1 I,1,15
Good boatswain, have care. Where's the master? Play the men.
2 II,1,715
Prithee, peace.
3II,1,730
I prithee, spare.
4II,1,806
You cram these words into mine ears against The stomach of my sense. Would I had never...
5II,1,824
No, no, he's gone.
6II,1,830
Prithee, peace.
7II,1,840
So is the dear'st o' the loss.
8II,1,882
Prithee, no more: thou dost talk nothing to me.
9II,1,904
What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts: I find...
10II,1,914
Thank you. Wondrous heavy.
11II,1,1054
Why, how now? ho, awake! Why are you drawn? Wherefore this ghastly looking?
12II,1,1061
I heard nothing.
13II,1,1065
Heard you this, Gonzalo?
14II,1,1072
Lead off this ground; and let's make further search For my poor son.
15II,1,1076
Lead away.
16III,3,1558
Old lord, I cannot blame thee, Who am myself attach'd with weariness,...
17III,3,1577
What harmony is this? My good friends, hark!
18III,3,1584
Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?
19III,3,1605
I cannot too much muse Such shapes, such gesture and such sound, expressing,...
20III,3,1614
Not I.
21III,3,1622
I will stand to and feed, Although my last: no matter, since I feel...
22III,3,1678
O, it is monstrous, monstrous: Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;...
23V,1,2144
Whether thou best he or no, Or some enchanted trifle to abuse me,...
24V,1,2174
If thou be'st Prospero, Give us particulars of thy preservation;...
25V,1,2181
Irreparable is the loss, and patience Says it is past her cure.
26V,1,2187
You the like loss!
27V,1,2192
A daughter? O heavens, that they were living both in Naples,...
28V,1,2223
If this prove A vision of the Island, one dear son...
29V,1,2230
Now all the blessings Of a glad father compass thee about!...
30V,1,2238
What is this maid with whom thou wast at play? Your eld'st acquaintance cannot be three hours:...
31V,1,2251
I am hers: But, O, how oddly will it sound that I...
32V,1,2262
I say, Amen, Gonzalo!
33V,1,2272
[To FERDINAND and MIRANDA] Give me your hands: Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart...
34V,1,2291
These are not natural events; they strengthen From strange to stranger. Say, how came you hither?
35V,1,2307
This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod And there is in this business more than nature...
36V,1,2352
Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler?
37V,1,2354
And Trinculo is reeling ripe: where should they Find this grand liquor that hath gilded 'em?...
38V,1,2364
This is a strange thing as e'er I look'd on.
39V,1,2375
Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.
40 V,1,2390
I long To hear the story of your life, which must...
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
King Alonso of Naples: Timeline
1.2.9: Alonso is on the ship and has come to the deck. He asks the boatswain to have care, and then follows instructions to go below deck, where he prays with his son, Prince Ferdinand.
2.1.107: Alonso has listened to Gonzalo, Antonio, and Sebastian bat words at each other, while he mourns his son’s death. He cries out that he regrets ever marrying his daughter to the King of Tunis, as it has cost him his son, and his daughter is so far away he might as well never see her again. Sebastian claims it is the King’s own fault, to which the King replies the loss is even more heartfelt.
2.1.124: Francisco, a lord, tries to comfort the King by saying maybe the Prince is still alive, but the King is certain that Ferdinand is gone, and wishes everyone to leave him in peace.
2.1.308: The King awakens from his deep sleep to find Sebastian and Antonio with suspicious daggers drawn. He asks why they look so frightened, when he himself heard nothing. He asks Gonzalo if he heard anything, and the answer is no.
2.1.323: The King, suspecting nothing, encourages the group to continue in the search for Ferdinand.
3.3.4: Gonzalo says he is wearied by the search, and the King agrees. He says he will no longer let his hope flatter him, and the sea, having drowned his son, mocks their search on land. He agrees to let his son go.
3.3.17: Alonso calls the group's attention to strange music, and asks what on earth these spirits were that set the table before them. He cannot muse over what they were, and instead refuses to eat the strange meal they’ve offered.
3.3.49: After some encouragement, Alonso agrees to dine. As the "best is past" in his life, he might as well take the risk and eat. Just as he calls all the others to the table, Ariel appears as a harpy, and calls him out for being a traitor.
3.3.95: When Gonzalo asks why Alonso looks so frightened, Alonso proclaims he saw something monstrous (the harpy). He thought the wind and thunder sang to him about his past wrong against Prospero, and claimed his payment for this ill deed was the loss of his son. Alonso fears the same fate awaits him at the bottom of the sea.
5.1.111: Alonso is unsure whether it is Prospero that greets them or not, and says lately his mind has been less than stable. He then returns the dukedom of Milan to Prospero, and asks Prospero to pardon his wrongs. Then he asks how it could be that Prospero is both alive and well on this strange island.
5.1.134: Again, Alonso asks Prospero for the particular details – how could Prospero have survived, whereas he has lost his dear son Ferdinand. Alonso says the loss is still sharp and fresh, and will not be eased by his patience.
5.1.148: Hearing that Prospero has also lost his child, a daughter, Alonso wishes that the children were both in Naples as the king and queen. He would trade his own life to be in the bottom of the ocean instead of his son, and asks Prospero for more details about his recent loss (not exactly the most tactful of fellows, this king guy).
5.1.75: Seeing Ferdinand initially, Alonso worries this is another one of the island’s illusions. He announces he would be miserable to lose his son twice.
5.1.184: After joyfully greeting his son, Alonso asks who the young woman was that Ferdinand was playing chess with, given that he could only have known her for about three hours. He thinks she might be the goddess that separated them and brought them together again.
5.1.197: Alonso gladly agrees to be Miranda’s second father (father-in-law) and after hearing that his son knows his crime against the former Duke of Milan, notes how strange it is that he must ask his child to forgive him.
5.1.213: Alonso takes Ferdinand and Miranda’s hands in his, wishing them joy, and calls for sorrow upon anyone that doesn’t do the same.
5.1.242. Still reeling from the news that the ship is fine and the sailors alive, Alonso states that more than nature is at work. He says he will seek an oracle to fill in the shady bits, but is quickly cut off by Prospero, who will fill in the shady bits himself.
5.1.277: Alonso recognizes Prospero’s would-be murderer as Stephano, his own drunken butler. He notes that Trinculo, the jester, is also reeling like a drunkard. Later, Alonso looks at Caliban and calls him the strangest thing he’s ever seen.
5.1.313: Alonso assures Prospero he can’t wait to hear the story of his life since his banishment, and agrees it must be a wondrous tale.
2.1.107: Alonso has listened to Gonzalo, Antonio, and Sebastian bat words at each other, while he mourns his son’s death. He cries out that he regrets ever marrying his daughter to the King of Tunis, as it has cost him his son, and his daughter is so far away he might as well never see her again. Sebastian claims it is the King’s own fault, to which the King replies the loss is even more heartfelt.
2.1.124: Francisco, a lord, tries to comfort the King by saying maybe the Prince is still alive, but the King is certain that Ferdinand is gone, and wishes everyone to leave him in peace.
2.1.308: The King awakens from his deep sleep to find Sebastian and Antonio with suspicious daggers drawn. He asks why they look so frightened, when he himself heard nothing. He asks Gonzalo if he heard anything, and the answer is no.
2.1.323: The King, suspecting nothing, encourages the group to continue in the search for Ferdinand.
3.3.4: Gonzalo says he is wearied by the search, and the King agrees. He says he will no longer let his hope flatter him, and the sea, having drowned his son, mocks their search on land. He agrees to let his son go.
3.3.17: Alonso calls the group's attention to strange music, and asks what on earth these spirits were that set the table before them. He cannot muse over what they were, and instead refuses to eat the strange meal they’ve offered.
3.3.49: After some encouragement, Alonso agrees to dine. As the "best is past" in his life, he might as well take the risk and eat. Just as he calls all the others to the table, Ariel appears as a harpy, and calls him out for being a traitor.
3.3.95: When Gonzalo asks why Alonso looks so frightened, Alonso proclaims he saw something monstrous (the harpy). He thought the wind and thunder sang to him about his past wrong against Prospero, and claimed his payment for this ill deed was the loss of his son. Alonso fears the same fate awaits him at the bottom of the sea.
5.1.111: Alonso is unsure whether it is Prospero that greets them or not, and says lately his mind has been less than stable. He then returns the dukedom of Milan to Prospero, and asks Prospero to pardon his wrongs. Then he asks how it could be that Prospero is both alive and well on this strange island.
5.1.134: Again, Alonso asks Prospero for the particular details – how could Prospero have survived, whereas he has lost his dear son Ferdinand. Alonso says the loss is still sharp and fresh, and will not be eased by his patience.
5.1.148: Hearing that Prospero has also lost his child, a daughter, Alonso wishes that the children were both in Naples as the king and queen. He would trade his own life to be in the bottom of the ocean instead of his son, and asks Prospero for more details about his recent loss (not exactly the most tactful of fellows, this king guy).
5.1.75: Seeing Ferdinand initially, Alonso worries this is another one of the island’s illusions. He announces he would be miserable to lose his son twice.
5.1.184: After joyfully greeting his son, Alonso asks who the young woman was that Ferdinand was playing chess with, given that he could only have known her for about three hours. He thinks she might be the goddess that separated them and brought them together again.
5.1.197: Alonso gladly agrees to be Miranda’s second father (father-in-law) and after hearing that his son knows his crime against the former Duke of Milan, notes how strange it is that he must ask his child to forgive him.
5.1.213: Alonso takes Ferdinand and Miranda’s hands in his, wishing them joy, and calls for sorrow upon anyone that doesn’t do the same.
5.1.242. Still reeling from the news that the ship is fine and the sailors alive, Alonso states that more than nature is at work. He says he will seek an oracle to fill in the shady bits, but is quickly cut off by Prospero, who will fill in the shady bits himself.
5.1.277: Alonso recognizes Prospero’s would-be murderer as Stephano, his own drunken butler. He notes that Trinculo, the jester, is also reeling like a drunkard. Later, Alonso looks at Caliban and calls him the strangest thing he’s ever seen.
5.1.313: Alonso assures Prospero he can’t wait to hear the story of his life since his banishment, and agrees it must be a wondrous tale.
King Alonso of Naples: Character Analysis
Alonso, the King of Naples, is not a particularly good guy, but not a particularly bad one, either. We know he was an enemy of Prospero, but the first we hear of the King is that he was easily swayed by Antonio’s self-interested flattery. When we properly meet Alonso, we see he’s completely self-involved, easily moved to passion, sorrow or tears.
Alonso is easily moved one way or another, sometimes giving up his son for dead, and other times searching for him doggedly. Gonzalo can sway him in one direction (towards good) when he speaks, but we know Antonio’s wicked flattery also worked on the King before. That Alonso keeps Antonio and Sebastian, willing traitors, so close to him is evidence that he is at once trusting and naïve, in addition to being a horrible judge of character.
Unlike many of the other characters here, Alonso is quick to admit when he has done wrong – so long as he is called out on it first. When Ariel as a harpy reminds King Alonso what he’s done to Prospero and Miranda, the King is genuinely sorrowful. Further, when Alonso sees Prospero, he’s quick to return the man’s dukedom. Yet we get the sense that Alonso doesn’t think too much about his actions until he’s called to account for them.
Because of his remorse and his willingness to embrace Miranda, his son, and Prospero, Alonso seems to be a not-all-that-bad kind of guy, just easily influenced by the wrong crowd. Most importantly, Alonso doesn’t really trust his own senses. At the end of the play, he wonders at his son and can’t really wrap his mind around the strange story they’ve all been part of. Ultimately, he’s just another one of Shakespeare’s misguided royals, not the brightest crayon in the box, easily persuaded, but not altogether bad.
The Tempest - Prospero Context
by Jacqueline Wong
[Context passage: Act I, Sc ii, lines 79-116. From "Being once perfected how to grant suits" to "To most ignoble stooping"]
Paying close attention to tone & imagery, comment on the presentation of Prospero and important ideas in the play raised here.
We are presented with the highly emotional and angst-filled account of past times in Milan narrated by the main protagonist of The Tempest, Prospero. The turbulence in his tale reminds us of the equally disturbing tempest in the previous scene with its general mood of disorder and destruction. Although there are no physical indication of violence as in the last scene, Prospero's report is coloured with such images. It is here, in Act 1 Scene 2 that we learn that Prospero's "art" had conjured up the "tempestuous" storm. Miranda's "piteous heart" demands a salvation for the "poor souls" onboard the ship but her father, the great magician, Prospero promises that, "there's no harm done". He proclaims, "tis' time" and sets out to explain his motive for raising The Tempest that is the driving force of the entire play.
As he speaks of the past, Prospero is no doubt reliving every single detail "in the dark backward and absym of time". He seems to have vengeance on his mind right now. Old wounds are cruelly re-opened and he re-experiences the bitterness of betrayal by is "false brother" and the pain of what had happened "twelve year since". At the same time, he is also stirring up lost memories in Miranda's "remembrance". We see Shakespeare's magic at work as well while he deftly weaves the plot into his audience's mind. Every time Prospero calls Miranda to attention, Shakespeare speaks through the lips of his creation to his audience, "Thou attend'st not?" Taking on the voice of father, magician and "prince of power", the bard leads us straight into the crux of The Tempest of Prospero's voice.
The usurped Duke of Milan speaks of the usurper, Antonio most vividly, using myriad images. We picture Antonio's brilliance in politics as Prospero tells of how his brother "being once perfected how to grant suits, how to deny them, who t' advance and which to trash for over-topping" supplanted him. He presents us with a hunting image as he acknowledges Antonio's skill & compliments him. Prospero uses a number of images in his speech to let us see Antonio as a political animal. He shows us how "having both the key of the officer and office" Antonio gained supporters and got rid of opposers. This double image aptly portrayed how he not only secured the authority entrusted to him; he also had the ability to assert that power to his own means -- "set all hearts i'th' state to what tune pleas'd his ear". At the same time, we notice that the play is one that rings of music, this is only one instance where music is mentioned. It is a recurring motif. He maneuvers his way into nature when he informs Miranda (and the audience) of "the ivy which hid my princely trunk and suck'd my vendure out on't". We see in our minds' eye the devious Antonio who sucked the power out of his brother's welcoming hands and so, his life, leaving only a dry shell. Through the use of such imagery, Shakespeare unfolds the passionate tale of usurpation before the "wondrous" Miranda and us, the audience.
The wise Prospero speaks of how he had laid himself wide open to harm in "being transported and rapt in secret studies". "Neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to closeness and the bettering of his mind" he entrusted Milan into the hands of his treacherous brother and in doing so, "awak'd an evil nature" in his false brother. Not contented with his position, Antonio "new created the creatures that were mine, chang'd 'em or else new form'd 'em" and "confederates wi'th King of Naples" to bend Milan "to most ignoble stooping". It is obvious that Prospero was not conscious of what Antonio was doing and so, we, the sympathetic listeners feel for him although we know that he is partly at fault for his downfall. Prospero's anger and feelings of vengeance is understandable but we know that "there's no harm done". At the same time, as we listen to the usurped fling charge after charge at the amoral usurper like the sea waves beating relentlessly at the "yellow sands", Shakespeare questions the Prospero's usurpation of the "creatures" of the island -- Caliban and Ariel. We find out later that the powerful mage subjects the "most delicate monster", Caliban to "most ignoble stooping" and even the "fine apparition", Ariel is not spared from the magic of Prospero who has him at his beck and call. They cry for liberty but do they receive it from the usurped "master"? This is another of the important ideas raised in the play.
Miranda listens attentively to her father as he relives how he had placed his trust mistakenly on Antonio, "like a good parent" and how it "beget of him a falsehood in its contrary". "He needs will be absolute Milan." This convoluted image reminds us of how the unknowing Caliban had placed his trust and "loved thee and showed thee all the qualities o' th' isle." The situation of Prospero "twelve year since" mirrors that of the "abhorred slave", Caliban. Meanwhile, it also presents Antonio and Prospero as complex political creatures surviving in the "realism" of politics. The usurped did not refrain from usurping others in a different place and time. Here, we see the men as truly brothers because they are alike in their usurpation. The only difference lies in Prospero's benevolence in his decision towards reconciliation. We are given enough to be sure that Antonio will never consider the very idea because he "made a sinner of his own memory". The man created and shaped his own reality to suit his means and this is another recurring motif in the play.
We have seen how the people are unable to see through the illusion of the "tempest" and sometimes, they just do not understand their own reality because they do not want to see it. Prospero has made use of that weakness to "recover" his dukedom as he brings the plotters, Antonio, Sebastian and Alonso to the island for a lesson. We will meet the king of Naples who despairs of ever finding his beloved son, Ferdinand after The Tempest and refuses to entertain the hope of seeing him again but we know he does in the end. Power, "all prerogative" had gone into the plotters' heads and this veils the actual reality to become another reality in the mind. We encounter another motif in the play, that of fathers. We know that although the fathers (Prospero and Antonio) are enemies, they will forget their differences in the union of their child (Ferdinand and Miranda) eventually.
This tale that "would cure deafness" is the stepping stone of the entire play and we are presented with a multi-faceted Prospero -- the magician who usurps, the wronged who was usurped, the avenger, the father, the master, the duke. Can we really define him? Shakespeare leaves that intriguing thought in our minds as we take leave of this account full of "imagistic" qualities and themes.
[Context passage: Act I, Sc ii, lines 79-116. From "Being once perfected how to grant suits" to "To most ignoble stooping"]
Paying close attention to tone & imagery, comment on the presentation of Prospero and important ideas in the play raised here.
We are presented with the highly emotional and angst-filled account of past times in Milan narrated by the main protagonist of The Tempest, Prospero. The turbulence in his tale reminds us of the equally disturbing tempest in the previous scene with its general mood of disorder and destruction. Although there are no physical indication of violence as in the last scene, Prospero's report is coloured with such images. It is here, in Act 1 Scene 2 that we learn that Prospero's "art" had conjured up the "tempestuous" storm. Miranda's "piteous heart" demands a salvation for the "poor souls" onboard the ship but her father, the great magician, Prospero promises that, "there's no harm done". He proclaims, "tis' time" and sets out to explain his motive for raising The Tempest that is the driving force of the entire play.
As he speaks of the past, Prospero is no doubt reliving every single detail "in the dark backward and absym of time". He seems to have vengeance on his mind right now. Old wounds are cruelly re-opened and he re-experiences the bitterness of betrayal by is "false brother" and the pain of what had happened "twelve year since". At the same time, he is also stirring up lost memories in Miranda's "remembrance". We see Shakespeare's magic at work as well while he deftly weaves the plot into his audience's mind. Every time Prospero calls Miranda to attention, Shakespeare speaks through the lips of his creation to his audience, "Thou attend'st not?" Taking on the voice of father, magician and "prince of power", the bard leads us straight into the crux of The Tempest of Prospero's voice.
The usurped Duke of Milan speaks of the usurper, Antonio most vividly, using myriad images. We picture Antonio's brilliance in politics as Prospero tells of how his brother "being once perfected how to grant suits, how to deny them, who t' advance and which to trash for over-topping" supplanted him. He presents us with a hunting image as he acknowledges Antonio's skill & compliments him. Prospero uses a number of images in his speech to let us see Antonio as a political animal. He shows us how "having both the key of the officer and office" Antonio gained supporters and got rid of opposers. This double image aptly portrayed how he not only secured the authority entrusted to him; he also had the ability to assert that power to his own means -- "set all hearts i'th' state to what tune pleas'd his ear". At the same time, we notice that the play is one that rings of music, this is only one instance where music is mentioned. It is a recurring motif. He maneuvers his way into nature when he informs Miranda (and the audience) of "the ivy which hid my princely trunk and suck'd my vendure out on't". We see in our minds' eye the devious Antonio who sucked the power out of his brother's welcoming hands and so, his life, leaving only a dry shell. Through the use of such imagery, Shakespeare unfolds the passionate tale of usurpation before the "wondrous" Miranda and us, the audience.
The wise Prospero speaks of how he had laid himself wide open to harm in "being transported and rapt in secret studies". "Neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to closeness and the bettering of his mind" he entrusted Milan into the hands of his treacherous brother and in doing so, "awak'd an evil nature" in his false brother. Not contented with his position, Antonio "new created the creatures that were mine, chang'd 'em or else new form'd 'em" and "confederates wi'th King of Naples" to bend Milan "to most ignoble stooping". It is obvious that Prospero was not conscious of what Antonio was doing and so, we, the sympathetic listeners feel for him although we know that he is partly at fault for his downfall. Prospero's anger and feelings of vengeance is understandable but we know that "there's no harm done". At the same time, as we listen to the usurped fling charge after charge at the amoral usurper like the sea waves beating relentlessly at the "yellow sands", Shakespeare questions the Prospero's usurpation of the "creatures" of the island -- Caliban and Ariel. We find out later that the powerful mage subjects the "most delicate monster", Caliban to "most ignoble stooping" and even the "fine apparition", Ariel is not spared from the magic of Prospero who has him at his beck and call. They cry for liberty but do they receive it from the usurped "master"? This is another of the important ideas raised in the play.
Miranda listens attentively to her father as he relives how he had placed his trust mistakenly on Antonio, "like a good parent" and how it "beget of him a falsehood in its contrary". "He needs will be absolute Milan." This convoluted image reminds us of how the unknowing Caliban had placed his trust and "loved thee and showed thee all the qualities o' th' isle." The situation of Prospero "twelve year since" mirrors that of the "abhorred slave", Caliban. Meanwhile, it also presents Antonio and Prospero as complex political creatures surviving in the "realism" of politics. The usurped did not refrain from usurping others in a different place and time. Here, we see the men as truly brothers because they are alike in their usurpation. The only difference lies in Prospero's benevolence in his decision towards reconciliation. We are given enough to be sure that Antonio will never consider the very idea because he "made a sinner of his own memory". The man created and shaped his own reality to suit his means and this is another recurring motif in the play.
We have seen how the people are unable to see through the illusion of the "tempest" and sometimes, they just do not understand their own reality because they do not want to see it. Prospero has made use of that weakness to "recover" his dukedom as he brings the plotters, Antonio, Sebastian and Alonso to the island for a lesson. We will meet the king of Naples who despairs of ever finding his beloved son, Ferdinand after The Tempest and refuses to entertain the hope of seeing him again but we know he does in the end. Power, "all prerogative" had gone into the plotters' heads and this veils the actual reality to become another reality in the mind. We encounter another motif in the play, that of fathers. We know that although the fathers (Prospero and Antonio) are enemies, they will forget their differences in the union of their child (Ferdinand and Miranda) eventually.
This tale that "would cure deafness" is the stepping stone of the entire play and we are presented with a multi-faceted Prospero -- the magician who usurps, the wronged who was usurped, the avenger, the father, the master, the duke. Can we really define him? Shakespeare leaves that intriguing thought in our minds as we take leave of this account full of "imagistic" qualities and themes.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
PROSPERO'S DREAM: The Tempest and the Court Masque Inverted
by Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen
The Tempest is an intensely self-conscious play - it is, in many ways, theatre about the theatre. Many of the actions and events in it are explicitly and implicitly referred to as theatrical ones. Miranda's response to the shipwreck is a response to a tragedy, full of pity and fear:
0, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel—
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her—
Dashed all to pieces! 0, the cry did knock
Against my very heart—poor souls, they perished.[1]
The shipwreck is described by Prospero as a theatrical show staged by himself. "The direful spectacle of the wreck" (1.2.26, my italics) — where the predominant meaning of "spectacle", as defined by Orgel, is "theatrical display or pageant". Similarly, Ariel is commanded to assume the "shape", or role of a "nymph o'th sea". Prospero orchestrates the events in The Tempest and much of the play is a play-within-a-play, directed by Prospero, with Ariel as his assistant-director and stage manager.
The Tempest is also Prospero's attempt to undo the past by restaging it. In this respect, Prospero is comparable to Hamlet, Richard II and Lear who also employ a reenactment of the past as a means of exerting symbolic power over it. Hamlet restages his father's assassination, and 'The Mousetrap', in a sense, is the replacement of actual revenge. Richard II turns his dethronement into a theatrical spectacle, and Lear calls his daughters to a mock trial. All resort to drama because reality is out of their reach, beyond their control. Metadrama, in Shakespeare, seems to function as a symbolic weapon, a substitute for reality, a staged repetition of the past an assertion of control on the site of loss and defeat.
Prospero's theatrical art serves as his weapon of power, his instrument of control. In The Tempest, theatre and political power are each other's doubles. Theatricality and power converge most strongly, and reach their apotheosis, in the wedding masque in Act 4, scene 1. A masque is a celebration of royal power and glory and, in staging one, Prospero becomes a type of king, a royal mage whose ideals become reality in a courtly entertainment. The wedding masque in The Tempest is an allusion to the court masques performed at the Whitehall Banqueting House and brings into the play a broad range of Renaissance thought about royalty, its manifestations and the nature of royal power.
The Court Masque
The court masque played a crucial role in the way Renaissance monarchs chose to think about themselves. Masques served essentially as images of the order, peace and harmony brought about by the monarch's mere presence, and expressed didactic truths about the monarchy. Lavishly spectacular and visual, designed to enchant the eye, they formed a genre fundamentally different from the drama performed on the public stage. Much of the action was taken up by the settings themselves, which did not merely form a passive backdrop to the action, but were an integral part of it and symbolised the controlling power of the king. In this sense, the masque is radically different from the plays that were performed in the popular playhouses, which lacked scenic machinery. Inigo Jones's ingenious settings, "his ability to do the impossible" were the prime manifestation of the royal will.[2]
Under James 1, the form of the masque developed into two contrasting parts. The first section, or antimasque, offered an image of vice and disorder, which, in the second section, the masque proper, was superseded by the workings of royal power, and an ordered, harmonious world, with the king at its centre, was established. For example in The Masque of Blackness and its sequel, The Masque of Beauty, twelve "Nymphs of Niger" were made white:
Brittania, whose new name makes all tongues sing,
Might be a diamond worthy to enchase it,
Rules by the sun that to this height doth grace it,
Whose beams shine day and night, and are of force
To blanch an Ethiop, and revive a corse. [3]
King James is associated with the sun, his rays break "the Night's black charms". In Ben Jonson's Hymenaei, the "four humours and affection" are scared away by the presence of Reason and make way for the eight "nuptial powers" of Juno: "These, these are they / Whom humour and affection must obey".[4] In the same masque, a debate between Truth and Opinion (Truth's false counterfeit) is resolved in favour of the former. Truth, here, embodies the virtues of marriage, while Opinion glorifies the benefits of spinsterhood. Eventually, Truth addresses the king:
This royal judge of our contention
Will prop, I know, what I have undergone;
To whose right sacred highness I resign
Low, at his feet, this starry crown of mine,
To show his rule and judgement is divine.[5]
In The Masque of Queens twelve hags, embodying Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity and other vices, vanish at the dazzling appearance of Heroic Virtue, accompanied by eleven mythical queens.
In other masques, the king is often represented as the controller and tamer of nature. The royal will creates order and sophistication in "the wildness and untutored innocence of nature".[6] At the climax of each masque, the masquers descended from the stage and chose a dancing partner from the audience, merging the worlds of the masque and the court into the ideal royal universe.
The court masque, then, manifested an important theatrical image of kingship; royalty's prime mode of expression was fundamentally histrionic, as is also confirmed by James I's personal treatise on royalty entitled Basilikon Doron (1599) and Elizabeth's assertion that "We princes, I tell you are set on stages, in the sight and view of all the world duly observed."[7] The theatre served as an extension of the royal mind. Even watching a masque was a histrionic activity: the king's box was placed at the centre of the hall, for all the other spectators to see. The king had to be seen seeing. Inigo Jones' stage-effects were also designed in such a way as to give the king the best view of the stage — only from his seat could the action be seen properly.
Prospero's Masque
The wedding masque in The Tempest is a materialisation of Prospero's will and power. Like the court masque, it is a visual spectacle: "No tongue! All eyes! Be silent!" (4.1.59). Whereas in the second scene of The Tempest, Prospero wanted his daughter to listen, and drink in his tale, this time he wants visual attention. The masque celebrates Prospero's paternal magnanimity and his ability to defy the laws of time and nature — "Spring come to you at the farthest, / In the very end of harvest!" (4.1.114-15): winter has been excluded from Prospero's seasonal cycle. Abundance emanates spontaneously from Nature's inexhaustible resources; the masque is a departure from the real world of The Tempest, in which Ferdinand has to labour for his wedding, Ariel for his freedom, Caliban for the liberation from bodily pain. These harsh, rigid transactions are replaced by a vision of unconditional plenty. It is, however, worth noting that Venus and her "waspish-headed son" have been safely excluded from the party; unbridled erotic lust — so much feared by Prospero — has been warded off.
In the court masque, when the masquers reveal their true identities (i.e. as persons of nobility, people of the court), the audience was meant to look through the image, at the ideals of kingship and courtly life it represented. "In such representations", Orgel and Strong write, "the court saw not an imitation of itself, but its true self." [8] Likewise, the wedding masque in The Tempest offers Miranda and Ferdinand an image of their ideal, virtuous selves. It points to the ideals forged by Prospero's royal mind and stands for his project in general:
In one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife
Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom
In a poor isle, and all of us ourselves
When no man was his own.
(5.1.208-13, my italics)
Prospero's noble, rational magic is contrasted to the black sorcery practised by Sycorax, Caliban's mother, and this, again, links him to the images of royal power we encounter in the court masque. In Jonson's Hymenaei, for example, "anti-royal" forces are said to be concocted by "the black sorceress Night." Frank Kermode, in his New Arden Edition of The Tempest, writes that Prospero's art is the disciplined exercise of virtuous knowledge … it is a technique for liberating the soul from the passions, from nature; the practical application of a discipline of which the primary requirements are learning and temperance, and of which the mode is contemplation … it is the ordination of civility, the control of appetite, the transformations of nature by breeding and learning.[9]
Just how strongly Prospero fashions his world and his image of himself the way a king does in a court masque, becomes clear if we connect Kermode's observations to a comment on the Caroline masque — but also applicable to masques in general — by Kevin Sharpe, quoted in Jerzy Limon's The Masque of Stuart Culture:
Neoplatonic philosophy postulates an ascent of cognition from the plane of senses and material objects to a loftier stratum of knowledge of forms and ideas, of which objects were but an imperfect material expression. The Caroline masque enacted that philosophy in the transition from antimasque to masque. The world of sense and appetite was represented in the masque by images of nature as an ungoverned wilderness, threatening, violent, ignorant and anarchic; the sphere of soul was depicted as nature ordered and governed by the patterns of the forms. So in the Caroline masque the transcendence is most often a transformation of nature — from chaos to order and from disjunction to harmony.[10]
If The Tempest can be related to a direct political context, it can also be related to the genre of the court masque on a structural level. In a sense, the play may be said to consist of a series of antimasques, resolved in the final act by Prospero's regenerative powers. In the very first scene, social hierarchy is subverted by the forces of nature —"What cares these roarers for the name of king!" — ; a little later the courtiers plot the assassination of Alonso; Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo conspire against Prospero, and there is also the past usurpation of Prospero which the latter seeks to undo. In The Tempest, the full gamut of Shakespeare's tragic material is played out in three hours. Hamlet, King Lear and the history plays are reenacted on a desert island, this time with the desire to resolve the tragedy and restore harmony and forgiveness. The dramatic form of the play is similar to that of the court masque — Prospero's (royal) powers are called upon to resolve and undo the antimasques acted out by the sailor, the courtiers, Caliban and his inebriated companions and Prospero's brother. In much traditional Tempest criticism, it has been taken for granted that Prospero successfully completes his royal task, that in The Tempest the world of the antimasque is unambiguously defeated and replaced by Prospero's "brave new world". Enid Welsford, for instance, writes that "the only potent will is the will of Prospero. So far from being founded upon a conflict, the play does not even contain a debate." [11]
However, there is a discrepancy between Prospero's magic on the one hand and the political realities it is designed to undo on the other. The sea captain's command over his ship, and the authority he derives from this, and Caliban's organic knowledge of and sensuous bond with the island are palpable political facts to reckon with. Prospero is even dependent on Caliban for basic physical sustenance: "We cannot miss him. He does make our fire, / Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices / That profit us" (1.2.311-13). Likewise, the conspiracy against Prospero is tangible in its carnivalesque physicality, the conspirators' excessive drinking and their preoccupation with the body, rather than the mind.
Prospero's magic, by contrast, is abstract, and it operates in the realm of ideas, even though the opening scene of The Tempest might at first seem to contradict this. Prospero conjures up an immaterial banquet (producing real food is beyond his capabilities), and evokes a masque that, for all its splendour, is primarily an abstract ideal, disconnected from concrete realities. In fact, the entire scope of Prospero's project is abstract: Prospero seeks to effect a type of religious conversion in his brother, tries to inscribe "nurture" on Caliban's "nature", he is his daughter's schoolmaster, the forger of her mind. The physically real effects of his magic (Ferdinand's paralysis, the pack of hounds that chase the conspirators) spring from an anxiety at his own lack of control over others — his inability to control their minds, which is what he most desperately wants.
Characters whose minds Prospero seems unable to control, include Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban. All three figure at the interruption of the wedding masque as Prospero remembers their "foul conspiracy" against his life:
Enter certain reapers, properly habited. They join with the nymphs in a graceful dance, towards the end whereof Prospero starts suddenly and speaks, after which, to a strange hollow and confused noise they heavily vanish.
The interrupted ceremony in Shakespeare often marks a dramatic turning point. In Hamlet, the interruption of 'The Mouse-Trap' by Claudius' sudden angry departure is particularly ominous. By restaging his father's assassination, Hamlet has revealed his suspicions concerning Claudius' crime. He is now openly dangerous and has, in fact jeopardised his life. In Richard II, the interruption of the duel between Bullingbrook and Mowbray marks a crucial political mistake on Richard's part and heralds his downfall and eventual death. Here, what was intended as the benevolent apotheosis and climactic celebration of Prospero's powers, is suddenly undercut by a conspiracy he himself has instigated. Prospero's anxiety seems out of proportion with reality. Perhaps it is the unmistakable political will behind the conspiracy that disturbs him so much; the mere fact of resistance and of carnivalesque irreverence signifies a limit to his powers. He cannot alter people's minds — "Thought is free" (3.2.121) as Caliban and the clowns have it.
The masque is followed immediately by Prospero's famous speech on the evanescence of life:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(4.1.148-58)
Prospero's vision of proliferation, abundance, inexhaustible plenty is overthrown by a declaration of finiteness, of transience. What was imagined to be permanent, an exchange without diminution — "nothing of him that doth fade" — turns out to be ephemeral, proves subject to loss. This is the culmination of one important 'deep structure' of the play as a whole. In Milan, Prospero devoted himself to the study of magic and, as a result, lost his throne; Caliban, in a dream, sees "riches ready to drop upon [him]" and wakes up to reality; a banquet appears in front of the courtiers but when they fall to, it vanishes. The Tempest rehearses this pattern of frustration over and over again and eventually leads up to the interrupted masque.[12]
Prospero's vision is emptied out, drained. He is thrown back upon himself, upon the naked fact of his old age: "Be not disturbed with my infirmity" (4.1.160). The speech refers most strongly to himself — he is old, weak — and to his splendid magical powers — they are merely "insubstantial", a histrionic fiction. One is all the more forcefully reminded of the substantial realities of the sailor, Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo, of the palpability of storms, but also of the erotic tension between Miranda and Ferdinand — at best repressed but by no means effaced by Prospero — of food and drink, of forms of physical excess as opposed to Prospero's abstract abundance. The conflict between Prospero's esoteric project and the realities it is designed to undo remains unresolved — the former's powers, at least, are insufficient, precisely because they are intangible idealisations; they are only a dream of absolute power.
All this has political implications beyond the play itself. As a structural allusion to the genre of the court masque, it is an evocation of royal power and splendour. It offers a series of antimasques, promises their undoing by Prospero's royal magic, yet, at crucial moments, withholds it, frustrates the very expectations it first creates. As such, it subverts the ideology of the court masque by resisting the easy solutions this genre offers. Prospero / the king is powerful, but only up to a point. Prospero's project is a royal desire whose realisation is ambivalent.
By staging the wedding masque as a piece of drama-within-drama, The Tempest also highlights the theatricality of kingship, marks it out as a histrionic construct. Royalty expresses itself by means of a theatrical fiction and in The Tempest it is represented as such. The court masque, as an expression of royal power, is appropriated for the stage, employed to create — in the audience — a desire for resolution. At crucial moments, however, this resolution is not achieved. Rather, it remains confined to Prospero's theatrical fantasy. What prevails, then, is an image of political struggle. The 'counter-voices' in the play remain alive, are not exorcised totally by the appearance of Prospero / the king, even if they do not triumph either.
This is Prospero's tragedy. He learns that there are limits to his power. Crucially, his brother, the usurper, remains unregenerate, never asks for forgiveness. In the great reconciliation-scene, Prospero addresses Antonio in a disturbingly ambiguous fashion, which indicates the unresolved emotional struggle within himself:
For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother
Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive
Thy rankest fault—all of them—and require
My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know
Thou must restore.
(5.1.130-34)
In one and the same breath, Prospero expresses both forgiveness and a deeply rooted hatred. Antonio does not reply, and from his silence we may deduce his unwillingness to repent.
Prospero also loses his daughter — and, crucially, his dukedom — to Ferdinand. The two lovers are "discovered playing at chess." Their somewhat cynical exchange seems to mirror the harsh Realpolitik characteristic of the world of Milan, and of which Prospero became the ironic victim. Yet it may also be seen as an image of erotic courtship, as a series of playful moves in which power-games are only symbolically played out. As Leslie Fiedler brilliantly points out, the chess-game also indicates Prospero's loss of power over his daughter: "the strongest piece is the queen; and the combat always ends with the cry, 'Checkmate!', meaning 'The king is dead!', the old man left without a move." [13]
Of his two servants — Ariel, the creature of air and Caliban, the creature of earth — it is Ariel whom Prospero has to let go and give freedom, and Caliban with whom — in a famously enigmatic line — he eventually expresses an ambiguous bond: "This thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine" (5.1.275-76). Although these words firmly claim Caliban as Prospero's colonised property, there is more at stake. "Acknowledge" has a positive ring and may mean "to accept", or "to recognise". Caliban, initially branded as the ultimate, evil Other, is acknowledged as a part of Prospero's own identity. This is also suggested by the line "This thing of darkness I", which, because of its ambiguous line ending, could be read as apposition — "This thing of darkness; I" — and hence an equation, of Prospero and Caliban.
Commenting on these lines, Leslie Fiedler has observed that Prospero "speaks on a psychological level, too, as indeed he must, since, in general the oppression of minorities always implies the repression of certain elements in the psyche of the oppressors with which those minorities are identified." [14] Prospero identifies Caliban with impending death, and the infirmity of old age: "And with age his body uglier grows, / So his mind cankers" (4.1.191-92). It refers back to Prospero's realisation of his advancing age:
Sir, I am vexed
Bear with my weakness, my old brain is troubled
Be not disturbed with my infirmity.
(4.1.158-60)
At the close of the play, he announces his return to Milan "where / Every third thought shall be [his] grave" (5.1.311). Caliban serves as a substitute for Prospero himself. His fears concerning his age are transferred on to Caliban. Likewise, Caliban may be said to embody Prospero's own repressed desires for Miranda. She is the only woman on the island and Prospero imagines his relationship with her as a kind of obsessive symbiosis:
I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who
Art ignorant of what thou art; naught knowing
Of whence I am, nor that I am more better
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father.
(1.2.16-21, my italics)
These desires are externalised and inscribed on Caliban, who is endowed by Prospero with an unbridled, rapacious sexuality — "thou didst seek to violate / The honour of my child" (1.2.347-48). The Tempest, then, resists the ideology of a court masque like The Masque of Blackness, in which the king reigns over and transforms 'blackness', and, instead, hints at the blackness within Prospero/the king himself.
This is an ironic reversal of the initial situation — Caliban served as the embodiment of otherness: low physicality, dangerous sexuality, unregenerate nature while Ariel was safely sexless, bodiless, the materialisation-cum-enactment of Prospero's language, the extension of his mind. Like his drunken fellow-conspirators, Caliban in his "deformity" is a creature of the antimasque, to be evicted from Prospero's courtly world, or at least 'whitewashed', deprived of his "nature" and inscribed with "nurture". [15] Ironically, Prospero finds himself unable to 'educate' Caliban and it even seems, once again, as if Prospero, in the last few scenes of the play, is thrown back more and more upon his own physical vulnerability, is brought down to a level of existence which he initially displaced on to Caliban.
In a sense, Prospero and Caliban come to occupy similar positions towards the end of the play. Caliban gets his island back — Prospero will return to Milan — and he is, once more, "his own king". As the sole inhabitant of the island, he is alone, like Prospero after everyone has left the stage — the other characters are all part of a company (the lovers, the courtiers, the clowns), while Prospero is essentially isolated — and the Duke-magician pronounces his epilogue:
Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint.
No 'tis true I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got,
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell,
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
(5.1.319-38)
While at the end of a court masque the king is addressed and his power glorified, here a duke addresses the audience to confess his powerlessness. Having relinquished his magical powers, Prospero is reduced to his own limited bodily strength. The Tempest, as a dramatic fiction, has now become Prospero's prison and Prospero his own prisoner. He has survived his own fantasy, his dream of power. Prospero's confinement echoes that of Ariel and Caliban, and his call for liberation similarly recalls their desire for freedom. His demand for mercy and forgiveness brings to mind Caliban's words just a few lines earlier: "I'll be wise hereafter, / And seek for grace" (5.1.294-95). "Grace", or Christian forgiveness, favour, here invests Prospero's power with religious dimensions — the languages of religion and power are conflated. In the Epilogue, religious favour becomes the very icon of Prospero's powerlessness and dependence. Finally, Prospero finds himself in a position he had hitherto reserved for his subjects. He expresses a sense of guilt:
"As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free" (5.1.337-38). Prospero's theatrical project, initially the sign of his power, now becomes his crime. In the world Prospero had created for himself, crimes were only committed by others — Antonio, Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo. His final confession of guilt mirrors the general reversal of his situation. As Edmund puts it in King Lear: "The wheel has come full circle, I am here." [16]
Prospero appeals to the audience for mercy, but also for their imaginative collaboration. The metadramatic undercurrent present throughout the play culminates here in an explicit elision of the borderline between play and world. It is the task of the audience to finish The Tempest; the struggle for power it presents is transferred to them, its energies infused into the extra-theatrical world.
NOTES
1 The Tempest, ed. Stephen Orgel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 1.2.5-10. All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition.
2 Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power, p. 87. Orgel's book is a classic introduction to the study of the court masque in its historical context. Much of the material in this section was inspired by it. Other seminal works are Enid Welsford's The Court Masque, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927), Jerzy Limon's The Masque of Stuart Culture (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong's Inigo Jones: The Theatre at the Stuart Court (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet Publications Limited, 1973), and The Court Masque (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), a collection of essays edited by David Lindley.
3 The Masque of Blackness, in Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong, Inigo Jones: The Theatre at the Stuart Court, p. 92, ll. 229-33.
4 Hymenaei,lines 240-41, in Inigo Jones, p. 108.
5 Hymenaei, lines 883-87, in Inigo Jones, p. 113.
6 The Illusion of Power, p. 49.
7 Quoted in The Illusion of Power, p. 42.
8 Inigo Jones, p. 2.
9 Frank Kermode (ed.), The Tempest, New Arden Edition (London: Methuen, 1954), pp. x1vii-x1viii.
10 The Masque of Stuart Culture, p. 67.
11 The Court Masque, p. 340.
12 See also David Lindley's essay "Music, Masque and Meaning in The Tempest", The Court Masque, ed. David Lindley, 47-60.
13 The Stranger in Shakespeare (Frogmore, St Albans: Paladin, 1974), p. 206.
14 The Stranger in Shakespeare, p. 209.
15 Limon's The Masque of Stuart Culture contains a brilliantly suggestive drawing by Andrzej Markowicz, showing an assortment of typical 'antimasque characters' — beer-bellied drunkards, long-haired, grotesque clowns and a type of human bottles, embodying, of course, the evils of dipsomania. They show a decided resemblance to Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo.
16 King Lear, in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 5.3.175.
The Tempest is an intensely self-conscious play - it is, in many ways, theatre about the theatre. Many of the actions and events in it are explicitly and implicitly referred to as theatrical ones. Miranda's response to the shipwreck is a response to a tragedy, full of pity and fear:
0, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel—
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her—
Dashed all to pieces! 0, the cry did knock
Against my very heart—poor souls, they perished.[1]
The shipwreck is described by Prospero as a theatrical show staged by himself. "The direful spectacle of the wreck" (1.2.26, my italics) — where the predominant meaning of "spectacle", as defined by Orgel, is "theatrical display or pageant". Similarly, Ariel is commanded to assume the "shape", or role of a "nymph o'th sea". Prospero orchestrates the events in The Tempest and much of the play is a play-within-a-play, directed by Prospero, with Ariel as his assistant-director and stage manager.
The Tempest is also Prospero's attempt to undo the past by restaging it. In this respect, Prospero is comparable to Hamlet, Richard II and Lear who also employ a reenactment of the past as a means of exerting symbolic power over it. Hamlet restages his father's assassination, and 'The Mousetrap', in a sense, is the replacement of actual revenge. Richard II turns his dethronement into a theatrical spectacle, and Lear calls his daughters to a mock trial. All resort to drama because reality is out of their reach, beyond their control. Metadrama, in Shakespeare, seems to function as a symbolic weapon, a substitute for reality, a staged repetition of the past an assertion of control on the site of loss and defeat.
Prospero's theatrical art serves as his weapon of power, his instrument of control. In The Tempest, theatre and political power are each other's doubles. Theatricality and power converge most strongly, and reach their apotheosis, in the wedding masque in Act 4, scene 1. A masque is a celebration of royal power and glory and, in staging one, Prospero becomes a type of king, a royal mage whose ideals become reality in a courtly entertainment. The wedding masque in The Tempest is an allusion to the court masques performed at the Whitehall Banqueting House and brings into the play a broad range of Renaissance thought about royalty, its manifestations and the nature of royal power.
The Court Masque
The court masque played a crucial role in the way Renaissance monarchs chose to think about themselves. Masques served essentially as images of the order, peace and harmony brought about by the monarch's mere presence, and expressed didactic truths about the monarchy. Lavishly spectacular and visual, designed to enchant the eye, they formed a genre fundamentally different from the drama performed on the public stage. Much of the action was taken up by the settings themselves, which did not merely form a passive backdrop to the action, but were an integral part of it and symbolised the controlling power of the king. In this sense, the masque is radically different from the plays that were performed in the popular playhouses, which lacked scenic machinery. Inigo Jones's ingenious settings, "his ability to do the impossible" were the prime manifestation of the royal will.[2]
Under James 1, the form of the masque developed into two contrasting parts. The first section, or antimasque, offered an image of vice and disorder, which, in the second section, the masque proper, was superseded by the workings of royal power, and an ordered, harmonious world, with the king at its centre, was established. For example in The Masque of Blackness and its sequel, The Masque of Beauty, twelve "Nymphs of Niger" were made white:
Brittania, whose new name makes all tongues sing,
Might be a diamond worthy to enchase it,
Rules by the sun that to this height doth grace it,
Whose beams shine day and night, and are of force
To blanch an Ethiop, and revive a corse. [3]
King James is associated with the sun, his rays break "the Night's black charms". In Ben Jonson's Hymenaei, the "four humours and affection" are scared away by the presence of Reason and make way for the eight "nuptial powers" of Juno: "These, these are they / Whom humour and affection must obey".[4] In the same masque, a debate between Truth and Opinion (Truth's false counterfeit) is resolved in favour of the former. Truth, here, embodies the virtues of marriage, while Opinion glorifies the benefits of spinsterhood. Eventually, Truth addresses the king:
This royal judge of our contention
Will prop, I know, what I have undergone;
To whose right sacred highness I resign
Low, at his feet, this starry crown of mine,
To show his rule and judgement is divine.[5]
In The Masque of Queens twelve hags, embodying Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity and other vices, vanish at the dazzling appearance of Heroic Virtue, accompanied by eleven mythical queens.
In other masques, the king is often represented as the controller and tamer of nature. The royal will creates order and sophistication in "the wildness and untutored innocence of nature".[6] At the climax of each masque, the masquers descended from the stage and chose a dancing partner from the audience, merging the worlds of the masque and the court into the ideal royal universe.
The court masque, then, manifested an important theatrical image of kingship; royalty's prime mode of expression was fundamentally histrionic, as is also confirmed by James I's personal treatise on royalty entitled Basilikon Doron (1599) and Elizabeth's assertion that "We princes, I tell you are set on stages, in the sight and view of all the world duly observed."[7] The theatre served as an extension of the royal mind. Even watching a masque was a histrionic activity: the king's box was placed at the centre of the hall, for all the other spectators to see. The king had to be seen seeing. Inigo Jones' stage-effects were also designed in such a way as to give the king the best view of the stage — only from his seat could the action be seen properly.
Prospero's Masque
The wedding masque in The Tempest is a materialisation of Prospero's will and power. Like the court masque, it is a visual spectacle: "No tongue! All eyes! Be silent!" (4.1.59). Whereas in the second scene of The Tempest, Prospero wanted his daughter to listen, and drink in his tale, this time he wants visual attention. The masque celebrates Prospero's paternal magnanimity and his ability to defy the laws of time and nature — "Spring come to you at the farthest, / In the very end of harvest!" (4.1.114-15): winter has been excluded from Prospero's seasonal cycle. Abundance emanates spontaneously from Nature's inexhaustible resources; the masque is a departure from the real world of The Tempest, in which Ferdinand has to labour for his wedding, Ariel for his freedom, Caliban for the liberation from bodily pain. These harsh, rigid transactions are replaced by a vision of unconditional plenty. It is, however, worth noting that Venus and her "waspish-headed son" have been safely excluded from the party; unbridled erotic lust — so much feared by Prospero — has been warded off.
In the court masque, when the masquers reveal their true identities (i.e. as persons of nobility, people of the court), the audience was meant to look through the image, at the ideals of kingship and courtly life it represented. "In such representations", Orgel and Strong write, "the court saw not an imitation of itself, but its true self." [8] Likewise, the wedding masque in The Tempest offers Miranda and Ferdinand an image of their ideal, virtuous selves. It points to the ideals forged by Prospero's royal mind and stands for his project in general:
In one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife
Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom
In a poor isle, and all of us ourselves
When no man was his own.
(5.1.208-13, my italics)
Prospero's noble, rational magic is contrasted to the black sorcery practised by Sycorax, Caliban's mother, and this, again, links him to the images of royal power we encounter in the court masque. In Jonson's Hymenaei, for example, "anti-royal" forces are said to be concocted by "the black sorceress Night." Frank Kermode, in his New Arden Edition of The Tempest, writes that Prospero's art is the disciplined exercise of virtuous knowledge … it is a technique for liberating the soul from the passions, from nature; the practical application of a discipline of which the primary requirements are learning and temperance, and of which the mode is contemplation … it is the ordination of civility, the control of appetite, the transformations of nature by breeding and learning.[9]
Just how strongly Prospero fashions his world and his image of himself the way a king does in a court masque, becomes clear if we connect Kermode's observations to a comment on the Caroline masque — but also applicable to masques in general — by Kevin Sharpe, quoted in Jerzy Limon's The Masque of Stuart Culture:
Neoplatonic philosophy postulates an ascent of cognition from the plane of senses and material objects to a loftier stratum of knowledge of forms and ideas, of which objects were but an imperfect material expression. The Caroline masque enacted that philosophy in the transition from antimasque to masque. The world of sense and appetite was represented in the masque by images of nature as an ungoverned wilderness, threatening, violent, ignorant and anarchic; the sphere of soul was depicted as nature ordered and governed by the patterns of the forms. So in the Caroline masque the transcendence is most often a transformation of nature — from chaos to order and from disjunction to harmony.[10]
If The Tempest can be related to a direct political context, it can also be related to the genre of the court masque on a structural level. In a sense, the play may be said to consist of a series of antimasques, resolved in the final act by Prospero's regenerative powers. In the very first scene, social hierarchy is subverted by the forces of nature —"What cares these roarers for the name of king!" — ; a little later the courtiers plot the assassination of Alonso; Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo conspire against Prospero, and there is also the past usurpation of Prospero which the latter seeks to undo. In The Tempest, the full gamut of Shakespeare's tragic material is played out in three hours. Hamlet, King Lear and the history plays are reenacted on a desert island, this time with the desire to resolve the tragedy and restore harmony and forgiveness. The dramatic form of the play is similar to that of the court masque — Prospero's (royal) powers are called upon to resolve and undo the antimasques acted out by the sailor, the courtiers, Caliban and his inebriated companions and Prospero's brother. In much traditional Tempest criticism, it has been taken for granted that Prospero successfully completes his royal task, that in The Tempest the world of the antimasque is unambiguously defeated and replaced by Prospero's "brave new world". Enid Welsford, for instance, writes that "the only potent will is the will of Prospero. So far from being founded upon a conflict, the play does not even contain a debate." [11]
However, there is a discrepancy between Prospero's magic on the one hand and the political realities it is designed to undo on the other. The sea captain's command over his ship, and the authority he derives from this, and Caliban's organic knowledge of and sensuous bond with the island are palpable political facts to reckon with. Prospero is even dependent on Caliban for basic physical sustenance: "We cannot miss him. He does make our fire, / Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices / That profit us" (1.2.311-13). Likewise, the conspiracy against Prospero is tangible in its carnivalesque physicality, the conspirators' excessive drinking and their preoccupation with the body, rather than the mind.
Prospero's magic, by contrast, is abstract, and it operates in the realm of ideas, even though the opening scene of The Tempest might at first seem to contradict this. Prospero conjures up an immaterial banquet (producing real food is beyond his capabilities), and evokes a masque that, for all its splendour, is primarily an abstract ideal, disconnected from concrete realities. In fact, the entire scope of Prospero's project is abstract: Prospero seeks to effect a type of religious conversion in his brother, tries to inscribe "nurture" on Caliban's "nature", he is his daughter's schoolmaster, the forger of her mind. The physically real effects of his magic (Ferdinand's paralysis, the pack of hounds that chase the conspirators) spring from an anxiety at his own lack of control over others — his inability to control their minds, which is what he most desperately wants.
Characters whose minds Prospero seems unable to control, include Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban. All three figure at the interruption of the wedding masque as Prospero remembers their "foul conspiracy" against his life:
Enter certain reapers, properly habited. They join with the nymphs in a graceful dance, towards the end whereof Prospero starts suddenly and speaks, after which, to a strange hollow and confused noise they heavily vanish.
The interrupted ceremony in Shakespeare often marks a dramatic turning point. In Hamlet, the interruption of 'The Mouse-Trap' by Claudius' sudden angry departure is particularly ominous. By restaging his father's assassination, Hamlet has revealed his suspicions concerning Claudius' crime. He is now openly dangerous and has, in fact jeopardised his life. In Richard II, the interruption of the duel between Bullingbrook and Mowbray marks a crucial political mistake on Richard's part and heralds his downfall and eventual death. Here, what was intended as the benevolent apotheosis and climactic celebration of Prospero's powers, is suddenly undercut by a conspiracy he himself has instigated. Prospero's anxiety seems out of proportion with reality. Perhaps it is the unmistakable political will behind the conspiracy that disturbs him so much; the mere fact of resistance and of carnivalesque irreverence signifies a limit to his powers. He cannot alter people's minds — "Thought is free" (3.2.121) as Caliban and the clowns have it.
The masque is followed immediately by Prospero's famous speech on the evanescence of life:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(4.1.148-58)
Prospero's vision of proliferation, abundance, inexhaustible plenty is overthrown by a declaration of finiteness, of transience. What was imagined to be permanent, an exchange without diminution — "nothing of him that doth fade" — turns out to be ephemeral, proves subject to loss. This is the culmination of one important 'deep structure' of the play as a whole. In Milan, Prospero devoted himself to the study of magic and, as a result, lost his throne; Caliban, in a dream, sees "riches ready to drop upon [him]" and wakes up to reality; a banquet appears in front of the courtiers but when they fall to, it vanishes. The Tempest rehearses this pattern of frustration over and over again and eventually leads up to the interrupted masque.[12]
Prospero's vision is emptied out, drained. He is thrown back upon himself, upon the naked fact of his old age: "Be not disturbed with my infirmity" (4.1.160). The speech refers most strongly to himself — he is old, weak — and to his splendid magical powers — they are merely "insubstantial", a histrionic fiction. One is all the more forcefully reminded of the substantial realities of the sailor, Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo, of the palpability of storms, but also of the erotic tension between Miranda and Ferdinand — at best repressed but by no means effaced by Prospero — of food and drink, of forms of physical excess as opposed to Prospero's abstract abundance. The conflict between Prospero's esoteric project and the realities it is designed to undo remains unresolved — the former's powers, at least, are insufficient, precisely because they are intangible idealisations; they are only a dream of absolute power.
All this has political implications beyond the play itself. As a structural allusion to the genre of the court masque, it is an evocation of royal power and splendour. It offers a series of antimasques, promises their undoing by Prospero's royal magic, yet, at crucial moments, withholds it, frustrates the very expectations it first creates. As such, it subverts the ideology of the court masque by resisting the easy solutions this genre offers. Prospero / the king is powerful, but only up to a point. Prospero's project is a royal desire whose realisation is ambivalent.
By staging the wedding masque as a piece of drama-within-drama, The Tempest also highlights the theatricality of kingship, marks it out as a histrionic construct. Royalty expresses itself by means of a theatrical fiction and in The Tempest it is represented as such. The court masque, as an expression of royal power, is appropriated for the stage, employed to create — in the audience — a desire for resolution. At crucial moments, however, this resolution is not achieved. Rather, it remains confined to Prospero's theatrical fantasy. What prevails, then, is an image of political struggle. The 'counter-voices' in the play remain alive, are not exorcised totally by the appearance of Prospero / the king, even if they do not triumph either.
This is Prospero's tragedy. He learns that there are limits to his power. Crucially, his brother, the usurper, remains unregenerate, never asks for forgiveness. In the great reconciliation-scene, Prospero addresses Antonio in a disturbingly ambiguous fashion, which indicates the unresolved emotional struggle within himself:
For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother
Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive
Thy rankest fault—all of them—and require
My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know
Thou must restore.
(5.1.130-34)
In one and the same breath, Prospero expresses both forgiveness and a deeply rooted hatred. Antonio does not reply, and from his silence we may deduce his unwillingness to repent.
Prospero also loses his daughter — and, crucially, his dukedom — to Ferdinand. The two lovers are "discovered playing at chess." Their somewhat cynical exchange seems to mirror the harsh Realpolitik characteristic of the world of Milan, and of which Prospero became the ironic victim. Yet it may also be seen as an image of erotic courtship, as a series of playful moves in which power-games are only symbolically played out. As Leslie Fiedler brilliantly points out, the chess-game also indicates Prospero's loss of power over his daughter: "the strongest piece is the queen; and the combat always ends with the cry, 'Checkmate!', meaning 'The king is dead!', the old man left without a move." [13]
Of his two servants — Ariel, the creature of air and Caliban, the creature of earth — it is Ariel whom Prospero has to let go and give freedom, and Caliban with whom — in a famously enigmatic line — he eventually expresses an ambiguous bond: "This thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine" (5.1.275-76). Although these words firmly claim Caliban as Prospero's colonised property, there is more at stake. "Acknowledge" has a positive ring and may mean "to accept", or "to recognise". Caliban, initially branded as the ultimate, evil Other, is acknowledged as a part of Prospero's own identity. This is also suggested by the line "This thing of darkness I", which, because of its ambiguous line ending, could be read as apposition — "This thing of darkness; I" — and hence an equation, of Prospero and Caliban.
Commenting on these lines, Leslie Fiedler has observed that Prospero "speaks on a psychological level, too, as indeed he must, since, in general the oppression of minorities always implies the repression of certain elements in the psyche of the oppressors with which those minorities are identified." [14] Prospero identifies Caliban with impending death, and the infirmity of old age: "And with age his body uglier grows, / So his mind cankers" (4.1.191-92). It refers back to Prospero's realisation of his advancing age:
Sir, I am vexed
Bear with my weakness, my old brain is troubled
Be not disturbed with my infirmity.
(4.1.158-60)
At the close of the play, he announces his return to Milan "where / Every third thought shall be [his] grave" (5.1.311). Caliban serves as a substitute for Prospero himself. His fears concerning his age are transferred on to Caliban. Likewise, Caliban may be said to embody Prospero's own repressed desires for Miranda. She is the only woman on the island and Prospero imagines his relationship with her as a kind of obsessive symbiosis:
I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who
Art ignorant of what thou art; naught knowing
Of whence I am, nor that I am more better
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father.
(1.2.16-21, my italics)
These desires are externalised and inscribed on Caliban, who is endowed by Prospero with an unbridled, rapacious sexuality — "thou didst seek to violate / The honour of my child" (1.2.347-48). The Tempest, then, resists the ideology of a court masque like The Masque of Blackness, in which the king reigns over and transforms 'blackness', and, instead, hints at the blackness within Prospero/the king himself.
This is an ironic reversal of the initial situation — Caliban served as the embodiment of otherness: low physicality, dangerous sexuality, unregenerate nature while Ariel was safely sexless, bodiless, the materialisation-cum-enactment of Prospero's language, the extension of his mind. Like his drunken fellow-conspirators, Caliban in his "deformity" is a creature of the antimasque, to be evicted from Prospero's courtly world, or at least 'whitewashed', deprived of his "nature" and inscribed with "nurture". [15] Ironically, Prospero finds himself unable to 'educate' Caliban and it even seems, once again, as if Prospero, in the last few scenes of the play, is thrown back more and more upon his own physical vulnerability, is brought down to a level of existence which he initially displaced on to Caliban.
In a sense, Prospero and Caliban come to occupy similar positions towards the end of the play. Caliban gets his island back — Prospero will return to Milan — and he is, once more, "his own king". As the sole inhabitant of the island, he is alone, like Prospero after everyone has left the stage — the other characters are all part of a company (the lovers, the courtiers, the clowns), while Prospero is essentially isolated — and the Duke-magician pronounces his epilogue:
Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint.
No 'tis true I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got,
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell,
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
(5.1.319-38)
While at the end of a court masque the king is addressed and his power glorified, here a duke addresses the audience to confess his powerlessness. Having relinquished his magical powers, Prospero is reduced to his own limited bodily strength. The Tempest, as a dramatic fiction, has now become Prospero's prison and Prospero his own prisoner. He has survived his own fantasy, his dream of power. Prospero's confinement echoes that of Ariel and Caliban, and his call for liberation similarly recalls their desire for freedom. His demand for mercy and forgiveness brings to mind Caliban's words just a few lines earlier: "I'll be wise hereafter, / And seek for grace" (5.1.294-95). "Grace", or Christian forgiveness, favour, here invests Prospero's power with religious dimensions — the languages of religion and power are conflated. In the Epilogue, religious favour becomes the very icon of Prospero's powerlessness and dependence. Finally, Prospero finds himself in a position he had hitherto reserved for his subjects. He expresses a sense of guilt:
"As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free" (5.1.337-38). Prospero's theatrical project, initially the sign of his power, now becomes his crime. In the world Prospero had created for himself, crimes were only committed by others — Antonio, Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo. His final confession of guilt mirrors the general reversal of his situation. As Edmund puts it in King Lear: "The wheel has come full circle, I am here." [16]
Prospero appeals to the audience for mercy, but also for their imaginative collaboration. The metadramatic undercurrent present throughout the play culminates here in an explicit elision of the borderline between play and world. It is the task of the audience to finish The Tempest; the struggle for power it presents is transferred to them, its energies infused into the extra-theatrical world.
NOTES
1 The Tempest, ed. Stephen Orgel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 1.2.5-10. All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition.
2 Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power, p. 87. Orgel's book is a classic introduction to the study of the court masque in its historical context. Much of the material in this section was inspired by it. Other seminal works are Enid Welsford's The Court Masque, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927), Jerzy Limon's The Masque of Stuart Culture (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong's Inigo Jones: The Theatre at the Stuart Court (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet Publications Limited, 1973), and The Court Masque (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), a collection of essays edited by David Lindley.
3 The Masque of Blackness, in Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong, Inigo Jones: The Theatre at the Stuart Court, p. 92, ll. 229-33.
4 Hymenaei,lines 240-41, in Inigo Jones, p. 108.
5 Hymenaei, lines 883-87, in Inigo Jones, p. 113.
6 The Illusion of Power, p. 49.
7 Quoted in The Illusion of Power, p. 42.
8 Inigo Jones, p. 2.
9 Frank Kermode (ed.), The Tempest, New Arden Edition (London: Methuen, 1954), pp. x1vii-x1viii.
10 The Masque of Stuart Culture, p. 67.
11 The Court Masque, p. 340.
12 See also David Lindley's essay "Music, Masque and Meaning in The Tempest", The Court Masque, ed. David Lindley, 47-60.
13 The Stranger in Shakespeare (Frogmore, St Albans: Paladin, 1974), p. 206.
14 The Stranger in Shakespeare, p. 209.
15 Limon's The Masque of Stuart Culture contains a brilliantly suggestive drawing by Andrzej Markowicz, showing an assortment of typical 'antimasque characters' — beer-bellied drunkards, long-haired, grotesque clowns and a type of human bottles, embodying, of course, the evils of dipsomania. They show a decided resemblance to Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo.
16 King Lear, in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 5.3.175.
Prospero Timeline
1.2.13: Prospero enters into the play with the command: "Be collected." He tells Miranda not to be shocked, there’s no harm done, in spite of the spectacle he’s created in the tempest. This could well be applied to all of the magic Prospero does through out the play – it’s spectacular, but it isn’t malicious or to be feared.
1.2.15: Prospero says all he’s ever done has been with the intention of caring for Miranda, and though she doesn’t know it, he is more than she thinks he is. He assures her he’s done no harm to the men on the boat, and now he’ll tell her about their life story.
1.2.47: Prospero marvels at what Miranda remembers. He asks what else she can see back in the darkness of time, but hearing that she doesn’t remember much more than her nursemaids, he tells her that their family once had the dukedom of Milan.
1.2.61: Prospero shows his enlightened perspective – he says it was foul how they were sent from Milan, but they were blessed (by Gonzalo and the good winds) that they made it safely to this island.
1.2.66: He continues to tell the story of how he became involved in his studies of the liberal arts, and trustingly gave over the run of his dukedom to Antonio. Prospero then details how Antonio contrived to steal the dukedom from him while he was busy with his books. He says his library was dukedom enough for him, and he did not anticipate his brother’s evil grab for power. He also doesn’t like that Antonio made Milan stoop to the King – this is below his (and Milan’s) dignity. The final detail is that Antonio opened the gates and sent Prospero and Miranda out of Milan under the cover of night, to a sad little boat.
1.2.153: Prospero shows his tenderness as a father – though he wept for all his loss, Miranda had a smile infused with the strength of heaven, and he gathered courage from her. They survived at first because of the things Gonzalo kindly made sure they had, including Prospero’s precious books, which he uses to teach Miranda. He claims she is better learned than other princesses that have more distractions and worse tutors.
1.2.177: Prospero admits that his art depends upon a star, and he must act in accordance to that special sign if he’s going to achieve anything. It’s time to get back to business, so he enchants Miranda to sleep.
1.2.193: Prospero has an exchange with Ariel, confirming that his bidding was done to bring the passengers of the wrecked ship to shore safely. He compliments Ariel lovingly, and says there’s much more work to be done.
1.2.244: When Ariel points his thoughts to the freedom Prospero promised, Prospero gets angry. He accuses Ariel of being moody, and quickly asks whether Ariel has forgotten what Prospero did for him.
1.2.257: Prospero chides Ariel for thinking that Prospero is asking too much. He claims Ariel has forgotten the witch Sycorax, and though he asks Ariel to tell what he remembers of her, he himself fills in all the details about who she was, why she came to the island, and why she imprisoned Ariel in a pine tree. He points out it was his own art that freed Ariel from his groaning torment in the tree, an act so powerful that Sycorax couldn’t have done it herself.
1.2.294: Prospero warns Ariel that if he so much as murmurs on this again, Prospero will return him to his tree prison so he can howl away another twelve winters. (Harsh.) He later promises Ariel will have his freedom after two more days of doing his master’s bidding.
1.2.307: Prospero wakes Miranda and asks her go with him to see Caliban, whom he admits does them a great service by bringing them wood and building their fire. He curses Caliban thoroughly, and promises his servant will suffer great torments for any curses he lays upon his master.
1.2.344: Prospero calls Caliban a lying slave, and recounts that he kept Caliban in his own cell (home) until Caliban tried to violate the honor of his daughter (not a good move). More cursing follows, with threats of cramps and aches that Caliban will get if he doesn’t follow Prospero’s orders to the letter.
1.2.413: Miranda accompanies Prospero to see Ferdinand from afar – Prospero tells her he’s the same form as they are (human), and moves her to pity him for his recent grief. Prospero makes an aside that he’s pleased with how the things are going with the young couple, and compliments Ariel for his fine work, which will earn the spirit’s freedom.
1.2.432: Prospero scolds Ferdinand for calling himself the King of Naples, and makes a pompous aside that the Duke of Milan and his daughter (i.e., Miranda) could control Naples (i.e., Ferdinand) if the time were right for it. This pompousness is left off to again compliment Ariel, and the aside continues with Prospero’s observation that he must make it hard for the two young lovers. If they don’t struggle, they won’t value their love for each other. Prospero now moves to harassing Ferdinand, whom he accuses of being a spy.
1.2.460: Prospero bids Ferdinand follow him, for he’ll chain him up as a traitor and feed him only withered roots and acorn shells. He dares Ferdinand to raise his sword, and promises to make him drop it by using his (magic) staff. When Miranda protests, he scolds her, too, saying that another word in defense of Ferdinand will make him chide her, if not hate her. He claims that Ferdinand is ugly, but she doesn’t know it because she doesn’t know anything of men. He has now wrapped Ferdinand in a charm.
3.1.32: Prospero looks on at Ferdinand and Miranda from a distance, and happily notes that Miranda is deeply in love. He is so pleased by their innocent encounter that he asks the heavens to rain grace on the love between them. He admits he can’t be as glad of their surprise love as they are (because he did plan it after all), but he does rejoice immensely. Then he’s back to the business that must be done before dinnertime.
3.3.83: Prospero watches the banquet laid out before Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian. He makes an aside agreeing with Gonzalo’s comment on the heavenly nature of the spirits, grumbling that some of the people at the banquet are actually worse than devils. Later, he finds Ariel again, and praises him for his good carry-through on his instructions. He notes his enemies are all knit up by what they’ve seen, and are now in his power. He leaves the traitors to go visit Ferdinand.
4.1.1. Prospero speaks frankly with Ferdinand, telling him the trials were just to make sure that the boy deserved his daughter. Ferdinand has passed the test, and Prospero will now hand over a precious third of his life (i.e., Miranda). A few lines later, he warns that if Ferdinand touches Miranda before the proper wedding ceremony, he’s toast. Then Prospero calls Ariel to bring spirits to the place to perform "the vanity of mine art" for the young couple. He again warns Ferdinand to be good to his word. Then all attention is moved to the display of gods before them. Prospero tells the amazed children that these are spirits enacting Prospero’s present fancies.
4.1.139: Prospero calls off his magical drama production – he had forgotten Caliban’s plot against him, and must do something about it. He then notes that Ferdinand looks unhappy, or at the least worried about his soon-to-be father-in-law. Prospero gives a thoroughly lovely speech, proclaiming that the revels are ended, and he wraps metaphor upon metaphor about life being a play, which is a meta-metaphor given that they’re talking about the life outside of the play based on a play they’re watching in a play we’re watching. Totally post-modern chic. Anyway, this is one of Shakespeare’s most beautiful speeches, to challenge "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," we’d bet. Read it in its entirety for full effect.
4.1.184: Prospero asks Ariel to lay out his fine stuff (clothes and linens), knowing it will distract his drunken, greedy, would-be murderers. He then cusses Caliban as a born devil, whose nature cannot be bettered by nurture. Prospero vows to plague the plotters all to the point where they’ll roar out of anguish. He eggs on his spirit hounds that chase the group when they arrive, and promises the traitors will have cramps, convulsions, and pinches.
4.1.262: Prospero notes he has everybody right where he wants them: "At this hour Lie at my mercy all mine enemies." Will he use his power for good or evil, virtue or vengeance? Nobody knows, Jeeves, nobody knows.
5.1.20: Now we know! Prospero asked Ariel how the shipwrecked group is doing, and Ariel says they’re such a sad mess, they could make a person feel sympathy. Prospero takes Ariel’s words to heart – he should be capable, if not more than capable, of the spirit’s sympathetic feelings. Although the traitors have done him terrible wrong, he doesn’t want vengeance, and only wishes to see that they are sorry. He commands Ariel to release them from his charm.
5.1.33: In a gorgeously moving speech, Prospero recounts all the bits of magic he has seen and partaken in. He then announces that once this task is over, he will break his staff and drown his book, giving up his art of magic. This is kind of a big deal.
5.1.58: Prospero, surrounded by all first string bad guys, gives them a stern talking to. He greets Gonzalo gladly, and calls out Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio for their role in his present condition (being banished to an island). He then subtly points out that Antonio and Sebastian would’ve murdered the King, bros or no. In a grand final gesture, Prospero declares he forgives them all, before realizing they don’t know who he is. He bids Ariel to bring him his hat and sword, which they’ll then recognize. ("Oh! I didn’t recognize you without your hat and sword!") As Ariel dresses him, he praises the spirit, and bids him to bring the mariners (sailors) that are safely sleeping in the King’s rescued ship.
5.1.107: Now that he’s wearing his hat, he says "Behold, sir King, The wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero." Having thus properly announced himself, he’ll dispel any fears they have that he is another illusion of the island by hugging them. He bids them all hearty welcome, and hugs all around, as the "You had me exiled with my infant daughter,"/ "You destroyed my ship and killed my son" feud is far in the past. He points out that he hasn’t outed Sebastian and Antonio (which basically outs them – slick). Prospero continues to be backhanded here; he turns to his brother Antonio and says that to call him brother "would even infect my mouth," which he immediately follows with "I do forgive thy rankest fault" and a follows that up essentially with "of course you’ll have to give me my dukedom back now, you simpering fool."
5.1.145: Prospero then plays a funny prank on Alonso, who is still mourning his dead son. He points out his daughter is also lost, and now Alonso gets to think about two dead children! Prospero quickly changes the subject back to himself, noting the others’ awe. He knows it’s amazing that he’s here, and he recaps the injustices done against him, but then after his long talk, he says its no time for long talk. He directs their attention to his cell, where Ferdinand and Miranda are playing a round of chess.
5.1.198: Alonso has a private moment with his son, thinking to ask his forgiveness for the wrong done against Milan, but Prospero interjects that they should not dwell on the past.
5.1.245: Alonso suggests that an oracle could explain all these strange happenings, but Prospero cuts him off and promises to clear it up himself later. Then Prospero commands Ariel to bring in Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano.
5.1.267: Prospero tells Caliban’s life story in a not-so-nice way, calls Caliban’s mom a witch, highlighting that the three have robbed and plotted to kill him. He then teases Stephano, who is in a cramp of pain and drunkenness, asking if he would be king of the isle. Prospero magnanimously dismisses Caliban to tidy up his cell for dinner, so that Caliban can again be in his good graces.
5.1.301: Prospero invites everyone to stay at his cell for the night, where he’ll tell his life story. In the morning they will all take the ship home to Naples, where the kids can get married and Prospero can revel in his dukedom and obsess about his own death.
5.1.314: His last command to Ariel is to make sure the seas are good for sailing, and then he sets him free to the elements, as he calls the audience near.
Epilogue: Essentially, "If you clap, I'll be satisfied and be able to get off the stage already."
1.2.15: Prospero says all he’s ever done has been with the intention of caring for Miranda, and though she doesn’t know it, he is more than she thinks he is. He assures her he’s done no harm to the men on the boat, and now he’ll tell her about their life story.
1.2.47: Prospero marvels at what Miranda remembers. He asks what else she can see back in the darkness of time, but hearing that she doesn’t remember much more than her nursemaids, he tells her that their family once had the dukedom of Milan.
1.2.61: Prospero shows his enlightened perspective – he says it was foul how they were sent from Milan, but they were blessed (by Gonzalo and the good winds) that they made it safely to this island.
1.2.66: He continues to tell the story of how he became involved in his studies of the liberal arts, and trustingly gave over the run of his dukedom to Antonio. Prospero then details how Antonio contrived to steal the dukedom from him while he was busy with his books. He says his library was dukedom enough for him, and he did not anticipate his brother’s evil grab for power. He also doesn’t like that Antonio made Milan stoop to the King – this is below his (and Milan’s) dignity. The final detail is that Antonio opened the gates and sent Prospero and Miranda out of Milan under the cover of night, to a sad little boat.
1.2.153: Prospero shows his tenderness as a father – though he wept for all his loss, Miranda had a smile infused with the strength of heaven, and he gathered courage from her. They survived at first because of the things Gonzalo kindly made sure they had, including Prospero’s precious books, which he uses to teach Miranda. He claims she is better learned than other princesses that have more distractions and worse tutors.
1.2.177: Prospero admits that his art depends upon a star, and he must act in accordance to that special sign if he’s going to achieve anything. It’s time to get back to business, so he enchants Miranda to sleep.
1.2.193: Prospero has an exchange with Ariel, confirming that his bidding was done to bring the passengers of the wrecked ship to shore safely. He compliments Ariel lovingly, and says there’s much more work to be done.
1.2.244: When Ariel points his thoughts to the freedom Prospero promised, Prospero gets angry. He accuses Ariel of being moody, and quickly asks whether Ariel has forgotten what Prospero did for him.
1.2.257: Prospero chides Ariel for thinking that Prospero is asking too much. He claims Ariel has forgotten the witch Sycorax, and though he asks Ariel to tell what he remembers of her, he himself fills in all the details about who she was, why she came to the island, and why she imprisoned Ariel in a pine tree. He points out it was his own art that freed Ariel from his groaning torment in the tree, an act so powerful that Sycorax couldn’t have done it herself.
1.2.294: Prospero warns Ariel that if he so much as murmurs on this again, Prospero will return him to his tree prison so he can howl away another twelve winters. (Harsh.) He later promises Ariel will have his freedom after two more days of doing his master’s bidding.
1.2.307: Prospero wakes Miranda and asks her go with him to see Caliban, whom he admits does them a great service by bringing them wood and building their fire. He curses Caliban thoroughly, and promises his servant will suffer great torments for any curses he lays upon his master.
1.2.344: Prospero calls Caliban a lying slave, and recounts that he kept Caliban in his own cell (home) until Caliban tried to violate the honor of his daughter (not a good move). More cursing follows, with threats of cramps and aches that Caliban will get if he doesn’t follow Prospero’s orders to the letter.
1.2.413: Miranda accompanies Prospero to see Ferdinand from afar – Prospero tells her he’s the same form as they are (human), and moves her to pity him for his recent grief. Prospero makes an aside that he’s pleased with how the things are going with the young couple, and compliments Ariel for his fine work, which will earn the spirit’s freedom.
1.2.432: Prospero scolds Ferdinand for calling himself the King of Naples, and makes a pompous aside that the Duke of Milan and his daughter (i.e., Miranda) could control Naples (i.e., Ferdinand) if the time were right for it. This pompousness is left off to again compliment Ariel, and the aside continues with Prospero’s observation that he must make it hard for the two young lovers. If they don’t struggle, they won’t value their love for each other. Prospero now moves to harassing Ferdinand, whom he accuses of being a spy.
1.2.460: Prospero bids Ferdinand follow him, for he’ll chain him up as a traitor and feed him only withered roots and acorn shells. He dares Ferdinand to raise his sword, and promises to make him drop it by using his (magic) staff. When Miranda protests, he scolds her, too, saying that another word in defense of Ferdinand will make him chide her, if not hate her. He claims that Ferdinand is ugly, but she doesn’t know it because she doesn’t know anything of men. He has now wrapped Ferdinand in a charm.
3.1.32: Prospero looks on at Ferdinand and Miranda from a distance, and happily notes that Miranda is deeply in love. He is so pleased by their innocent encounter that he asks the heavens to rain grace on the love between them. He admits he can’t be as glad of their surprise love as they are (because he did plan it after all), but he does rejoice immensely. Then he’s back to the business that must be done before dinnertime.
3.3.83: Prospero watches the banquet laid out before Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian. He makes an aside agreeing with Gonzalo’s comment on the heavenly nature of the spirits, grumbling that some of the people at the banquet are actually worse than devils. Later, he finds Ariel again, and praises him for his good carry-through on his instructions. He notes his enemies are all knit up by what they’ve seen, and are now in his power. He leaves the traitors to go visit Ferdinand.
4.1.1. Prospero speaks frankly with Ferdinand, telling him the trials were just to make sure that the boy deserved his daughter. Ferdinand has passed the test, and Prospero will now hand over a precious third of his life (i.e., Miranda). A few lines later, he warns that if Ferdinand touches Miranda before the proper wedding ceremony, he’s toast. Then Prospero calls Ariel to bring spirits to the place to perform "the vanity of mine art" for the young couple. He again warns Ferdinand to be good to his word. Then all attention is moved to the display of gods before them. Prospero tells the amazed children that these are spirits enacting Prospero’s present fancies.
4.1.139: Prospero calls off his magical drama production – he had forgotten Caliban’s plot against him, and must do something about it. He then notes that Ferdinand looks unhappy, or at the least worried about his soon-to-be father-in-law. Prospero gives a thoroughly lovely speech, proclaiming that the revels are ended, and he wraps metaphor upon metaphor about life being a play, which is a meta-metaphor given that they’re talking about the life outside of the play based on a play they’re watching in a play we’re watching. Totally post-modern chic. Anyway, this is one of Shakespeare’s most beautiful speeches, to challenge "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," we’d bet. Read it in its entirety for full effect.
4.1.184: Prospero asks Ariel to lay out his fine stuff (clothes and linens), knowing it will distract his drunken, greedy, would-be murderers. He then cusses Caliban as a born devil, whose nature cannot be bettered by nurture. Prospero vows to plague the plotters all to the point where they’ll roar out of anguish. He eggs on his spirit hounds that chase the group when they arrive, and promises the traitors will have cramps, convulsions, and pinches.
4.1.262: Prospero notes he has everybody right where he wants them: "At this hour Lie at my mercy all mine enemies." Will he use his power for good or evil, virtue or vengeance? Nobody knows, Jeeves, nobody knows.
5.1.20: Now we know! Prospero asked Ariel how the shipwrecked group is doing, and Ariel says they’re such a sad mess, they could make a person feel sympathy. Prospero takes Ariel’s words to heart – he should be capable, if not more than capable, of the spirit’s sympathetic feelings. Although the traitors have done him terrible wrong, he doesn’t want vengeance, and only wishes to see that they are sorry. He commands Ariel to release them from his charm.
5.1.33: In a gorgeously moving speech, Prospero recounts all the bits of magic he has seen and partaken in. He then announces that once this task is over, he will break his staff and drown his book, giving up his art of magic. This is kind of a big deal.
5.1.58: Prospero, surrounded by all first string bad guys, gives them a stern talking to. He greets Gonzalo gladly, and calls out Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio for their role in his present condition (being banished to an island). He then subtly points out that Antonio and Sebastian would’ve murdered the King, bros or no. In a grand final gesture, Prospero declares he forgives them all, before realizing they don’t know who he is. He bids Ariel to bring him his hat and sword, which they’ll then recognize. ("Oh! I didn’t recognize you without your hat and sword!") As Ariel dresses him, he praises the spirit, and bids him to bring the mariners (sailors) that are safely sleeping in the King’s rescued ship.
5.1.107: Now that he’s wearing his hat, he says "Behold, sir King, The wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero." Having thus properly announced himself, he’ll dispel any fears they have that he is another illusion of the island by hugging them. He bids them all hearty welcome, and hugs all around, as the "You had me exiled with my infant daughter,"/ "You destroyed my ship and killed my son" feud is far in the past. He points out that he hasn’t outed Sebastian and Antonio (which basically outs them – slick). Prospero continues to be backhanded here; he turns to his brother Antonio and says that to call him brother "would even infect my mouth," which he immediately follows with "I do forgive thy rankest fault" and a follows that up essentially with "of course you’ll have to give me my dukedom back now, you simpering fool."
5.1.145: Prospero then plays a funny prank on Alonso, who is still mourning his dead son. He points out his daughter is also lost, and now Alonso gets to think about two dead children! Prospero quickly changes the subject back to himself, noting the others’ awe. He knows it’s amazing that he’s here, and he recaps the injustices done against him, but then after his long talk, he says its no time for long talk. He directs their attention to his cell, where Ferdinand and Miranda are playing a round of chess.
5.1.198: Alonso has a private moment with his son, thinking to ask his forgiveness for the wrong done against Milan, but Prospero interjects that they should not dwell on the past.
5.1.245: Alonso suggests that an oracle could explain all these strange happenings, but Prospero cuts him off and promises to clear it up himself later. Then Prospero commands Ariel to bring in Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano.
5.1.267: Prospero tells Caliban’s life story in a not-so-nice way, calls Caliban’s mom a witch, highlighting that the three have robbed and plotted to kill him. He then teases Stephano, who is in a cramp of pain and drunkenness, asking if he would be king of the isle. Prospero magnanimously dismisses Caliban to tidy up his cell for dinner, so that Caliban can again be in his good graces.
5.1.301: Prospero invites everyone to stay at his cell for the night, where he’ll tell his life story. In the morning they will all take the ship home to Naples, where the kids can get married and Prospero can revel in his dukedom and obsess about his own death.
5.1.314: His last command to Ariel is to make sure the seas are good for sailing, and then he sets him free to the elements, as he calls the audience near.
Epilogue: Essentially, "If you clap, I'll be satisfied and be able to get off the stage already."
Prospero: Character Analysis
Prospero is certainly our protagonist, and possibly the hero of the play, but not in any traditional sense. We know him from a couple of perspectives: he is the ousted Duke of Milan, father of Miranda, a powerful sorcerer of white magic, a learned man, and the master of Ariel and Caliban. In almost all of these functions, he presents different facets to the audience or reader. At times he is loving to his daughter, cruel to her suitor, gentle to Ariel, harsh to Caliban, subject to nature, and master over nature. We also learn contradictory things about Prospero: he says his library was dukedom enough, but also craves for his title to be returned. The worst and best that can be said of Prospero is that he is complex.One treatment of his character views him as a tyrant. He’s taken Caliban’s island in return for his own lost title, and has put his enemies through all kinds of hell to gather them up so he can judge them. He is cruel to Ferdinand and Caliban, and kind to Ariel only when the spirit is totally subservient. This view is well founded on the facts, but Shakespeare isn't about the facts alone. Prospero’s words are what elevate him to his status as a worthy hero – behind all of his actions lies an incredibly thought out and beautifully spoken sense of reason. He is mean to Ferdinand by making him fetch wood, but he wishes Ferdinand and his daughter to fall in love, and asks heaven to rain down blessings on them. He loved Caliban and taught him until the young devil tried to violate Prospero’s most prized possession, his daughter. Unlike many fathers during Shakespeare’s time, Prospero teaches Miranda and raises her to be her own person, giving her what she wants in her marriage to Ferdinand. As for his dukedom, he only seeks its return so that he’ll have a quiet place to retire and think on his death – he doesn’t do it for power or money. In all facets, he wishes justice to be served. While his actions seem autocratic, he is only staunch within reason – he acts as Plato’s philosopher king, seemingly tyrannical but having the best interest of all at heart. This is most easily seen by his treatment of the men who have conspired and continue to conspire against him – he could rain down vengeance on them easily, or have murdered them all in the tempest, but he brings them before him to forgive them. He helps them seek the penitence that will clear their own consciences. All of these practical considerations are second to Prospero’s magic, which is an art he cultivates with diligence and love. He does not work against the forces of nature, but seeks to understand and use them to the benefit of justice. Most importantly, some critical analyses place Prospero as a stand-in for Shakespeare himself – here it is important that Prospero's magic isn’t magic alone, but art. As Prospero wields nature, so does Shakespeare wield words, to teach lessons and delight the mind. When Prospero renounces his magic, Shakespeare knows The Tempest is the last play he will write alone. As the sorcerer Prospero breaks his staff, Shakespeare puts down his pen. He asks only that we appreciate what he’s done, and humbly takes his leave of us to disappear quietly, letting his words work magic long after he has gone.
Forgiveness and Reconciliation in The Tempest
Many scholars argue that, along with Shakespeare’s other late romances, The Tempest is a play about reconciliation, forgiveness, and faith in future generations to seal such reconciliation. However, while it is clear that the theme of forgiveness is at the heart of the drama, what is up for debate is to what extent the author realizes this forgiveness. An examination of the attitudes and actions of the major characters in the play, specifically Prospero, illustrates that there is little, if any, true forgiveness and reconciliation in The Tempest.
We must first set a standard by which to judge the effectiveness of forgiveness in the play. Undoubtedly, the most important Christian lesson on the true nature of forgiveness can be found in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount:
But I say to unto you which hear, love yourenemies, do good to them which hateyouBless them that curse you, and pray for themwhich despiseth you… For if ye love themwhich love you, what thank have ye? Forsinners also do even the same. But loveyour enemies, and do good, and lend,hoping for nothing again… (Luke 6:27-35)
Prospero’s conduct from the moment the play begins seems to contradict the basic tenets of Christian forgiveness. Fortune has brought his enemies within his grasp and Prospero seizes the opportunity for revenge. “Desire for vengeance has apparently lain dormant in Prospero through the years of banishment, and now, with the sudden advent of his foes, the great wrong of twelve years before is stirringly present again, arousing the passions and stimulating the will to action” (Davidson 225). While it is true that Prospero does not intend to harm anyone on the ship, and asks his servant sprite with all sincerity, "But are they, Ariel, safe?" (1.1.218), he does not hesitate to put the men through the agony of what they believe is a horrible disaster resulting in the death of Prince Ferdinand. Prospero insists that those who wronged him suffer for their crimes, before he offers them his forgiveness, even if it means innocent and noble men, like Gonzalo, suffer as well. Later in the drama Ariel tells Prospero that "The good old lord, Gonzalo/His tears run down his beard" (5.1.15-6), and it is Ariel’s plea that convinces Prospero to end their misery: "if you now beheld them / Your affections would become tender" (5.1.19-20).
Some critics believe that, through Ariel’s expression of genuine concern for the shipwrecked men, Prospero undergoes a transformation – that he comes to a "Christ-like" realization (Solomon 232). A close reading of the magician’s response reveals that his newfound regard for the command "love thine enemies" comes after he has achieved his revenge:
…the rarer action isIn virtue than invengeance: they being penitent,The sole drift of my purpose doth extendNot a frown further.
Prospero feels free to forgive those who sinned against him only after he has emerged triumphant and has seen the men, now mournful and "penitent", pay for their transgressions. Further evidence to support the claim that Prospero’s quality of mercy is strained, and that a truly sincere reconciliation fails to develop, comes when Prospero finally confronts King Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio and announces that he is the right Duke of Milan.
Prospero hopes that his plan to shipwreck the King and his courtiers will result in both their ultimate acceptance of him as Duke and their deep apologies for wronging him. But King Alonso’s initial reaction is not profound regret for setting Prospero out to sea in a rickety boat and stealing his title, but profound relief that someone on the island, be he real or no, has bid him a "hearty welcome" (5.1.89). Alonso does ask Prospero to pardon his wrongs, but the regret seems perfunctory and matter-of-fact, rather than genuine. It seems that Alonso’s only true regret is that his betrayal of Prospero has resulted in the loss of his son, Ferdinand. Nevertheless, Alonso’s brief and conciliatory "pardon me" is enough to please Prospero: "First, noble friend/Let me embrace thine age, whose honor cannot be measured or confined" (5.1.124-6). This exchange of pleasantries confirms Prospero’s penchant for forgiveness and the reconciliation of the two men, but only in the most superficial sense. And does Prospero truly forgive those who "hate" him? His reaction to Antonio speaks volumes:
For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brotherWould even infect my mouth, I do forgiveThy rankest fault, -- all of them; and requireMy dukedom of thee, which perforce, I know,Thou must restore. (5.1.130-4)
Prospero goes through the motions of forgiveness, but his sincerity is lost to us. Moreover, there is clearly no reconciliation amongst Prospero, Sebastian, and Antonio. Prospero still considers Antonio a "most wicked sir" (5.1.130) and Antonio, focussed on slaying the island fiends, will not even acknowledge Prospero.
A thorough discussion of the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation in the play must consider Prospero’s treatment of Caliban. When Prospero came to the island he taught Caliban his language and mannerisms. At the beginning Caliban welcomed Prospero, delighting in the attention he would receive: "Thou strok’st me, and made much of me" (1.2.334). In return, Caliban showed Prospero "all the qualities o’ th’ isle" (1.2.339), as there was little else he could give his new master. But Caliban, in an expression of his natural instincts, tried to ravage Miranda. It is an atrocious deed, but, to Caliban, it is a basic biological urge, springing from no premeditation but his simple desire to procreate, and can be equated to the crimes of a child, which is itself an ironic juxtaposition. Caliban is "unlike the incontinent man, whose appetites subdue his will, and the malicious man, whose will is perverted to evil ends" (Kermode xlii). Caliban is, in fact, "the bestial man [with] no sense of right and wrong, and therefore sees no difference between good and evil. His state is less guilty” (Kermode xlii). While he should have taken measures to prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again, Prospero goes further to ensure that Caliban pay dearly for his actions. He threatens continually to "rack [him] with old cramps" (1.2.371), and confines him "in this hard rock" (1.2.345) away from the rest of the island. For Caliban Prospero has no mercy or forgiveness. Prospero brands him "a born devil, on whose name/Nurture can never stick" (4.1.188-9), and vows, "I will plague them all" (4.1.192). It is also true that Caliban is guilty of planning the murder of Prospero after he finds a new master, Stephano, whom, he believes, will treat him better than Prospero. But, again, Caliban, in his primitive (and drunken) state cannot be held accountable. Even though Prospero understands that Caliban’s bad behaviour is like that of a child, he does not offer mercy and forgiveness as freely and earnestly as one should. The best Prospero can do is couch a rather lackluster pardon inside a command:
Go, sirrah, to my cell;Take with you your companions; as you lookTo have my pardon, trim it handsomely. (5.1.292)
Shakespeare no doubt understood that ending the play with this sour meeting would leave the reader wanting, so he crafts the union of Miranda and Ferdinand as a vehicle by which the two fathers can further their reconciliation. It is fitting that the most innocent and virtuous of all the characters in the play, Gonzalo, should express the most hope for the future:
Was Milan thrust from Milan, that hisIssue Should become kings of Naples? O rejoiceBeyond a common joy, and set it downWith gold on lasting pillars: in one voyageDid Claribel her husband find at Tunis,And Ferdinand her brother found a wifeWhere he himself was lost: Prospero his dukedomIn a poor isle; and all of us ourselves,Where no man was his own. (5.1.204-12)
With these words of hope invested in the new royal couple, Alonso and Prospero rejoice together as the play comes to a close. But, despite the traditional happy ending befitting a Shakespeare comedy, ultimately, we are left with the feeling that true forgiveness and reconciliation have not been realized.
References
Davidson, Frank. The Tempest: An Interpretation. In The Tempest: A Casebook. Ed. D.J. Palmer. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1968.Kermode, Frank.
Introduction. The Tempest. By William Shakespeare. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958.
Solomon, Andrew. A Reading of the Tempest. In Shakespeare’s Late Plays. Ed. Richard C. Tobias and Paul G. Zolbrod. Athens: Ohio UP, 1974.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Ed. Frank Kermode. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958.
We must first set a standard by which to judge the effectiveness of forgiveness in the play. Undoubtedly, the most important Christian lesson on the true nature of forgiveness can be found in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount:
But I say to unto you which hear, love yourenemies, do good to them which hateyouBless them that curse you, and pray for themwhich despiseth you… For if ye love themwhich love you, what thank have ye? Forsinners also do even the same. But loveyour enemies, and do good, and lend,hoping for nothing again… (Luke 6:27-35)
Prospero’s conduct from the moment the play begins seems to contradict the basic tenets of Christian forgiveness. Fortune has brought his enemies within his grasp and Prospero seizes the opportunity for revenge. “Desire for vengeance has apparently lain dormant in Prospero through the years of banishment, and now, with the sudden advent of his foes, the great wrong of twelve years before is stirringly present again, arousing the passions and stimulating the will to action” (Davidson 225). While it is true that Prospero does not intend to harm anyone on the ship, and asks his servant sprite with all sincerity, "But are they, Ariel, safe?" (1.1.218), he does not hesitate to put the men through the agony of what they believe is a horrible disaster resulting in the death of Prince Ferdinand. Prospero insists that those who wronged him suffer for their crimes, before he offers them his forgiveness, even if it means innocent and noble men, like Gonzalo, suffer as well. Later in the drama Ariel tells Prospero that "The good old lord, Gonzalo/His tears run down his beard" (5.1.15-6), and it is Ariel’s plea that convinces Prospero to end their misery: "if you now beheld them / Your affections would become tender" (5.1.19-20).
Some critics believe that, through Ariel’s expression of genuine concern for the shipwrecked men, Prospero undergoes a transformation – that he comes to a "Christ-like" realization (Solomon 232). A close reading of the magician’s response reveals that his newfound regard for the command "love thine enemies" comes after he has achieved his revenge:
…the rarer action isIn virtue than invengeance: they being penitent,The sole drift of my purpose doth extendNot a frown further.
Prospero feels free to forgive those who sinned against him only after he has emerged triumphant and has seen the men, now mournful and "penitent", pay for their transgressions. Further evidence to support the claim that Prospero’s quality of mercy is strained, and that a truly sincere reconciliation fails to develop, comes when Prospero finally confronts King Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio and announces that he is the right Duke of Milan.
Prospero hopes that his plan to shipwreck the King and his courtiers will result in both their ultimate acceptance of him as Duke and their deep apologies for wronging him. But King Alonso’s initial reaction is not profound regret for setting Prospero out to sea in a rickety boat and stealing his title, but profound relief that someone on the island, be he real or no, has bid him a "hearty welcome" (5.1.89). Alonso does ask Prospero to pardon his wrongs, but the regret seems perfunctory and matter-of-fact, rather than genuine. It seems that Alonso’s only true regret is that his betrayal of Prospero has resulted in the loss of his son, Ferdinand. Nevertheless, Alonso’s brief and conciliatory "pardon me" is enough to please Prospero: "First, noble friend/Let me embrace thine age, whose honor cannot be measured or confined" (5.1.124-6). This exchange of pleasantries confirms Prospero’s penchant for forgiveness and the reconciliation of the two men, but only in the most superficial sense. And does Prospero truly forgive those who "hate" him? His reaction to Antonio speaks volumes:
For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brotherWould even infect my mouth, I do forgiveThy rankest fault, -- all of them; and requireMy dukedom of thee, which perforce, I know,Thou must restore. (5.1.130-4)
Prospero goes through the motions of forgiveness, but his sincerity is lost to us. Moreover, there is clearly no reconciliation amongst Prospero, Sebastian, and Antonio. Prospero still considers Antonio a "most wicked sir" (5.1.130) and Antonio, focussed on slaying the island fiends, will not even acknowledge Prospero.
A thorough discussion of the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation in the play must consider Prospero’s treatment of Caliban. When Prospero came to the island he taught Caliban his language and mannerisms. At the beginning Caliban welcomed Prospero, delighting in the attention he would receive: "Thou strok’st me, and made much of me" (1.2.334). In return, Caliban showed Prospero "all the qualities o’ th’ isle" (1.2.339), as there was little else he could give his new master. But Caliban, in an expression of his natural instincts, tried to ravage Miranda. It is an atrocious deed, but, to Caliban, it is a basic biological urge, springing from no premeditation but his simple desire to procreate, and can be equated to the crimes of a child, which is itself an ironic juxtaposition. Caliban is "unlike the incontinent man, whose appetites subdue his will, and the malicious man, whose will is perverted to evil ends" (Kermode xlii). Caliban is, in fact, "the bestial man [with] no sense of right and wrong, and therefore sees no difference between good and evil. His state is less guilty” (Kermode xlii). While he should have taken measures to prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again, Prospero goes further to ensure that Caliban pay dearly for his actions. He threatens continually to "rack [him] with old cramps" (1.2.371), and confines him "in this hard rock" (1.2.345) away from the rest of the island. For Caliban Prospero has no mercy or forgiveness. Prospero brands him "a born devil, on whose name/Nurture can never stick" (4.1.188-9), and vows, "I will plague them all" (4.1.192). It is also true that Caliban is guilty of planning the murder of Prospero after he finds a new master, Stephano, whom, he believes, will treat him better than Prospero. But, again, Caliban, in his primitive (and drunken) state cannot be held accountable. Even though Prospero understands that Caliban’s bad behaviour is like that of a child, he does not offer mercy and forgiveness as freely and earnestly as one should. The best Prospero can do is couch a rather lackluster pardon inside a command:
Go, sirrah, to my cell;Take with you your companions; as you lookTo have my pardon, trim it handsomely. (5.1.292)
Shakespeare no doubt understood that ending the play with this sour meeting would leave the reader wanting, so he crafts the union of Miranda and Ferdinand as a vehicle by which the two fathers can further their reconciliation. It is fitting that the most innocent and virtuous of all the characters in the play, Gonzalo, should express the most hope for the future:
Was Milan thrust from Milan, that hisIssue Should become kings of Naples? O rejoiceBeyond a common joy, and set it downWith gold on lasting pillars: in one voyageDid Claribel her husband find at Tunis,And Ferdinand her brother found a wifeWhere he himself was lost: Prospero his dukedomIn a poor isle; and all of us ourselves,Where no man was his own. (5.1.204-12)
With these words of hope invested in the new royal couple, Alonso and Prospero rejoice together as the play comes to a close. But, despite the traditional happy ending befitting a Shakespeare comedy, ultimately, we are left with the feeling that true forgiveness and reconciliation have not been realized.
References
Davidson, Frank. The Tempest: An Interpretation. In The Tempest: A Casebook. Ed. D.J. Palmer. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1968.Kermode, Frank.
Introduction. The Tempest. By William Shakespeare. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958.
Solomon, Andrew. A Reading of the Tempest. In Shakespeare’s Late Plays. Ed. Richard C. Tobias and Paul G. Zolbrod. Athens: Ohio UP, 1974.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Ed. Frank Kermode. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958.
Monday, January 25, 2010
The Definition of Love
Marvell’s metaphysical conceit in “The Definition of Love” is not as easy or clear as the conceits tend to be in, say, Herbert or Donne’s poetry. Marvell seems to be using “Definition” as a sort of reference to geometric proofs: he is defining the space and relationships that make up love, built on geometric axioms and principles. There are distinct parallels in the poem to Donne’s use of the compass in “Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” but Marvell’s poem seems detached and impersonal compared to Donne’s, in part because of the abstract principles he uses to define love, but also because he depersonalizes love in a way that Donne does not.Marvell starts with a paradox in which love is both a living thing that is born, but also an “object strange and high,” rather than a human being (2). Love itself is an object, a thing, rather than possessing a clear object or focus at this point. The speaker, too, is ambiguous, never defined as a man, woman, or thing. This is the starting point, for me at least, of the detached and impersonal feeling I mentioned. Love is strange, high, and ultimately foreign. Love does not connect to a person, other than the speaker, but even the speaker is alienated from love because it is produced by a union of Despair and Impossibility, rather than of the speaker and the beloved.
Despair, the speaker says, “alone / Could show me so divine a thing / Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flow” (5-7). Here, it seems that love is divine precisely because there is no hope. The object of love is unobtainable, and thus divine. There seems to be something vaguely protestant about this sort of divine love. But is love itself the divine thing, or is the object of love “so divine a thing”? Marvell leaves the “thing” undefined, or, perhaps defines it as a space, the place where Hope cannot fly. The image of space, particularly geometric space, is perhaps the most important one for the rest of the poem.
The third stanza builds on the notion of space as the speaker hopes to “arrive / Where my extended soul is fixed” (9-10). The soul is fixed upon the object of love, creating a line between the speaker and object, but “Fate does iron wedges drive / and always crowds itself betwixt” (11-12). Fate is a physical impediment, and it inhabits space by multiplying itself, “crowding” into a space it cannot share with another. The image of Fate is made concrete and physical so that the immaterial soul and the imaginary lines created between points cannot stop it.The next stanza changes the point of view of the poem: rather than the speaker’s perspective of the relationship between the lover and the beloved, we see Fate’s perspective, in which there are two separate loves, “two perfect loves.” The union of the two loves, we are told, “would [Fate’s] ruin be.” The difference in perspective will be important later in the poem, when we come to the final stanza, so I’ll return to this image then.
The next few stanzas are littered with geometric axioms, rules, and images, and in such a way as to suggest that the space between lovers that seems so unfair and the product of fate is actually what is necessary for love to thrive. Fate’s “decrees of steel” (again, Fate’s tools are physical and concrete) turn the two loves into “distant poles” that form an axis upon which “Love’s whole world . . . doth wheel.” Love exists, we might say, in the space between the two lovers, though the lovers themselves are separated by that space. The speaker imagines that the universe might collapse from three dimensions into two, creating a “planisphere,” and thus bringing the two poles together, but this would be “cramped” (24). The language here suggests that the speaker desires the space between lovers, even as he abhors it. The discussion of parallel and oblique lines suggests something similar:
As lines so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet. (25-28)
Oblique lines can meet, but a love that is truly parallel and infinite, can never meet. There are two potential ways to read this stanza that I can think of, though they are opposite readings. In the reading that might better continue the geometric images proposed earlier in the poem, if oblique lines meet and form an angle, they also have an end point where they meet, suggesting an end to love. They either stop at the point where they meet, or they continue in different, separate directions. Parallel lines, by contrast, are infinite, identical in both shape and direction. In order for the loves to continue, especially if love exists within the spaces between the lines rather than in the lines themselves, they must stay separate. The second potential reading borrows from Stephen Greenblatt’s notion of bias and swerving in the Renaissance that he proposed in “Fiction and Friction.” Oblique lines are the intersections of two genders; parallel lines would be the love of two people of the same gender. The love is so parallel, so similar, it is impossible on some social or cultural level, embodied in Fate’s iron wedges and steel decrees. The very ambiguity of the speaker and the object’s genders (if even they have any at all) makes this a fairly plausible reading.The final stanza manages somehow to encompass all these possibilities, returning us to the allegorical images of Impossibility and Fate that characterized the beginning of the poem as well as continuing the geometric axioms and principles that defined the middle and end:
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars. (29-32)
Love binds, returning us to the image of the soul that is extended to the object, creating a connection, but Fate debars, where the allusion to bars reminds us of the physical impediments of steel and iron that were used earlier. The conjunctions and oppositions of the final two lines are geometric and astronomical terms to describe the relationship of two objects to a third. To say that love is the conjunction of the mind means that the two objects look to be in the same place when viewed from the single point of the mind (think solar eclipse), and to say that they are the opposition of the stars implies that they are 180 degrees apart when viewed from the stars, or from Fate’s perspective (think of looking at the relationship of the moon and sun with the earth between them during a lunar eclipse). The double meaning of “opposition of the stars,” in which the stars themselves are opposed to the loves, helps keep the two perspectives in as much tension as the loves themselves are.
Despair, the speaker says, “alone / Could show me so divine a thing / Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flow” (5-7). Here, it seems that love is divine precisely because there is no hope. The object of love is unobtainable, and thus divine. There seems to be something vaguely protestant about this sort of divine love. But is love itself the divine thing, or is the object of love “so divine a thing”? Marvell leaves the “thing” undefined, or, perhaps defines it as a space, the place where Hope cannot fly. The image of space, particularly geometric space, is perhaps the most important one for the rest of the poem.
The third stanza builds on the notion of space as the speaker hopes to “arrive / Where my extended soul is fixed” (9-10). The soul is fixed upon the object of love, creating a line between the speaker and object, but “Fate does iron wedges drive / and always crowds itself betwixt” (11-12). Fate is a physical impediment, and it inhabits space by multiplying itself, “crowding” into a space it cannot share with another. The image of Fate is made concrete and physical so that the immaterial soul and the imaginary lines created between points cannot stop it.The next stanza changes the point of view of the poem: rather than the speaker’s perspective of the relationship between the lover and the beloved, we see Fate’s perspective, in which there are two separate loves, “two perfect loves.” The union of the two loves, we are told, “would [Fate’s] ruin be.” The difference in perspective will be important later in the poem, when we come to the final stanza, so I’ll return to this image then.
The next few stanzas are littered with geometric axioms, rules, and images, and in such a way as to suggest that the space between lovers that seems so unfair and the product of fate is actually what is necessary for love to thrive. Fate’s “decrees of steel” (again, Fate’s tools are physical and concrete) turn the two loves into “distant poles” that form an axis upon which “Love’s whole world . . . doth wheel.” Love exists, we might say, in the space between the two lovers, though the lovers themselves are separated by that space. The speaker imagines that the universe might collapse from three dimensions into two, creating a “planisphere,” and thus bringing the two poles together, but this would be “cramped” (24). The language here suggests that the speaker desires the space between lovers, even as he abhors it. The discussion of parallel and oblique lines suggests something similar:
As lines so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet. (25-28)
Oblique lines can meet, but a love that is truly parallel and infinite, can never meet. There are two potential ways to read this stanza that I can think of, though they are opposite readings. In the reading that might better continue the geometric images proposed earlier in the poem, if oblique lines meet and form an angle, they also have an end point where they meet, suggesting an end to love. They either stop at the point where they meet, or they continue in different, separate directions. Parallel lines, by contrast, are infinite, identical in both shape and direction. In order for the loves to continue, especially if love exists within the spaces between the lines rather than in the lines themselves, they must stay separate. The second potential reading borrows from Stephen Greenblatt’s notion of bias and swerving in the Renaissance that he proposed in “Fiction and Friction.” Oblique lines are the intersections of two genders; parallel lines would be the love of two people of the same gender. The love is so parallel, so similar, it is impossible on some social or cultural level, embodied in Fate’s iron wedges and steel decrees. The very ambiguity of the speaker and the object’s genders (if even they have any at all) makes this a fairly plausible reading.The final stanza manages somehow to encompass all these possibilities, returning us to the allegorical images of Impossibility and Fate that characterized the beginning of the poem as well as continuing the geometric axioms and principles that defined the middle and end:
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars. (29-32)
Love binds, returning us to the image of the soul that is extended to the object, creating a connection, but Fate debars, where the allusion to bars reminds us of the physical impediments of steel and iron that were used earlier. The conjunctions and oppositions of the final two lines are geometric and astronomical terms to describe the relationship of two objects to a third. To say that love is the conjunction of the mind means that the two objects look to be in the same place when viewed from the single point of the mind (think solar eclipse), and to say that they are the opposition of the stars implies that they are 180 degrees apart when viewed from the stars, or from Fate’s perspective (think of looking at the relationship of the moon and sun with the earth between them during a lunar eclipse). The double meaning of “opposition of the stars,” in which the stars themselves are opposed to the loves, helps keep the two perspectives in as much tension as the loves themselves are.
