humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

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Bad Formatting Alert (I'm trying to fix it).

The title for The Tempest originates in the Latin
word 'tempesta' which meant either 'storm' or
'weather.' Words for 'weather' were originally
words for 'time' in languages from Russia to
Brittany 1 so we have the climactic pun from the
author of The Tempest, it is the end of his turbulent
career as a playwright and the last of the plays.

Having the wrong author(s), this play has nEVER
been plumbed by critics. How many Strats and
Oxfordians have credited Bacon for the primary
source for Love's Labor's Lost?

Bacon wrote the Gesta Grayorum and Spedding
was so sure of that fact (Spedding, an Oxford Unversity Shakespeare
scholar and toady, normally erred
'in favor of the Strats) that he printed the whole
of the Gesta in Works and Letters.

Spedding also printed the History of the Winds, a
primary source for The Tempest, a fact the Shake-
speare scholar Spedding does not mention.

Spedding wanted a knighthood (and deserved one)
no doubt ruminating on Habsburg ingratitude, he absent-mindedly walked
into traffic and was hit by
a cab, it's too bad as a knighthood would have gone
nicely with the ten thousand-acre Spedding estate
in the Lake Country, the Speddings were quality).

This is by way of an introduction to some of the many
instances of Bacon's History of the Winds in The Tempest.

1 tempest "violent storm," c.1250, from O.Fr. tempeste
(11c.), from V.L. *tempesta, from L. tempestas (gen.
tempestatis) "storm, weather, season," also "commotion,
disturbance," related to tempus "time, season." Sense
evolution is from "period of time" to "period of
weather," to "bad weather" to "storm." Words for
"weather" were originally words for "time" in languages
from Russia to Brittany. Fig. sense of "violent
commotion" is recorded from c.1315. Tempestuous is
attested from 1447.