and that this sense, as he suspect
with ideas about other things."58 Clark explores this set
study of early modern printed books about witchcraft, Th
study the grimoires with a rigor in any way equal to Clar
sive investigation of, for example, such theological matte
modern beliefs about demons and angels, about miracles
Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory; it would require an examin
phenomena as the clergy's professional antipathy to the v
interest of medical doctors in the grimoires, and (in Engl
larization on the emotional and spiritual needs of the
require a tracing of the course of Hermetic/Neoplat
Cabalistic mysticism-along with alchemical, astrological,
ics-as they found their way into the early modern intelle
grimoires. Like the printed books that Clark studied, the
not be isolated from the culture that created them withou
distorting them.
Conversely, the more attention we pay to the grimoires,
ing we are likely to have of early modern culture as a whole.
places to gain historical access to a strange culture are th
seem most opaque."'59 Clark found his point of entry into
early modern Europe through the period's published writi
suggest that the grimoires offer equally promising histor
that produced the plays of Shakespeare.

56 Briggs, 113.
5' Alasdair Maclntyre, Against the Self-Images of the Age (New York
quoted here from Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witch
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), viii.
58 Clark, vii-x, esp. viii.
59 Clark, ix.

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 25

In the meantime, given what we kn

we, as readers and audiences of Th
Prospero presumably uses? I suggest,
book both is and is not a grimoire. A
instructions for calling spirits from
miliar to any of the hundreds of Ja
lage cunning man or a London astrolo
the usual categorizing of the play's m
magic" for Sycorax is inadequate. I c
spell out the complicated early mode
recovered) "learned or holy magic,";' th
ious forms of conjuring and witch-r
world. I can, however, at least sugge
Neoplatonic/Cabalistic magic nor to
most often descried in The Tempest.
tremendously important third catego
Edward Peters has shown, the magic
dominant magic figure in England
Neoplatonic theurgy arose. We kn
because they "have either been dis
magic or as an undifferentiated part of
century, though, attention was focu
cian and witch, as we can see in the w
Weir, all of whom ignored both the m

60 The most famous of such London astrolo

manuscript for calling the spirit Assassell is
Harvey now collected in British Library MS A
"revealed by King Solomon anno Domini 15
Barbara Howard Traister's The Notorious Astr
Forman (Chicago and London: U of Chicago
Occultism" (97-119) that focuses on manuscr
61 As Edward Peters has shown, these are al
arly attention has focused; see The Magician,
P, 1978), xii-xiii, esp. xii.
62 Peters, xii.
63 James I writes:"There are principallie two
are redacted; wherof the one is called Magie
(Daemonologie, sig. B4r); for Gifford, magicia
people call cunning men and wise women" (A
1593], sig. [A3r]. Weir's purpose in his De prae
mous magician from the witch and the poiso

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26 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

Reginald Scot, who blurs the distinction between the ma

attributing some of the trappings of the magus to the co
ite figure (who works"with a kind of majestie, and with a
sition to the witch (who works"with a baggage tode or a
Whether in the legends about those archmagicians Solom
stories and legal records about the cunning men and wise
the magician), the connection to conjuring books is omn
and Virgil derived their power over demons or spirits fro
ing to James I, Weir, and others, did early modern magicians
language for controlling spirits.66 Through charms, herbs
juring of spirits, the early modern magicians set out to so

for their clients, attracting to themselves enormous host

Especially in their countering of witchcraft-through "unw
identifying and exposing witches-magicians, writes Clar
their clerical mentors to be as much, perhaps more, of a t
inflicted the original injury."68 The significant point here is
teenth-century audience of The Tempest, Prospero's refe
Caliban's allusions to Prospero as a "magician" and a "sor
Prospero in the category of"magician" or "white witch,' h
natural enemy of Sycorax.69 This possibility encourages a
terms of Prospero's connections back to the Virgil and So

64 Scot, sig. 2F5'.

65 Peters includes the famous story of Virgil's magic book on p
Hattaway,"Paradoxes of Solomon: Learning in the English Renaissance,"J
29 (1968): 499-530, esp. 504-6; Moncure Daniel Conway, Solomon and So
Open Court; London: K. Paul, Trench, Triibner and Co., 1899), 236-4
Virgil the Necromancer: Studies in Virgilian Legends (Cambridge, MA
Tudeau-Clayton argues that Virgil's "magic" was sympathetic, natural
modeled on this benign Virgilian form (Jonson, Shakespeare and Early
Cambridge UP, 1998], 8-9). It is hard, though, to read Virgilius, the
about Virgil as a magician, as Tudeau-Clayton does. On pages 3-4 of Vi
is shown getting his books of necromancy from a devil he releases fro
7, Virgilius looks "in his boke of negromancye where in he was very
1812]). This is not, I would argue, the picture of a magician as "nat
Clayton insists.
66 See James I, Daemonology, 16; Weir, De praestigiis daemonum, 110-12
67 See Clark, 457-71, esp. 461-64; and Macfarlane, 67, 126, and 129
68 Clark, 459. For an account of the services performed by cunning m
also Richard Bernard, who lists the services of "white witches" in coun
to argue that this healing, which cannot be done by natural means, m
to Grandjury Men... [London, 1629], 126-30).
69 Macfarlane explicitly refers to local magicians as"the enemy" of t

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 27

and out to the users of grimoire

fruitful in terms of the magician
thy to (even the memory of) Sy
At the same time, however, Pros
today. While further research by h
tents of Prospero's book, as reflec
departing in significant ways from
spirit-world has an insouciance an
constructed MS Vb26. The langua
them to depart conveys at every p
powerful, dangerous, and other. T
a spirit who may do him terrible
so. The MS Vb26 master thus he
dozens of restrictions and qualif
and shape;',""without anie delaye o
"without anie feare or hurte" to th
Prospero, in contrast, says blit
give thee power, here to this pl
dismissal of the spirits is equal
appropriate language to handle t
dismissed-"Go vnto the place
without damage or hurt of me
'Avoid. No more,"' and the spirits
Even more astonishing to the w
the spirits summoned and used
are a strange mixture of Old T
demons, biblical devils, and Bab
learn in 5.1 when he pronounces
ration of magic (11. 42-66). The
form of a conjuration in langua
Ovid's Metamorphoses, where M
Woods alone, / Of standing Lak

70 Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador offers an

posing it to royal magic in his "The Po
1-13.

" Folger MS Vb26, pages 198-99.

72 Scot, sig. 212r; see also Butler, 76.
73 The. xv. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso; entytuled Metamorphoses, translated oute of Latin into English meeter,
by Arthur Golding (London, 1567), sig. M3v.

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28 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

tated this speech in 1609 for the witch's invocation in

replaced Medea's unnamed, undifferentiated nature spi
... / You, that (to arme us) have yourselves disarm'd /
your whips and brands":'74 In having his witches summon
removes the invocation from the Ovidian world and pla
of the witch.

Shakespeare, in contrast, retains the language-and th

Medea's invocation. The list of magic powers that Pro
power to create storms and earthquakes, to control thunde
dead-are more or less consistent with those sought by t
the spirits, though, are not. Prospero's invocation of elves"
midnight mushrumps," of "demi-puppets that / By m
ringlets make" (11. 47-48, 45-46), places the magician, and
the Ovidian, the poetic, the fictional. That the speech is, a
an improvisation on and translation of "witchcraft's great
only by Jonson and Shakespeare but also by Thomas H
means that the speech was probably instantly recognizable
In the same way, Prospero's use of his magic book to
the counterfactual world of fiction than to most grimoire
ities" as Greek-mythological masques and spirit dances with
101sd), Prospero is reminiscent not so much of the grimoi
fictional depictions of such masters.76 Robert Reed has
ability to produce spirits in fantastic shapes or in the like
traces back to the practice of fictional sorcerers, and he se
viding a terminus to an "era of unparalleled popularity
Barbara Traister, too, writes that, in the decades p
Prospero, the magician as"creator and director of spectacle
a"stock formula" in the romance epic and on the London st
the world of epic, romance, and drama Prospero has multi

74 Ben Jonson, The Masque of Queenes, celebrated from the House

1609), sigs. C2v-C3r.
75 Bate also comments importantly on Shakespeare's interesting p
from Ovid-not at the beginning of the play, before the magically
and in conjunction with the rejection of magic; see Jonathan Bat
Clarendon Press, 1993), 252.
76 However, see note 32, above.
77 Robert Reed, The Occult on the Tudor and Stuart Stage (Boston
1965), 125 and 88.
78 Barbara Howard Traister, Heavenly Necromancers: The Magicia
(Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1984), 27-29, esp. 29.

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 29

his magic book has multiple coun

Ariosto, for instance, magicians hav
magicians "are dependent on book
juror in 2 Henry VI, the hero of Fr
Devil's Charter, and many of the ot
Prospero's book, then, seems to
(or romance-prop) grimoire, just
alternately) a serious master of s
reminds us (as I've argued elsewhe
magician.80 But just as The Tem
Prospero's book, within the play'
porary Mediterranean/Atlantic v
seems quite other than that carri
in terms of the larger power of th
It is this resonance that Stephe
words "Remember first to posse
with magic but instead as represen
European and the unlettered islan
source not of magical potency bu
lacking "letters and Writing," are
Savage, Barbarous.'"81 Peter Gree
of Prospero's (nonmagical) power
Prospero's books not because th
Prospero's learnedness, his "cultur
But both Greenaway and Greenb
book (especially in the eyes of the n
nection between the book as the a
natural potency. Greenaway has C
(3.2.46-47) delivered on a beach li
"urns, busts, reliefs, tombs:'"83 A
objects of a far-off, foreign, unk
papers, fly up into his face ... the a

79 Traister, Heavenly Necromancers, 27 an

80 Mowat, "Prospero, Agrippa, and Ho
81 Samuel Purchas, 'A Discourse of the
World ...," quoted here from Stephen Gree
(Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991), 10.
82 Greenaway, 124-25. The phrase "l
Marvelous Possessions, 10.
83 Greenaway, 125.

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30 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

he can have ripped from his stolen books."84 And Gree

for Caliban's"Burn but his books,"' recounts the story t
about the Hurons who "were convinced that we [Eu
imposters come to take possession of their country, aft
by our spells, which were shut up in our inkstands, in
that we dared not, without hiding ourselves, open a book o
The Duret anecdote, by turning the book of the expl
book," points obliquely to an unexpected connection betwee
and the sorcerer. The connection is buttressed by Gre
discourse of travel in the late Middle Ages and the Re
"strength" of this discourse in its expression of"the shock o
cation of an intense curiosity,... the encounter with differ
and epitomized by Columbus's marvelous landfall in an u
suggest that these phrases describing geographical discover
the lettered-"the shock of the unfamiliar,"'"the provocatio
"the encounter with difference"- could just as well be
attempted forays into the dark world of the spirits. T
explorer and the conjuror appears as well in the languag
conqueror against his victim and by the conjuror against a

Therefore ... I doo bind you and constreine you into my w

being thus bound, may come vnto me in great humilitie,
circles before me visiblie, in faire forme and shape ..., and
things, whatsoeuer I shall desire, and that you may not d
my licence. And if you doo against my precepts, I will pro
shall descend into the profound deepeness of the sea, exc
vnto me.... 88

A comparable linguistic parallel is found in the accusations of treachery and l

leveled by the grimoire masters against the spirits and by New World explo
against the Indians.89

84 Greenaway, 125.
85 Claude Duret, Thresor de l'histoire des langues . . . (Cologny, 1613), 935, quoted here
Greenblatt, Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (New York: Routledge, 1990), 24.
86 Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, 2-3.
87 Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, 3.
88 Scot, sig. 2H6v.
89 The tone of the grimoire masters is captured in Simon Forman's language about a summo
spirit: 'And if he do not tell you the truth in these things then ... punish him. And if he say,
punishing me and I will do it, then say him nay. I will punish thee most cruelly for this lie
Additional 36674, fol. 48r). For accusations of treachery and lying against native Virginians
North Carolinians in the first decade of settlement (1607-1617), see the accounts of George Per

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 31

Prospero is, of course, both voyag

bookish allusions, conjures the lon
empire-building that predates the
that the play's intertextual citations
a great and continuous sequence of
epics, romances, and dramas stretchin
lies the ancient and ongoing saga of
human history.90 In terms of Pro
that, whether in poetry or travel nar
the barbaric other; as early as the A
wild peoples and set up laws for me
"to transplant human beings from
social system" was seen as belonging
of The Tempest, much of the pow
located more specifically in the bo
Greenblatt notes,"those who wrote
superiority."'93 Within the real-w
cially as it manifested in early mo
book therefore carried enormous s
and thus of both real and perceived
It is here that the book of magic
queror and where our sense of Pros
play's voyage story. When Prospero
furnished me / From mine own libra
dom" (1.2.198-200), Prospero evokes
the early modern sorcerer, and the l
against those perceived as "Brutish
book carried by the explorer: all p

Gabriel Archer, William White, John Smith

Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colon
(Champlaine, VA: RoundHouse, 1998). See also
Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Chapel Hill an
90 See Barbara A. Mowat, "'Knowing I lo
'The Tempest' and Its Travels, Peter H
Pennsylvania P, 2000), 27-36.
91 The Aeneid of Virgil, trans. Kevin Guina
11 (Bk. 1, 11. 63-64).
92 Quoted here from Greenblatt, Learning t
93 Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, 9-10.

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32 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

"magic" (as we see in the Duret anecdote).94 That Pros

offstage, a source of power that we only imagine as an
mana. Like the offstage alchemical laboratory in Jonson
Epicure Mammon is Novo Orbo, Peru, and Solomon'
takes on a reality all the greater because imagined rather t
Alchemist's alembic, Prospero's book is no mirage, no fraud
it is a source of tremendous power, and Prospero's decision
in the frame of magic and sorcery, only prudent.
Within the frame of literacy as civilization and as po
is more ambiguous. When, as in Greenaway's film,
leather-bound, gorgeous, their pages yielding all the wo
ples, its art, its histories-their destruction seems, to lo
of Western civilization, both problematic and poignant.
Caliban's view of Prospero, who see Prospero as litt
Western civilization as little more than tyranny, the destr
more a matter of celebration. Such a divided response
almost inevitable, forcing the early-twenty-first-centu
with the meanings of literacy, of history, of civilization,
values and of worlds implied in The Tempest's larger story
The book of magic that I suggest Shakespeare provides
it, as book per se, a long and difficult colonial and pos
since it is represented as the source of Prospero's contr
ment Caliban and who make possible Prospero's rule ov
grimoire-and even more so as a stage-prop grimo
seems much further in the past and its baggage strange
host of questions about Prospero and his magic, many o
swered until we know more about manuscript con
Watson points out, we cannot, for example, fully grasp

14 On the"magic" power of the book, specifically that attaching t

nal Americans, see James Axtell, "The Power of Print in the Ea
Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 44 (1987): 300-309. Axtell quotes Th
Roanoke voyage of 1585, in which the natives see books as "wor
attempts of the Englishmen to disabuse them of this superstitio
95 F. H. Mares points out in his edition of The Alchemist that"th
seen, or need not be-is the symbol at the centre of the play. It
potent instrument of delusion" (lii). Mares notes other features
me to be interestingly parallel to The Tempest, including the fact t
ty well co-terminous with the duration of the play in perform
venues of performance of the two plays, it seems plausible that Th
to The Alchemist.

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 PROSPERO'S BOOK 33

cian or why his book appears to diff

the field is greater.96 We know eno
tence of grimoires forces us to look
plays and their magic books, beginni
or soon after, The Tempest itself. An
ters, of Oberion and Storax, of the
us the salutary reminder that ther
about The Tempest but also about t
bailiwick.

96 Private correspondence. I am grateful to Watson, to Claire Fanger, and especially to Frank

Klaassen for so generously sharing their expertise with me. Any inaccuracies that remain are despite
their kind efforts.

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