How The Tempest drew on The Complete Essays
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Michel de Montaigne’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Complete Essays
Michel de Montaigne · 1580
RenaissanceThe influenced
The Tempest
William Shakespeare · c. 1611
ShakespeareRelevance
9/10
On The Tempest’s page
- Gonzalo isn't improvising — he's quoting Montaigne
- His commonwealth speech lifts Of the Cannibals almost verbatim from Florio's 1603 translation, the single clearest case of Shakespeare citing Montaigne
- Read the essay first and you'll catch the irony Shakespeare is playing with — Montaigne's earnest meditation on the New World turned into a castaway's idle daydream
On The Complete Essays’s page
- The one indisputable Montaigne fingerprint in all of Shakespeare
- Gonzalo's fantasy of an ideal commonwealth (The Tempest II.i) closely paraphrases Montaigne's Of the Cannibals — straight out of Florio's 1603 English translation
- The whole essay's argument — that the "savage" New World might shame civilized Europe — gets put in the mouth of a dreaming old courtier