Prospero

The opera's theme was startlingly anticipated by NICOLETTA, a recently discovered 17th century work tentatively attributed to Shakespeare; I have obtained these excerpts:

ACT I SCENE I. A STREET BEFORE THE GREAT CATHEDRAL OF VERONA.
CURTIS AND FERDINAND, SERVING-MEN TO GENTLEFOLK, OBSERVE A FUNERAL PROCESSION..
F... yonder cometh the widow, a most sweet wench whom he met at a tavern-theater. There, nightly, she strutted in costumes fashioned to reveal and by stages to discard, rather than to adorn.
C. And he of more than fourscore years took her to wife?
F. Some might say that rather, she took him. I’ll warrant he wore horns before the marriage feast was cold.
C. Think you that grief lies heavy in her breast?
F. Howe’er much she may sorrow, there is mayhap a morsel of consolation in a fortune rumored to be more than four hundreds of millions of ducats......
ACT III SCENE II. TWELVE YEARS LATER. UPON THE PORTICO OF THE DUKE'S PALACE.
ENTER GREGORY AND EDMUND, YOUNG GENTLEMEN.
E. Today the Duke is to hear the pleadings of Lorenzo, Antonio and Valentino.
G. Surely those are the gallants rumored to be, at various and sundry times, the lovers of the fair Nicoletta?
E. Indeed the same. And lovers perhaps at most similar times, for each claims to be the father of the departed Nicoletta’s babe, and thus both fit and eager to bear a parent’s burden.
G. A burden indeed, one heavy with not only the kind and proper training of the little motherless maiden who hath been scarce six months in this sad world, but also the prudent management of Nicoletta’s fortune until the maiden be of age to inherit. But how do these three gentlemen argue their case?
E. Marry I know not whether one saith,
"Ah good my liege, I pray thee pardon me but I mounted Nicoletta the most times," another rejoins
"But I mounted her at the most propitious days of the lunar month," and another claimeth
"But I emit the strongest seed!" or yet other arguments as we may conjecture, who can tell.

ACT VI. SCENE IV (BELIEVED TO BE THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY) TIME: A WEEK LATER.
UPON A PIERSIDE. ENTER FOUR MEN IN COMMON GARB, BEARING A COFFIN AND FOLLOWED BY A GENTLEMAN.
GENTLEMAN. With this melancholy freight do we embark.
O Nicoletta! Favored by Nature and by Fame, but not by Fortune; living to but half your ordained mortal span; departing a turbulent and betimes a woeful life amid much dissent of friends, kinfolk, and others, so your final journey begins: a voyage to a warm and tranquil island, there to be laid to rest shielded at last from the prying eyes of gossips and the insatiable curiosity of the idle.
Nicoletta, farewell. (EXCERPT ENDS HERE)