In _The Tempest_ Prospero is a philosopher rather than a wizard, and Ariel is a fairy not a familiar. The magic of Prospero is of the intellect, and throughout, Shakespeare is careful to insist upon a certain detachment from human passions and ambitions. His love for Miranda, indeed, is exquisitely portrayed, and once—at the base ingratitude of Caliban—his anger flashes forth, but none the less, albeit superintending the fortunes of those over whom he watches tenderly, and utterly abhorring the thought of revenge, he seems to stand apart like Providence divinely guiding the events to the desired issue of reconciliation and forgiveness. Even so, the situation was delicate to place before an Elizabethan audience, and how nobly and with what art does Shakespeare touch upon Prospero’s “rough magic”! In Sycorax we recognize the typical witch, wholly evil, vile, malignant, terrible for mischief, the consort and mistress of devils. There are few scenes which have so caught the world’s fancy as the wild overture to _Macbeth_. In storm and wilderness we are suddenly brought face to face with three mysterious phantasms that ride on the wind and mingle with the mist in thunder, lightning, and in rain. They are not agents of evil, they are evil; nameless, spectral, wholly horrible. And then, after the briefest of intervals, they reappear to relate such exploits as killing swine and begging chestnuts from a sailor’s wife, to brag of having secured such talismans as the thumb of a drowned pilot, businesses proper to Mother Demdike or Anne Bishop of Wincanton, Somerset. Can this change have been intentional? I think not, and its very violence and quickness are jarring to a degree. The meeting with Hecate, who is angry, and scolds them “beldames as you are, Saucy and overbold” does not mend matters, and in spite of the horror when the apparitions are evoked, the ingredients of the cauldron, however noisome and hideous, are too material for “A deed without a name.” There is a weakness here, and it says much for the genius of the tragedy that this weakness is not obtrusively felt. Nevertheless it was upon this that the actors seized when for theatrical effect the incantation scenes had to be “written up” by the interpolation of fresh matter. Davenant also in his frankly operatic version of _Macbeth_, produced at Dorset Garden in February, 1672-3 elaborated the witch scenes to an incredible extent, although by ample conveyance from Middleton’s _The Witch_ together with songs and dances he was merely following theatrical tradition.[9]