Mr. Kipling's letter has found a place in all subsequent critical discussions of the play, and has become a contribution to that historical research which seeks to discover the ways and means by which literature is made. It may not be unseemly therefore to bring together as an introduction and commentary some other suggestions that criticism has advanced in regard to the influences and incentives that directed Shakspere's art in this play, written at the very close of his career and at the moment when the Elizabethan drama had reached its highest development. Recent investigation has added to our certainty that the play was written in 1610 or 1611, for Mr. Ernest Law has shown that the supposedly forged entry of its performance at court on November 1, 1611 is genuine. Various passages in the play indicate that it was not written before July 1610, when Sir Thomas Gates and his ships sailed up the Thames with news of the safety of the fleet that had departed from Plymouth over a year before. This fleet of nine vessels had started for the new colony in Virginia, had been scattered by a great storm, and the ship 'Sea Venture' with the leaders aboard, Sir George Somers, Sir Thomas Gates, and Captain Christopher Newport, had been cast ashore on one of the Bermudas. But there had been no loss of life; the adventurers had lived comfortably for many months, had built two pinnaces from the materials of the wreck, and had rejoined their comrades in Virginia. Before the arrival of Gates from Virginia, reports of the wreck had reached London, so his safe return was a nine days wonder. Full accounts were written. Two were printed in the autumn, and others circulated in manuscript. Shakspere certainly read some of the pamphlets recounting the strange experiences of the expedition, and he made some use of other voyagers' tales, as Raleigh's 'Discovery of Guiana.' But he may have heard much more than he read in the common gossip of the day. Or, enter Mr. Kipling's sailor, "the original Stephano fresh from the seas and half-seas over."