William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest is often described as his most elusive work. It has been read as “a romance of reconciliation, a Christian allegory of forgiveness, a meditation on the powers of the imagination and the limits of art” (Lindley 1) among other readings. These different interpretations can be supported by elements in the text, which makes all of them valid and does not allow one reading to be pointed out as the right one. Although the play can be read in many different ways, the similarity the story being told has to theater itself is a relevant reading of the playwright’s work. The Tempest is a reflection on theater and art and constantly reminds us of the made-up quality of what we are reading while highlighting its reformative power in the real world. From the beginning of the play when Prospero uses his art to cause the shipwreck to the epilogue, in which the character, and not the actor, is the one closing the play, we are presented with many metatheatrical elements that emphasize this reading of the play. (Egan, Johnston)
In the first scene of the first act of The Tempest we watch a terrible storm in the sea and the fight of mariners to avoid the wreck of their ship. The King of Naples, Alonso, and his companions are not happy with the tempest and the threat it represents to their lives and want to talk to the master of the ship. The boatswain tells them to go back below deck because they are not helping them by standing in the way. Even when Gonzalo remembers him that he is talking to a king he is still adamant that they should leave. On the next scene we learn that the storm was actually caused by Prospero, it was not a natural occurrence: “MIRANDA: If by your art, my dearest father, you have / Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them” (1.2.1-2). Prospero orchestrates the storm, being careful not to cause harm to those in the ship, as a director or a playwright orchestrates a scene in a play. Here we can already recognize Prospero as the one who will direct all the other characters, through his art, into following the necessary steps for them to better themselves.
Prospero proceeds to tell his daughter, Miranda, the story of how they came to live in the island. He tells her of how he was betrayed and lost his dukedom, but confesses that he was not a good ruler because he was more interested in his books than in his duties as a Duke. According to Johnston, Prospero’s admission of his own fault in losing his position reminds us that “whatever the powers and wonders of the illusion, one has to maintain a firm sense of what it is for, what it can and cannot do, and where it is most appropriate” for art cannot substitute life. He then puts Miranda to sleep by use of his magic so that he can talk to Ariel, the spirit that serves him. The dramatic, metatheatrical aspect of Prospero’s magic is again evidenced when he asks Ariel: “PROSPERO: Hast thou, spirit, performed to point the tempest that I bade thee?” (1.2.193-4), the tempest was no more than a performance by the spirit. The servant gives a report of the wreck and the ship passengers and is then requested to continue to help Prospero, which is actually an order since Ariel is not free but bound to the exiled duke by his magic.
As the play progresses we learn that Prospero uses his powers to control the islander Caliban who, according to Egan, knows that Prospero’s powers are not natural to him, but gained with his studies (173): “CALIBAN: Remember first to possess his books; for without them he’s but a sot, as I am” (3.2.83-5). Caliban is calling attention to the fact that without his books, Prospero is just a human being like any other, as any dramatist is a human being offstage.
Prospero also uses his art to contrive the meeting between Miranda and Ferdinand, the king’s son, and to prevent the murder of Alonso and Gonzalo by the hands of Sebastian and Antonio. The way that Prospero conducts the events in the island is reminiscent of the way the writer or the director controls a play, he is a “magician as well as a dramatist” (Egan 174). The betrayed duke guides the events and the people on the island to fit his own purpose of revenge and of transformation, for he intends to make those who wronged him see their mistakes and alter their attitudes as the banquet scene shows: “ARIEL: But remember […] that you three from Milan did supplant good Prospero […] for which foul deed the powers […] have incensed the seas and shore, yea, all the creatures against your peace” (3.3.68-75). Prospero’s art, or the theater, is an instrument of renovation and improvement for those involved in it, even if you are simply part of the audience for the spectacle.
The epilogue of The Tempest is unique amongst Shakespeare’s plays because the one speaking is not the actor, released from his characterization and asking for applause, but Prospero himself addresses the audience from the island and asks them to get involved in the art of the theater and send him back home: “PROSPERO: 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” (Epilogue 4-8). As Egan asserts, “the play’s art has no terminal boundaries but rather subsumes the ‘real’, extra-theatrical world of its spectators, supplanting their sense of reality with its own” (173).
The Tempest implies that the art of theater has power of reformation because it “reminds us of things we may too easily forget; it can liberate and encourage youthful wonder and excitement at all the diverse richness of life” (Johnston). During the play, Prospero constantly asks Miranda if she is paying attention to what he is saying, “Dost thou attend me?” (1.2.78). This could also be seen as a way to ask the audience if they are paying attention, because theater can serve as a way of bettering oneself, but, as the epilogue shows, it is necessary to go back to real life afterwards and apply what you have learned in the world of illusion to your reality as a human being.
Bibliography
Egan, Robert. “The Rough Magic: Perspectives of Art and Morality in The Tempest.” Shakespeare Quartely 23.3 (1972): 171-182. Web. 19 Jan. 2013.
Johnston, Ian. "You Can Go Home Again, Can't You? An Introduction to The Tempest". Vancouver Island University. Nanaimo, BC. Lecture. Web. 19 Jan. 2013.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Ed. David Lindley. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2002.
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