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Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Shakespeare's Stormy French Reading List: Du Bartas' Tempest and Rabelais'.

In this series:

Having begun with Du Bartas quotes concerning nightingales and larks [link], we now move on to Du Bartas' tale of the Prophet Jonah in the Third Book of the Fourth Day of the Second of the Divine Weeks. Jonah having fled by ship from the mission he was given by God brings upon the ship and all aboard a mighty tempest.

Du Bartas's original reads:

Calez , dit le patron, calez voile: baissez

Et misane, & beau-pré. Mais les vents courroucez

Deslachent sur sa face une bourasque forte,

Qui son jargonde mer, bou-bourdonnante emporte.

Des hommes esperdus le confus hurlement,1


["Trim the sails," said the captain, "trim the sails: lower
The mizzen and the bowsprit." But the furious winds
Unleashed a strong squall upon his face,
Which carried away his jargon-filled, roaring speech.
The confused howling of the bewildered men,...]

In Joshua Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas's Weeks, this is rendered:

Strike, strike our saile (the Master cryes) amain,

Vaile misne and sprit-sail: but hee cryes in vain ;

For, in his face the blasts so bluster ay,

That his Sea-gibb'rish is straight born away.

Confused cryes of men dismay'd in minde,2

While it is not always the case, here Sylvester has managed a literal translation.

Shakespeare's Tempest being a play, these general descriptions take on flesh. The Captain gives his orders through the boatswain:

Boteswain. Heigh my hearts, cheerely, cheerely my harts: yare, yare:

Take in the toppe-sale: Tend to th’Masters whistle :

Blow till thou burst thy winde, if roome enough.

*

Botes. Downe with the top-Mast: yare, lower, lower,

A cry within. Enter Sebajiian, Anthonio & Gonzalo.

upon this howling: they are lowder then the weather,

or our office: yet againe? What do you heere? Shal we

give ore and drowne, have you a minde to sinke ?

Sebaf. A poxe o’your throat, you bawling, blasphemous incharitable Dog.

*

Botes. Lay her a hold, a hold, set her two courses off to Sea againe, lay her off.3

The howling wind does not need to be described. It is being provided by stage machinery. Shakespeare does not repeat or approximate Sylvester's term “ Sea-gibb'rish” but the fact is not sufficient to tell us whether he was working from Du Bartas's original or Sylvester or both or neither.

Now Du Bartas amplifies the storm into an assault by canon.

Comme plusieurs canons braquez contre une tour

Faisans un rang de trous rez-terre tout autour,

Esbranlent bien le mur. Mais le dernier tonnerre

D'un fer aislé de feu le renverse par terre .4


[Like several cannons aimed against a tower,
Making a row of holes all around at ground level,
They shake the wall. But the final thunderclap
Of a winged iron projectile of fire knocks it to the ground.,]

Sylvester's translation of the Divine Weekes renders it:

As, many Canons, 'gainst a Castle bent,

Make many holes, and much the rampire rent.

And shake the wall, but yet the latest shock

Of fire-wing'd Bullets batters down the Rock

He takes a number of minor liberties in order to maintain his rhyme-schema.

In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Ariel recounts the storm he has risen to terrify those on the King's ship:

I flam’d amazement, sometime I’ld divide

And burne in many places; on the Top-mast,

The Yards and Bore-spritt, would I flame distinctly,

Then meete, and joyne. Joves Lightning, the precursers

O’th dreadfull Thunder-claps more momentarie

And fight out-running were not;...

The canons needed not be expressly mentioned in the play. The audience is only too aware of them without a word. Instead the flash and crack of them firing blank rounds, and the sulfur smell wafting over the audience is described to heighten the effect:

the fire, and cracks

Of sulphurous roaring, the moil...5

It should be noted that Shakespeare specifically mentions the boresprit6 (beau-pré7, beau / bore) that Sylvester has rendered as “sprit-sail”. Still, it is not nearly enough to clinch our investigation for us.

But those who have read my “The Tempests of Shakespeare and Rabelais” know that Ariel is understood to have described the storm effect called “St. Elmo's Dance”.8 The Rabelais, is a much clearer, direct source for Ariel's speech:

les categides, thielles, lelapes, et presteres enflamber tout autour de nous par les psoloentes, urges, elicies, et aultres ejaculations etherees


[the catapults, javelins, thunderbolts, and fiery projectiles ignited everything around us with the whistling sounds, surges, flashes, and other ethereal emanations.]

And Panurge imagines demons rising around the ship in Rabelais' tempest in the direct fashion Ferdinand imagines them in Shakespeare:9

Je croy que touts les diables sont deschainez aujourd'huy 10


[I believe all the devils have got loose today.]

Not in the euphemistic style wielded by Du Bartas:

Le Pilote pendant sur l'escume d'un mont

Pense du Pole auant voir l'enfer plus profond.

Et puis precipité jusqu'à l'areine molle

Du plus bas de l'enfer pense voir le haut pole.

Et sentant l'ennemi & dedans & dehors,

Autant qu'il voit de flots croit voir autant de morts.11


[The pilot, suspended on the foam of a mountain,
Thinks of the Pole before seeing the deeper hell.
And then, plunged to the soft sand,
From the lowest depths of hell, thinks he sees the high pole.
And sensing the enemy both within and without,
For every wave he sees, he believes he sees as many dead.]

Sylvester's translation converts “the dead” into a general observation upon “death” in order to get his rhyme for which reason Shakespeare could not have gotten any idea of devils rising up from Du Bartas through him.

Interestingly, Du Bartas does get one image exactly in the fashion of Rabelais, and even more magically, when he observes that

le sifflement des chables,

Font chantres merueilleux, des concerts effroyables.12


[the whistling of the cables,
Create wondrous melodies, terrifying concerts.]

The image is particularly strong evidence that he, like Shakespeare, read Rabelais's tempest (in the original french), and surely all of his great Gargantua et Pantagruel:

commença... le mistral,... siffler à travers nos antennes... et autres éjaculations

éthérées13


[the mistral began,... to whistle through our rigging... and other ethereal ejaculations]

But, by-and-large, the great popularity of Du Bartas' poem came from the fact that it was perceived as a Biblical epic. The over-sized lust for life of his even more enormously famous predecessor, inasmuch as he borrowed from him, had to be transformed to suit a religious rather than a literary audience.

This to say that both Du Bartas' and Shakespeare's tempests are clearly influenced by Rabelais' Gargantua et Pantagruel. In the original, for there would be no translation into another language until well after both were dead.

Most of the parallels between Du Bartas' and Shakespeare's tempest, as a result, can be attributed to Rabelais'. Some more limited number, however, suggest that Shakespeare had also read Du Bartas in the original. And the evidence does not end there.


1Bartas, Guillaume de Saluste, Seigneur du. Les Peres, ov La Seconde Partie Dv Troisieme Iovr De La Seconde Sepmaine (1591). 17.

2 Sylvester, Joshuah. Bartas: his Devine weekes and works (1605-14) collated by Alexander Grosart in The Complete Works of Joshuah Sylvester (1880). II.248.

3 Shakespeare, William. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. IX. The Tempest. I.i.10-13, 43-4, 57-8.

4 Bartas. 18.

5 Shakespeare, I.ii.231-7.

6 Boresprit] bowsprit. We cannot know Sh.'s original spelling. Tudor spelling was irregular and numerous copyists/typesetters involved before publication.

7 Beau-pré] derivation: beau-proue. Proue = prow, bow

8 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “The Tempests of Shakespeare and Rabelais.” Virtual Grub Street. August 15, 2021. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-tempests-of-shakespeare-and-rabelais.html “St. Elmo’s Dance. During fierce storms sailors often saw sparkling lights dance around their masts. This effect, we have come to know, is caused by the air becoming highly ionized from lightning strikes.”

9 Shakespeare, I.ii.247-250. “the Kings sonne Ferdinand

With haire up-staring (then like reeds, not haire)

Was the first man that leapt; cride hell is empty,

And all the Divels are heere.”

10 Rabelais, Francois. Gargantua et Pantagruel, Clouzot ed. (1913). IV.160.

11 Du Bartas, 17.

12 Du Bartas, 17.

13 Rabelais, IV.156.



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