Kathman refutation - The Oxford Authorship Site
Kathman refutation - The Oxford Authorship Site
Kathman refutation - The Oxford Authorship Site
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FALSE PARALLELS IN DAVID KATHMAN’S ‘DATING THE TEMPEST’ 16<br />
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David <strong>Kathman</strong> appears never to have considered this point: how could Shakespeare have<br />
used accounts by Strachey and Jourdain in which a ship does not split as sources for a<br />
play in which a ship does split? <strong>The</strong> very idea is an absurdity.<br />
David <strong>Kathman</strong>'s false parallel can thus be analyzed as follows:<br />
A ship splits on a rock and is ‘dashed all to pieces’.<br />
True for <strong>The</strong> Tempest.<br />
Not true for the Strachey letter.<br />
Ergo: a false parallel.<br />
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&<br />
(7) David <strong>Kathman</strong> writes:<br />
Strachey says that "who was most armed, and best prepared, was not a little shaken" (6)<br />
Prospero asks, "Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil / Would not infect his<br />
reason?" (1.2.207-08).<br />
Here is a fuller quotation from Strachey:<br />
We had followed this course so long as now we were within seven or eight days at the<br />
most, by Captain Newport's reckoning, of making Cape Henry upon the coast of Virginia,<br />
when on St. James his day, July 24, being Monday (preparing for no less all the black<br />
night before), the clouds gathering thick upon us and the winds singing and whistling<br />
most unusually (which made us to cast off our pinnace, towing the same until then<br />
astern), a dreadful storm and hideous began to blow from out the northeast, which,<br />
swelling and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence than others, at<br />
length did beat all light from Heaven; which like an hell of darkness, turned black upon<br />
us, so much the more fuller of horrors as in such cases horror and fear use to overrun the<br />
troubled and overmastered senses of all, which taken up with amazement, the ears lay so<br />
sensible to the terrible cries and murmurs of the winds and distraction of our company as<br />
who was most armed and best prepared was not a little shaken. (Wright, p. 4)<br />
Here's a fuller quotation from <strong>The</strong> Tempest:<br />
ARIEL All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come<br />
To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,<br />
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride<br />
On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task<br />
Ariel and all his quality.<br />
© 2005 Nina Green All Rights Reserved<br />
http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/