Kathman refutation - The Oxford Authorship Site

FALSE PARALLELS IN DAVID KATHMAN’S ‘DATING THE TEMPEST’ 38
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Use of the rare word 'thunderstroke’.
True for The Tempest.
Not true for the Strachey letter.
Ergo: a false parallel.
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(20) David Kathman writes:
Strachey also writes of the "many scattering showers of Raine (which would passe swiftly
over, and yet fall with such force and darknesse for the time as if it would never bee
cleere again)" (16).
In the course of Trinculo's monologue at 2.2.18-41, a storm with "black cloud[s]" (20)
passes over quickly.
David Kathman is in error. His point is that storms in the Bermudas and in The Tempest
'pass over quickly'. It is necessary to quote more fully from Strachey to demonstrate the
falsity of this statement with respect to Bermuda. Strachey writes:
[T]he storms continually raging from them, which once in the full and change commonly
of every moon (winter or summer) keep their unchangeable round and rather thunder
than blow from every corner about them, sometimes forty-eight hours together. . . . In
August, September, and until the end of October we had very hot and pleasant weather;
only (as I say) thunder, lightning, and many scattering showers of rain (which would pass
swiftly over and yet fall with such force and darkness for the time as it would never be
clear again) we wanted not any; and of rain more in summer than in winter. (Wright, pp.
20-1)
From this fuller quotation it is clear that the storms in Bermuda, far from passing over
quickly, often lasted for forty-eight hours at a time, all year round (although it is true that
Strachey says that downpours of rain within these two-day storms passed over quickly).
However this is ultimately irrelevant, because David Kathman’s claim that a ‘storm’ in
The Tempest ‘passes over quickly’ is also false. In fact, the storm in The Tempest
mentioned at the beginning of Act 2, Scene 2 never materializes, although thunder is
heard. Trinculo’s talk of this storm merely serves as a pretext for his taking cover under
Caliban’s gaberdine, thus giving rise to the ‘monster of the isle with four legs’ which
Stephano sees when he passes by.
David Kathman's false parallel can thus be analyzed as follows:
Storms which pass over quickly.
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