I read The Tempest by William Shakespeare after reading the Prospero’s Daughter series – the series is based on the play. I’d seen the play live before but never read it.
One of my favorite things about Shakespeare plays is that I get to read literary criticism and history on them before I review them, so I feel extra smart.
I don’t really feel the need to put “SPOILER ALERT” on a 400 year old play, so here we go.
The Tempest is thought to be written between 1610 and 1611, and is thought to be the last play Shakespeare wrote by himself. But, like everything else we know about Shakespeare, we don’t really “know” it at all, and scholars contest both these claims.
For a long time, this wasn’t one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. It didn’t meet much acclaim before the “closing of the theaters” (which was when, basically, the Puritans sucked the fun out of life) and after the Restoration (when English, Scottish, and Irish monarchies were “restored” under Charles II – it’s way easier to read the Wikipedia than explain) only adaptations of it were popular. It wasn’t until later on, during the 1800s, did people begin using the original work rather than an adaptation, and it was even later than that, in the 20th century, that the play was re-evaluated by critics and scholars. It’s now considered one of Shakespeare’s greatest works.
Either way, this particular play was written very late, and like some of Shakespeare’s other later plays, is not a strict comedy although it is classified as one. This play, along with Cymbeline, The Two Noble Kinsmen, The Winter’s Tale, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre were classified by Edward Dowden as “romances” or “tragicomedies” in his 1875 work Shakespeare: A Critical Study of his Mind and Art. (I have to get a copy of this.)
Romances tend to have certain things in common.
+ A redemptive plotline with a happy ending involving the re-uniting of long-separated family members
+ Magic and other fantastical elements
…as well as some other things you can read on the Wikipedia page. But these two stood out particularly me.
There were a couple of other themes mentioned in critical essays I’ve read about The Tempest, one of which is that the play is very concerned with the fact that it’s a play. Remember that this is believed to be one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote on his own – one theory is that the “dread magician Prospero” is Shakespeare inserting himself into the story. As Prospero brings about all the events in the story through his magic, Shakespeare brought about all the events in the theater as a playwright. As Prospero decides to give up his magic and return to normal life, Shakespeare decides to give up his role as a playwright.
I rather like this theory, and it’s supported by some textual evidence. The shipwreck was a “spectacle” that Ariel “performed.” There is a connection between Prospero’s “art” and theatrical tricks/illusions, and two of the characters – Antonio and either the Alonso or Sebastian – are “cast” in a “troop” to “act.” The Globe Theatre itself may have been reference by Prospero:
“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. …”
The other theme that seems to run through is magic. Now, from what I remember of my high school history and English classes, in Shakespeare’s day, you could get away with being interested in the supernatural by wanting to study it and understand its causes. If you were interested in conjuring spirits and other occult things, then you could be executed for it. That was going on at that point, particularly close to the Catholic Church, in Italy.
Anyway, Shakespeare very carefully paints Prospero as a “white” magician (furthering the self-insert theory). Most of Prospero’s magic is based on late 16th and early 17th science, and Prospero is carefully juxtaposed with Sycorax, who worships the devil and traps Ariel in a tree when he’s too gentle to perform her dark tasks. Prospero’s magic is described as wonderful and constructive; Sycorax’s magic is supposed to be destructive and dangerous. Prospero uses his magic to set things right and once he does, he gives it all up and frees Ariel.
Usually I love to look carefully at how Shakespeare’s female characters are written and perceived, but in this case it’s almost pointless. Miranda is the only female character, she falls in love with Ferdinand, he loves her, they plan to marry, game over. Miranda seems to have accepted the patriarchal society she would have been in – she is subordinate to her father. Her only duty to him seems to be to remain a virgin until marriage. The other women mentioned in the play – Claribel, Alonso’s daughter, and Sycorax – don’t appear, they’re only mentioned.
We learn everything of Sycorax from Prospero, but he’s never met her. He only knows what he knows from Ariel. There’s one theory from Stephen Orgel, a Shakespearean scholar who teaches English at Stamford University, that says Prospero is suspicious of women and their virtue because he makes and ambiguous remark about his wife’s fidelity. This makes him an unreliable source.
Caliban is one of the more interesting characters in the play. Some scholars think that he’s based on a Caribbean native, called Caribans, by members of Shakespeare’s society. He is more in touch with the natural world but is, in many ways, a brute. He does eventually come to see that the shipwrecked men he meets on the islands are not virtuous or noble masters and he kind of comes around. There’s some post-colonial theories on this that I didn’t read much about, but in the post-colonial view of the colonizer’s (Prospero’s) effect on the colonized (Caliban and Ariel), you could almost say that Prospero “civilized” them, which was a goal of the colonizers back in Shakespeare’s day. As everyone knows from history class, natives of the West Indies were viewed as cannibals and savages who needed to be civilized by white men.
Since I am two book reviews behind at this point, I’m going to end my research here. Overall, I have to say that I truly enjoyed The Tempest, both reading it and watching it performed a couple of years ago.
words in scarlet ink 