The Tempest - Shakespeare

The Tempest is Shakespeare’s last play. It is a pastoral romance (which mixes pastoral poems with a fictional narrative in prose) like The Winter’s Tale. But its opposition of court and country is affected by Shakespeare’s adherence to the unity of place. We never see the courts of Milan and Naples. Rather they come to the island in the persons of courtiers (Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian and others).

Characters on the Island Prospero – his dukedom was usurped by his brother Antonio twelve years ago in Milan. By his magic art he conjures up the storm and bring the courtiers to the island in order to his usurping brother Antonio into repentance. Miranda – his daughter. Married to Ferdinand who is a son to Alonso, the king of Naples. Prospero plans this marriage for the purpose of bringing a harmony between Milan and Naples.

Ariel - an airy spirit, representing fire and air, concord and music, loyal service. Caliban – a savage and deformed slave, of the earth, associated with discord, drunkenness and rebellion. However he has a wonderful attunement to the natural environment: he knows every corner, every species of the island.

Characters from the court Alonso – King of Naples, Ferdinand’s father Antonio – Prospero’s usurping brother, planning to usurp Alonso’s throne with Sebastian (Alonso’s brother) Stephano – a drunken butler, planning to kill Prospero to take over the island with Trinculo (a jester) and Caliban.

Structure The Tempest may be Shakespeare’s most tightly structured play. Composed of nine separate scenes, the play begins with a shipwreck and ends with the restoration of the ship that had seemed earlier to split.

The rest of the play is comparably symmetrical. Scenes 2 and 8 involve Prospero, Miranda and Ferdinand Scenes 3 and 7 develop Antonio and Sebastian’s plan to kill Alonso. Scenes 4 and 6 display the drunken antics of Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo, and their plot to kill Prospero and take over the island. The central scene showcases Ferdinand and Miranda’s betrothal

Several roles and events are parallel * Prospero’s overthrow in Milan twelve years earlier is nearly repeated. (first in Antonio and Sebastian’s plot to murder Alonso, and second in Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo’s plan to assassinate Prospero). Prospero’s ultimate goals, the restoration of his rightful place and a proper marriage for his daughter, are celebrated in the masque of goddesses he stages for Ferdinand and Miranda in 4.1.

Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio are stunned by a disappearing banquet and Ariel’s sudden appearance as a harpy in 3.3. Harpy is a mythical predatory bird with a woman’s head, talons for hands and the body of a vulture, associated with divine retribution.

Island More than a simple setting, the island takes on a life of its own – Caliban creates its mythic resonances with his evocations of exotic flora and fauna. His perspective is shaped by physical responses to night and day, moon and starts, emptiness and fullness, silence and music.

The Neapolitans see the island differently To Gonzalo it has possibilities as a golden-age plantation. To Sebastian and Antonio it evokes travellers’ tales of unicorns and the phoenix.

To the others To Prospero it is a temporary if unwanted haven from the cares of office. To the audience it is the stuff that dreams are made on, a imaginative world of words and music.

By yoking tragic themes and comic resolutions, realistic characterizations and exotic tales, the romances highlights the paradoxes of human experience.

Masque Stage spectacle was the essence of the Jacobean court masque, a form embedded in The Tempest not just in the musical interlude but in other scenes as well. Masques were the original multimedia event, requiring ‘painting, architecture, design, mechanics, lighting, music of both composer and performer, acting, choreography, and dancing acrobatic and formal.’

Staged at great expense for special court occasions – wedding, birthdays, investitures – masques treated the audience to a vision of court ladies and gentlemen dressed in lavish costumes within spectacular moving sets. Prospero’s masque continues Ben Jonson’s hymeneal theme, his insistence on continence. His concern of his daughter’s chastity is linked to his hopes for her fruitful marriage and the legitimacy of his dynasty.

Imperialism, Colonialism There may be more relevance in Tudor and Stuart England’s incipient empire. Caliban Africa and Ireland

Themes and Symbols The theme of repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness Tempest versus Music Storm or tempest – a symbol of turmoil. During the tempest in the opening scene, the normal social order is out of joint: the boatswain commands the courtiers. Music – a symbol of healing , harmonizing influence

The Play-within-a-play As Allardyce Nicoll puts it, the use of this framing device is closely associated with the architectural shape of the Elizabethan playhouse, which is suitable for ‘the entire fabric of the romance drama’, where deities and creatures of the folk imagination are mixed with what purports to be the real, or the purportedly real includes the fantastic’. (Nicoll 51)

Double frames of play-within-play. The events that occur on the island are planned by Prospero to restore his dukedom. The Tempest itself is a sort of play-within- a-play presented by Prospero. Prospero functions as a playwright and a director in that he has the power to control the actions of the other dramatic personae through his magic power. As a result his island is the stage and the rest of the characters are actors.

The masque presented by Prospero’s pageant before Ferdinand and Miranda forms another frame, so that it becomes a play-within-a- play within a play. Robert J. Nelson uses the term ‘triple convolution’ (Nelson 30) to describe the structure of this play.

Epilogue The fact that his role as a dramatist is the widest frame in the play is revealed in the epilogue where Prospero addresses the theatre audience: Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own, Which is most faint: now, ‘tis true, I must be here confin’d by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got, And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell; But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands [.] (1-10)