Music as Meaning in The Tempest

On 7 November 1667, the diarist Samuel Pepys “resolv’d [...] to go see ‘The Tempest’, an old play of Shakespeare’s” on the first day it was presented at the Dorset Garden Theatre, also known as “the Duke’s house”.1 In the same entry, Pepys adds a description of “a curious piece of musique in an echo of half sentences, the echo repeating the former half, while the man goes on to the latter, which is mighty pretty”. This remark both identifies the performance as the Davenant/Dryden adaptation of The Tempest by Shakespeare, and brings into focus two questions. First, can we really say that Pepys saw Shakespeare’s play, and, by extension, accept as Shakespeare criticism his additional remark: “The play no great wit, but yet good, above ordinary plays”? Second, we know that the Davenant/Dryden adaptation was not turned into Thomas Shadwell’s opera until March or April 1674.2 So whose music did Pepys hear in 1667? Not Robert Johnson’s. The songs which he composed for what was possibly the original performance of The Tempest (certainly during Shakespeare’s lifetime) did