Kathman refutation - The Oxford Authorship Site

FALSE PARALLELS IN DAVID KATHMAN’S ‘DATING THE TEMPEST’ 20
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A leader displays effective organizational skills and encourages his men by example.
Not true for The Tempest.
True for the Strachey letter.
Ergo: a false parallel.
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(9) David Kathman writes:
Strachey has a description of St. Elmo's fire that corresponds in many particulars to
Ariel's description of his magical boarding of the King's ship. Strachey: "Sir George
Somers . . . had an apparition of a little round light, like a faint Starre, trembling, and
streaming along with a sparkeling blaze, halfe the height upon the Maine Mast, and
shooting sometimes from Shroud to Shroud, tempting to settle as it were upon any of the
foure Shrouds . . . running sometimes along the Maine-yard to the very end, and then
returning . . . but upon a sodaine, towards the morning watch, they lost the sight of it, and
knew not which way it made . . . Could it have served us now miraculously to have taken
our height by, it might have strucken amazement" (11-12).
ARIEL I boarded the King's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam'd amazement. Sometimes I'ld divide,
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards and boresprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then meet and join. Jove's lightning, the precursors
O' th' dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary
And sight-outrunning were not; (1.2.196-203)
David Kathman is to be commended for accuracy here in that he doesn't claim that what
occurred on the ship in The Tempest was St. Elmo's fire. He terms it 'Ariel's description
of his magical boarding of the King's ship'. In that respect, David Kathman is right.
Despite the popular misconception that Shakespeare describes St. Elmo’s fire in The
Tempest, it clearly is not St. Elmo's fire, which has never been described in this way. It is
a magical effect created by Ariel to terrify everyone on the ship. And it succeeds.
In order to appreciate this, it is necessary to quote the entire passage, not merely the lines
quoted by David Kathman.
ARIEL To every article.
I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement: sometime I'ld divide,
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