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A Modern Perspective: The Tempest

By Barbara A. Mowat

Somewhat past the midpoint of The Tempest, King Alonso and his courtiers reach a temporary still point in their journey on Prospero’s island. Shipwrecked, they have searched for the lost Prince Ferdinand; now, exhausted, they give up the search. Into this moment of fatigue—and, for Alonso, despair—at the center of what Gonzalo calls their “maze,” enters the maze’s monster: a Harpy who threatens them with lingering torment worse than any death. For Alonso, the Harpy’s recounting of his long-ago crimes against Prospero is “monstrous”; maddened, he rushes off to leap (he thinks) into the sea, to join (he thinks) his drowned son Ferdinand.

King Alonso’s confrontation with the Harpy ( 3.3.23 –133) brings together powerfully The Tempest ’s intricate set of travel stories and its technique of presenting key dramatic moments as theatrical fantasy. The presentation of dancing islanders, a disappearing banquet, and a descending monster is the first big spectacle since the play’s opening tempest. The unexpected appearance of these island “spirits,” combined with the power of the Harpy’s speech, gives the Harpy confrontation a solidity within the story world that seems designed to rivet audience attention. At the same time, audience response to the scene is inevitably colored by curiosity about the “quaint device” that makes the banquet vanish and by awareness of Prospero looking down on his trapped enemies from “the top,” commenting on them in asides, and obtrusively turning the Harpy/king encounter into make-believe, first by telling us that the Harpy was only Ariel reciting a speech and, second, by reminding us, just before Alonso’s desperate exit to join Ferdinand in the ocean’s ooze, that Ferdinand is, at this moment, courting Miranda.

The double signals here—to the powerful moment within the story and to the deliberate theatricality with which the moment is staged—reflect larger doublenesses in this drama. They reflect, first of all, major differences in the temporal and spatial dimensions of the drama’s “story” and its “play.” The Tempest ’s “story” stretches over more than twenty-four years and several sea journeys; it embeds elements of the mythological voyages of Aeneas and of Jason and the Argonauts, of the biblical voyages of St. Paul, and of actual contemporary voyages to the new world of Virginia. The “play” that The Tempest actually presents is, in contrast, constricted within a plot-time of a single afternoon and confined to the space imagined for an island. 1 Through this particular doubling, Shakespeare creates in The Tempest a form that allows him to bring familiar voyage material to the stage in a (literally) spectacular new way.

The “story” that The Tempest tells is a story of voyages—Sycorax’s journey from Algiers, Prospero and Miranda’s journey from Milan to the island in the rotten carcass of a butt, Alonso’s voyage from Naples to Tunis across the Mediterranean Sea and thence to the island—and, on the island, a set of journeys (Ferdinand’s journey across yellow sands; Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo’s through briers and filthy-mantled pools, and Alonso and his men’s through strange mazes) that lead, finally, back to the sea and the ship and to yet another sea journey. This complex narrative, with its immense span of chronological time, its routes stretching over most of the Mediterranean, its violent separations and losses and its culmination in royal betrothals and restorations, is the kind of story told in the massive novels, popular in Shakespeare’s time, called Greek Romances. The Tempest ’s story could have filled one or more such romance volumes or could have been presented in a narrative-like drama such as Shakespeare himself had created in Pericles and The Winter’s Tale . Instead, within the brief period of The Tempest ’s supposed action, the narrative of the twenty-four or more years preceding the shipwreck of King Alonso and his courtiers on the island—worked out by Shakespeare in elaborate detail—is told to us elaborately. The second and third scenes of The Tempest —that is, 1.2 . and 2.1 —contain close to half the lines in the play, and close to half of those lines are past-tense narration. Through Prospero, through Ariel, through Caliban, through Gonzalo, through Sebastian, through Antonio, characters in our presence (and our present) tell us their pasts.

If we take the sets of narratives embedded in 1.2 and 2.1 and roll them back to where they belong chronologically, the first story (and the most fantastic) is that of the witch Sycorax, her exile on the island, her “littering” of Caliban there, and her imprisoning of Ariel ( 1.2.308 –47)—twelve years before Prospero is thrust forth from Milan. That thrusting-forth is the subject of the next story (next chronologically, that is): the narrative of Antonio’s betrayal of Prospero and of Prospero and Miranda’s sea journey and arrival on the island ( 1.2.66 –200). Then comes the story of what happened on the island during the next twelve years, a story in which narratives that tell of Caliban ( 1.2.396 –451), of Ariel ( 1.2.287 –306, 340 –47), and of Miranda and Prospero ( 1.2.205 –8) overlap and intersect. Finally comes the story from the most recent past—the story of the Princess Claribel and her “loathness” to the marriage arranged by her father ( 2.1.131 –40), of Claribel’s wedding in Tunis ( 2.1.71 –111), of the return journey of Alonso and his courtiers ( 2.1.112 –17), and of the shipwreck as described by Ariel ( 1.2.232 –80).

One of the most powerful features of the form Shakespeare crafted in The Tempest is that this detailed, complex narrative, told us in the first part of the play, keeps reappearing within the play’s action. The story of the coup d’état that expelled Prospero “twelve year since,” for example, is made the model for the Antonio/Sebastian assassination plot (“Thy case, dear friend,” says Sebastian to Antonio, “shall be my precedent: as thou got’st Milan, I’ll come by Naples” [ 2.1.332 –34]); the story appears at the center of the Harpy’s message ( 3.3.86 –93); and it is told yet once again by Prospero when, in the play’s final scene, he attempts to forgive Antonio ( 5.1.80 –89). Caliban’s story—“this island is mine”; “I serve a tyrant”—is told by him again and again. The story of Sycorax, who died years before the dramatic “now,” is alluded to so often—her powers described one last time by Prospero even as the play is ending ( 5.1.323 –26)—that she seems to haunt the play, as does the absent, distant, unhappy Claribel.

As the play reaches its conclusion, each of the stories recounted in the early narrative scenes is conjured up a final time, though the pressure now is toward the future—toward the nuptials of the royal couple, toward a royal lineage with Prospero’s heirs as kings of Naples. As that virtual future is created, the structuring process of the opening scenes is reversed: where narrative was there incorporated into the play, now the play opens back out into the next pages of the narrative from which it had emerged. As we watch and listen, the play we have been experiencing moves into the past, becomes a moment in the tale Prospero promises to tell to the voyagers—“such discourse as . . . shall make [the night] / Go quick away: the story of my life / And the particular accidents gone by / Since I came to this isle” ( 5.1.361 –64). As Alonso notes, this is a “story . . . which must / Take the ear strangely” ( 5.1.371 –72).

By folding the story into the play and then unfolding the play into its own virtual narrative future, Shakespeare creates a form in which past and future press on the present dramatic moment with peculiar intensity. We sense this throughout the play, but see it with special clarity in the confrontation between Alonso and the Harpy. The Harpy brings the past to Alonso as a burden Alonso must pick up—an intolerable burden for Alonso, who goes mad under the simultaneous recognition of his guilt and its consequences, given to him as Time Past, Time Present, and Time Future. In Time Past: “you . . . / From Milan did supplant good Prospero, / Exposed unto the sea . . . / Him and his innocent child” ( 3.3.87 –90); in Time Present: “for which foul deed, / The powers . . . have / Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures / Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, / They have bereft” ( 90 –94); and finally, in Time Future: “Ling’ring perdition . . . shall step by step attend / You and your ways, whose wraths to guard you from— / Which here, in this most desolate isle, else fells / Upon your heads—is nothing but heart’s sorrow / And a clear life ensuing” ( 95 –101). This pressure of past and future on the present moment—a pressure that is created in large part by the way Shakespeare folds chronological time into plot-time, and that we feel throughout the play in Prospero’s tension, in Ariel’s restiveness, in Caliban’s fury—makes believable in The Tempest that which is normally suspect: namely, instant repentance, instant inner transformation. Because the dramatic present is so permeated with the play’s virtual past, so pressured by the future—the six o’clock toward which the play rushes, after which Time as Opportunity will be gone—that Alonso’s anguished repentance, his descent into silence, madness, and unceasing tears, his immediate surrender of Milan to Prospero and the reward of being given back his lost son—can all take place in moments, and can, even so, seem credible and wonderful.

The interplay between The Tempest ’s elaborate voyage story and its tightly constricted “play” is not the only doubleness toward which the drama’s Harpy/king encounter points us. It points as well to two kinds of travel tales embedded in the drama: ancient, fictional voyage narratives and contemporary travelers’ tales buzzing around London at the time the play was being written. The Harpy/king encounter is shaped as a sequence of verbal and visual events that in effect reenact and thus recall ancient confrontations between harpies and sea voyagers. In each of these harpy incidents—from the third century B.C. Argonautica through the first century B.C. Aeneid to The Tempest itself—harpies are ministers of the gods sent to punish those who have angered the gods; they punish by devouring or despoiling food; and they are associated with dire prophecies. The Tempest ’s enactment of the harpy encounter is thus one in a line of harpy stories stretching into the past from this island and this set of voyagers to Aeneas, and through Aeneas back to Jason and the crucial encounter between the terrible harpies (the “hounds of mighty Zeus”) and the Argonauts. 2 In replicating the sequence of events of voyagers meeting harpies, combining details from Jason’s story and from the Aeneid, Shakespeare directs attention to the specific context in which such harpy confrontations appear and within which The Tempest clearly belongs—that of literary fictional voyages.

At the same time, he surrounds the encounter with dialogue that would remind his audience of present-day voyages of their own fellow Londoners. Geographical expansion, around-the-world journeys, explorations of the new world of the Americas had heightened the stay-at-homes’ fascination with the strange creatures reported by travelers. Real-world creatures like crocodiles and hippopotami, fantastic creatures like unicorns and griffins, reported monstrosities like the men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders—all were, at the time, equally real (or unreal) and equally fascinating. The dialogue preceding the Harpy’s descent in The Tempest centers on such fabulous creatures. When the supposed “islanders”—creatures of “monstrous shape”—appear, bringing in the banquet, Sebastian says: “Now I will believe / That there are unicorns, that in Arabia / There is one tree, the phoenix’ throne, one phoenix / At this hour reigning there.” “Travelers ne’er did lie,” says Antonio, “Though fools at home condemn ’em.” Gonzalo adds, “If in Naples / I should report this now, would they believe me? / If I should say I saw such islanders . . . ” ( 3.3.26 –36). It is into this dialogue-context that the Harpy descends—that is, into a discussion of fantastic travelers’ tales and fabulous creatures.

When the Harpy—one of these creatures—actually appears, claps its wings upon the table, and somehow makes the food disappear ( 3.3.69 SD), she is very real to Alonso and his men—as real as the harpies were to Jason and to Aeneas; as real as the hippopotami and anthropophagi were to fifteenth-century explorers; as real as is Caliban, the monster mooncalf, to his discoverers Stephano and Trinculo. The attempts to kill the Harpy are classical responses—that is, they are the responses of Jason and Aeneas when confronted by the terrible bird-women. The response of Stephano and Trinculo to their man-monster is a more typically sixteenth-century response to the fabulous. When, for example, Stephano finds Trinculo and Caliban huddled under a cloak and thinks he has discovered a “most delicate monster” with four legs and two voices, he responds with the greed that we associate with Martin Frobisher and other sixteenth-century New World explorers who brought natives from North America to England to put on display: “If I can recover him,” says Stephano, “and keep him tame and get to Naples with him, he’s a present for any emperor that ever trod on neat’s leather. . . . He shall pay for him that hath him, and that soundly” ( 2.2.69 –81). Trinculo had responded with equal greed to his first sight of the frightened Caliban:

What have we here, a man or a fish? . . . A strange fish. Were I in England . . . and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man. Any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.

( 2.2.25 –34)

While the finding and subjugating of “wild men” was a feature that ancient and new-world voyage stories held in common (for example, Jupiter promises that Aeneas, as the climax of his sea journeys, will “wage a great war in Italy, and . . . crush wild peoples and set up laws for men and build walls” 3 ), Prospero’s subjugation of Caliban has a particularly New World flavor. The play itself, no matter how steeped it is in ancient voyage literature and no matter how much emphasis it places on its Mediterranean setting, is also a representation of New World exploration. While it retells the stories of Aeneas and of Jason, it also stages a particular Virginia voyage that, in 1610–11, was the topic of sermons, published government accounts, and first-person epistles, many of which Shakespeare drew on in crafting The Tempest . The story, in brief, goes as follows: A fleet of ships set out in 1609 from England carrying a new governor—Sir Thomas Gates—to the struggling Virginia colony in Jamestown. The fleet was caught in a tempest off the coast of Bermuda. All of the ships survived the storm and sailed on to Virginia—except the flagship, the Sea-Venture, carrying the governor, the admiral of the fleet, and other important officials. A year later, the exhausted and dispirited colonists in Jamestown were astounded when two boats sailed up the James River carrying the supposedly drowned governor and his companions. The crew and passengers on the flagship had survived the storm, had lived for a year in the Bermudas, had built new ships, and had made it safely to Virginia. News of the happy ending to this “tragicomedy,” as one who reported the story called it, soon reached London, and many details of the story are preserved in The Tempest .

Among the details may be the disturbing picture of the relationship of the “settlers” and the “Indians” in Jamestown, represented perhaps in Caliban and his relationship with Prospero. In one of the documents used by Shakespeare in writing The Tempest, William Strachey describes an incident in which “certain Indians,” finding a man alone, “seized the poor fellow and led him up in to the woods and sacrificed him.” Strachey writes that the lieutenant governor was very disturbed by this incident, since hitherto he “would not by any means be wrought to a violent proceeding against them [i.e., the Indians] for all the practices of villainy with which they daily endangered our men.” This incident, though, made him “well perceive” that “fair and noble treatment” had little effect “upon a barbarous disposition,” and “therefore . . . purposed to be revenged.” The revenge took the form of an attack upon an Indian village. 4

As we read Strachey’s account today, we find much in the behavior of the settlers toward the natives that is appalling, so that the account is not for us simply that of “good white men” against “bad Indians,” as it was for Strachey. In the same way, whether or not this particular lieutenant governor and these treacherous “Indians” are represented in The Tempest, Shakespeare’s decision to include a “wild man” among his island’s cast of characters, and (as Stephen Greenblatt notes) to place him in opposition to a European prince whose power lies in his language and his books, 5 raises a host of questions for us about the play. The Tempest was written just as England was beginning what would become massive empire-building through the subjugating of others and the possessing of their lands. European nations—Spain, in particular—had already taken over major land areas, and Shakespeare and his contemporaries had available to them many accounts of native peoples and of European colonizers’ treatment of such peoples. Many such accounts are like Strachey’s: they describe a barbarous people who refuse to be “civilized,” who have no language, who have a “nature” on which “nurture will never stick” (as Prospero says of Caliban). Other accounts describe instead cultural differences in which that which is different is not necessarily inferior or “barbarous.” When Gonzalo says (at 2.1.157 –60), “Had I plantation [i.e., colonization] of this isle . . . And were the King on ’t, what would I do?” he answers his own question by describing the Utopia he would set up ( lines 162 –84), taking his description from Montaigne’s essay “Of the Cannibals.” In this essay, Montaigne (“whose supple mind,” writes Ronald Wright, “exemplifies Western civilization at its best” 6 ) argues in effect that American “savages” are in many ways more moral, more humane people than so-called civilized Europeans.

As with so much of The Tempest, Caliban may be seen as representing two quite different images. Shakespeare gives him negative traits attached to New World natives (traits that seem to many today to smack of racist responses to the strange and to the Other) while giving him at the same time a richly poetic language and a sensitive awareness of nature and the supernatural. He places Caliban in relation to Prospero (as Caliban’s master and the island’s “colonizer”), to Miranda (as the girl who taught Caliban language and whom he tried to rape), and indirectly to Ferdinand (who, like Caliban, is made to carry logs and who will father Miranda’s children as Caliban had wished to do). Shakespeare thus creates in the center of this otherworldly play a confrontation that speaks eloquently to late-twentieth-century readers and audiences living with the aftereffects of the massive colonizing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and observing the continuing life of “empire” in the interactions between the powerful and the formerly colonized states. 7 As many readers and audiences today look back at the centuries of colonization of the Americas, Africa, and India from, as it were, Caliban’s perspective, The Tempest, once considered Shakespeare’s most serene, most lyrical play, is now put forward as his representation, for good or ill, of the colonizing and the colonized. 8

This relatively new interest in the colonization depicted in The Tempest has had a profound impact on attitudes toward Prospero. For centuries seen as spokesman for Shakespeare himself, as the benign, profound magician-artist who presides like a god over an otherworldly kingdom, Prospero is now perceived as one of Shakespeare’s most complex creations. He brings to the island books, Old World language, and the power to hurt and to control; he thus figures an early form of the colonizer. But he carries with him other, complicating associations. He is, for example, a figure familiar in voyage romances popular in Shakespeare’s day. The hermit magician (or exiled doctor, or some equivalent) in Greek Romance tales comes to the aid of heroes and heroines, protects them, heals them, often teaches them who they really are. In such stories, the focus is always on the lost, shipwrecked, searching man or woman—that is, on the Alonso figure or the Ferdinand or the Miranda figure. In The Tempest, Prospero, the hermit magician, is center stage, and the lost, shipwrecked, and searching are seen by us through him and in relation to him. Prospero thus carries a kind of power and an aura of ultimately benevolent intention that complicates the colonizer image.

Prospero is also the creator of the maze in which the other characters find themselves—“as strange a maze as e’er men trod,” says Alonso ( 5.1.293 )—and thus carries yet other complicating associations. The scene of the Harpy/king encounter opens with Gonzalo’s “Here’s a maze trod indeed through forthrights and meanders,” a statement that picks up suggestively Ovid’s description of that most infamous of mazes, created by Daedalus to enclose the Minotaur. The Daedalus story has unexpected but rich links with The Tempest . Daedalus, the quintessential artist/engineer/magician, built the maze to sty the monstrous creature that he had helped to bring into being. (It was sired by a bull on King Minos’ queen, but it was Daedalus who had lured the bull to the queen, encasing her, at her urgings, in the wooden shape of a cow.) Having built the maze, Daedalus (in Golding’s 1567 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis ) “scarce himselfe could find the meanes to wind himself well out / So busie and so intricate” was the labyrinth he had created (Book 8, lines 210–20).

The story of the maze and its Minotaur is a familiar one, involving the sacrifice of Greek youths to the bloodthirsty Minotaur, an annual horror that stopped only with Theseus’ slaughter of the Minotaur and his escape from the maze through the aid of King Minos’ daughter, Ariadne, whom Theseus marries and then abandons. Less familiar is the connection between the story of the maze and that of Daedalus and his son Icarus’ flight from the island of Crete:

Now in this while [when Theseus was overcoming

the Minotaur] gan Daedalus a weariness to take

Of living like a banisht man and prisoner such a time

In Crete, and longed in his heart to see his native

But Seas enclosed him as if he had in prison be.

Then thought he: though both Sea and land King

Minos stop fro me,

I am assured he cannot stop the Aire and open

It is at this point that Daedalus turns to “uncoth Arts” (i.e., magic), bending “the force of all his wits / To alter natures course by craft”—and he constructs the famous wings that take him home, at the cost of the life of his son, who falls into the sea and drowns.

When Prospero stands “on the top,” looking down and commenting on the trapped figures below him, he to some extent figures the magician/artist Daedalus. Throughout the play he, like Daedalus, is almost trapped in his own intricate maze, an exile who “gan . . . a weariness to take / Of living like a banisht man and prisoner such a time,” who “longed in his heart to see his native Clime,” and who thus bent “the force of all his wits” and his magic powers to find a way to get himself and his child home. The associations of Prospero with Daedalus, his maze, and his magic flight are less accessible to us today than they would have been to a Renaissance audience. But the sense of Prospero’s weariness, of his hatred of exile, of the danger facing him as he heads back to Milan having abjured his magic—these complicating emotional factors, even without a specific awareness of the Daedalus parallels, are available to us. We notice them especially in Prospero’s epilogue, where he begs our help in wafting him off the island and safely back home.

Like The Tempest itself, then, Prospero is complicated, double. He, like the play, is woven from a variety of story materials, and like the play he represents a particular moment, the moment at which began a period of colonizing and empire-building that would completely alter the world, leaving a legacy with which we still live. But he, like the play, also embodies ancient stories of travel and exile and the emotions that accompany them. And The Tempest ’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century retellings and sequels (Browning’s “Caliban on Setebos,” Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête, Auden’s “The Sea and the Mirror,” and such film versions as Forbidden Planet and Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books, to name but a few) suggest that those stories and emotions have continued to intrigue. The magician fascinates, the journey and the maze still tempt, despite the near certainty that magic—like all power—tends to corrupt and that islands and labyrinths hold as many monsters as they do “revels.”

I am using the word “story” here both in its general sense of a narration of events and in the more particular sense that translates the Russian formalists’ term “fabula”—that is, the events sequenced in chronological order. The formalists contrast the “fabula” with the “szujet”—the fiction as structured by the author (a term I translate as “play”). See Keir Elam’s The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London and New York: Methuen, 1980), pp. 119–26.
See Barbara A. Mowat, “‘And that’s true, too’: Structures and Meaning in The Tempest ,” Renaissance Papers 1976 , pp. 37–50. The pertinent sections of the Argonaut stories are Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2:178–535, and Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 4:422–636; Virgil’s account of the Harpies as encountered by Aeneas and his men is found in the Aeneid 3:210–69.
Aeneid , Book I, lines 261–64 (Guildford trans.).
“A True Reportory of the Wreck and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight,” in A Voyage to Virginia in 1609 , ed. Louis B. Wright (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1964), pp. 1–101, esp. pp. 88–89.
“Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century,” in Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 23–26.
Stolen Continents: The “New World” Through Indian Eyes (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1993).
See Edward W. Said, “Empire, Geography, and Culture” and “Images of the Past, Pure and Impure,” in Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), pp. 3–14, 15–19.
For example, in “Nymphs and reapers heavily vanish: the discursive con-texts of The Tempest ,” Alternative Shakespeares , ed. John Drakakis (pp. 192–205), Francis Barker and Peter Hulme state that “the discourse of colonialism” is the “dominant discursive con-text” for the play.

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Transformation In Shakespeare

All Shakespeare’s plays have transformation at their heart and we see that in his texts in several ways.

The most visible manifestation of transformation in the plays stems from Shakespeare’s pre- eminence in creating inner lives for his characters that are complex and evolving as they react to events. Before Shakespeare, literature did not present us with characters whose inner lives demand our deepest attention. But we see in Shakespeare’s plays so many characters who are in the process of reacting to events and developing, as we watch them, in ways no other characters in literature before Shakespeare did, because Shakespeare’s assumptions about character were different from those of earlier writers. Earlier characters had personality structures, and while they did react to events, we don’t see process and the development of understanding in them that we see in Shakespeare’s characters. That development of understanding in Shakespeare’s characters is responsible for the transformation we see in all of them. With Hamlet , Othello , Macbeth , and Lear especially, we see this interiority which has become so much a part of our way of understanding human beings.

Shakespeare’s positioning as a Renaissance writer places him in the context of rapid change. The world in which he lived was fast transforming itself in science, art, philosophy, religion, medicine and many other areas. It was in the middle of the Copernican revolution, the Machiavellian influence, geographic exploration, and dynamic social change. Shakespeare’s characters begin to display a Machiavellian duplicity, or are concerned with, or promote, as we see in King Lear , both a concern for the preservation, and the dismantling of, the received Elizabethan world view. In many characters we see the impulse to replace it with a modern, science-based sensibility. Living in the times he did means that Shakespeare could not have done anything else than have his characters respond. The context of fast and widespread change in Europe enters the fabric of the plays.

And so, transformation pervades all the plays. Something common to all of them is stability giving way to confusion. The ultimate ending in the plays is restoration, however – a change back to the state before the confusion, but with a transformation having taken place – usually in the form of deeper understandings on the part of the characters At all times the context, as outlined above, informs the action and the character development. Change may happen to individuals on the most basic level. In Twelfth Night Malvolio is tricked by a false letter into changing from a puritan steward to a ridiculous would-be lover; in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Nick Bottom is magically transformed into an ass. In every play characters change in some way: it could be the change from life to death, or the dawning of new insights. Figures of power come tumbling down and villains are exposed.

None of Shakespeare’s plays is about one thing: every play is criss-crossed with a multitude of themes, so if one tried to explain a Shakespeare text in terms of one idea it would be simplistic. However, in some plays transformation is a central theme, operating at every level of the text. The Tempest is one of those and, more, it is in many ways the climax of the theme in Shakespeare’ works. It might therefore be instructive to look at transformation in that play.

The word that is usually used to talk about transformation in The Tempest is ‘metamorphosis.’ It means, simply, transformation by means of magic. In The Tempest the magician, Prospero, uses magic to bring about transformation in both the outer and inner lives of his enemies. In the process he is himself transformed and at the end of the play he demonstrates his complete, permanent transformation by renouncing his magic and its agents.

After twelve years of anger and bitterness at his banishment and imprisonment on a small island with his young daughter, Miranda, he now has the opportunity to take revenge on those who have done him wrong. He uses his magic to wreck the ship they are travelling on and bring them to the island, taking them out of their context of European politics, to an unknown and unpredictable environment. The spells Prospero casts on them transforms their emotional states. Prospero’s initial intention was to confuse, punish and teach them a lesson but finally, filled with pity, he is moved to compassion for them. This is the turning point in the story as well as in Prospero’s inner character. In letting go of his resentment and forgiving the wrongdoer, he lets go of his power over them and they waken to new insights and understandings, transformed by the forgiveness of their victim. This is the climax of the transformation theme in The Tempest . Vengeance gives way to forgiveness and mercy and transforms the lives of everyone who is affected by the previous climate of hatred. This is a deeply Christian idea and we see it throughout Shakespeare’s dramatic works.

The above explanation is simplistic, however, and doesn’t take account of the complexity of the plays. As in all Shakespeare, the central theme is interwoven with such things as linked themes and ideas, language, dramatic action, characterisation and so on. We see the transforming influence of childhood innocence feeding into the main theme, the softening influence of nature and femininity on the hard, masculine, urban political world. And in the end love and forgiveness emerge and transform the characters. In Shakespeare’s plays we will almost always find that transformation takes place in that way.

Shakespeare Themes by Play

Hamlet themes , Macbeth themes , Romeo and Juliet themes

Shakespeare Themes by Topic

Ambition, Appearance & Reality , Betrayal , Conflict , Corruption , Death , Deception , Good & Evil , Hatred , Order & Disorder , Revenge , Suffering , Transformation

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Transformation, a reccuring theme in Shakespeare’s plays

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The Transformation of Prospero

William Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, was written sometime after late 1610 and performed for King James I at least two times between 1611 and 1613 (Cliffnotes). Sometimes classified as a comedy because it ends with a wedding, The Tempest actually defies exact categorization. It is a complex play and scholarly interpretations about every aspect of it abound. Amidst the widely diverse theories that exist about The Tempest , this essay will focus primarily on the personal transformation of Prospero, and aim to prove the thesis: The myriad power dynamics between characters in The Tempest serve ultimately to illustrate facets of Prospero’s transformation from disenfranchised magician to overlord to enlightened sage.

It is precisely because of the dynamics between other characters in The Tempest that Prospero emerges as the hero of this play. As Paul A. Cantor points out in the article “Shakespeare’s The Tempest: The Wise Man as Hero,” Prospero is not the type of figure that would typically be at the center of a play. Cantor explains “Ordinarily we expect the heroes in plays to be moved by the basic human passions, such as sexual desire, greed, or ambition” (65). The Tempest is rare in its composition around a central character whose primary qualities are wisdom and restraint.

In the second scene of the play we learn how Prospero came to be on the island, that his own brother overthrew him as Duke of Milan, and set him out to sea (Act I, Scene 2, 46-208). The picture of Prospero, when he was Duke of Milan, painted by this backstory is that of a man pre-occupied with his art (magic), and naïve enough to leave kingly duties in the hands of his ambitious brother. Thus, he has been handily swept aside and left to drown.

There are several examples of other characters in this story that are “disenfranchised” too, whether momentarily or chronically. For example, in the first scene of the play, King Alonzo and his entourage of men are stripped of their usual authority in the midst of the tempest when the boatswain bucks propriety and says to Gonzalo, “What care these roarers for the name of king? To cabin! Silence! Trouble us not!” (Act I, Scene 1, 16-18).

Through expositional dialogue in the first Act we know that Prospero arrived on the island as a dethroned duke, and then apparently got right to work on a plan to regain his position. One of his first tasks was to enslave Caliban, who existed on the island before Prospero arrived. Caliban is another example of a person disenfranchised in this story. Throughout the play, Caliban bemoans his servitude, as in the first Act when he laments to Prospero “This island’s mine, by Sycorax, my mother, which thou tak’st from me.” He goes on to say “…For I am all the subjects that you have, which first was mine own king; and here you sty me in this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me the rest o’ th’ island” (Act I, Scene 2, 396-411).

Many writers point to the relationship between Prospero and Caliban as reflective of the advent of slavery in the 17 th century, and liken Prospero’s perception of Caliban to the accounts that European explorers were reporting about natives in the “new world.” In the article “Form and Disorder in The Tempest,” Rose A. Zimbardo offers the viewpoint that Caliban, being the offspring of an evil witch and the devil, really represents the element of “disorder.” If seen through this lens, we can view Prospero’s enslavement of Caliban as his attempt to create “order” out of the disorder he has been thrust into.

Another character that is stripped of his franchise is Ariel. Prospero rescued Ariel from captivity and apparently Ariel is beholden to serve Prospero for the favor. When Ariel asks Prospero to set him free in Act I, Prospero puts Ariel back in his place, saying “Dost thou forget from what a torment I did free thee?” He goes on to remind Ariel of the horrid details of his imprisonment at the hands of Sycorax and finally finishes by saying “If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak and peg thee in his knotty entrails till thou hast howled away twelve winters.” Ariel humbly submits (Act I, Scene 2, 299-354).

Through Prospero’s patient efforts over time, developing his magic art and harnessing the energy of his servants, we find him in Act IV having complete control over every other character. As he says, “At this hour lies at my mercy all mine enemies“ (Act IV, Scene 1, 291-292). Having power over others is another dynamic that can be seen throughout the characters’ relationships in this play.

Antonio, the brother of Prospero, is a clear example of someone who likes to dominate others. In the backstory he has usurped Prospero’s dukedom. In the current story he encourages Sebastian to kill Alonzo and steal the throne of Naples. Writer Zimbardo posits that Antonio has no other motive for encouraging this coup by Sebastian other than to promote disorder (55).

A particularly humorous example of the desire to have power over others is the scene where Stephano is seduced by Caliban’s idea that he kill Prospero and become king of the island. Here, Stephano, who has been a servant up to this point in his life, sees the possibilities of having absolute power. Caliban entices him with images of being king, and assures Stephano that beautiful Miranda will be his wife and “bring thee forth brave brood” (Act III, Scene 2, 115). Stephano doesn’t need much convincing. He replies, “Monster, I will kill this man. His daughter and I will be king and queen – save our Graces! – and Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys” (Act III, Scene 2, 116-118).

Zimbardo treats the coup generated by Caliban as a parody of the other coup being promoted by Antonio. She posits that in both cases, characters that embody disorder (Antonio and Caliban) generate the plots, which serves to contrast Prospero, who represents order and goodness (55).

In the end, Prospero does not want to retain control over all the other characters. At the point where a more vengeful character might punish those who have wronged him, Prospero sets all his enemies free. This final stage of Prospero’s transformation involves a spiritual component, prisms of which are seen in three other characters of the play.

In the first Act, Prospero’s daughter, Miranda, sees Alonzo’s son, Ferdinand, wandering up from the shipwreck. She assumes he is a spirit. When Ferdinand sees her, he says “Most sure the goddess on whom these airs attend!” (Act I, Scene 2, 505-506). They learn that they are both human and they fall in love instantly. The purity of their mutual trust and instant surrender to each other portends a spiritual grace in the center of all the other action. Miranda, in utter lack of artifice, says to Ferdinand, “I am your wife if you’ll marry me. If not, I’ll die your maid. To be your fellow you may deny me, but I’ll be your servant whether you will or no.” Ferdinand replies “My mistress, dearest, and thus humble ever” and offers his hand in marriage (Act III, Scene 1, 100-107). Miranda and Ferdinand reflect what is best and yet to come in Prospero’s character.

Finally, more than anyone, it is Ariel who exemplifies and shines the way for Prospero’s complete transformation. On a practical level, Prospero has relied on the powers of Ariel to execute every stage of his methodical plan. More than that, though, Ariel is living Spirit, purity itself.

Ariel wants to be free, but is in bondage to Prospero. Still, he holds no grudge and gives wholeheartedly. His unsullied joy is evident throughout the execution of his tasks. He takes on frightening forms and orchestrates near-catastrophic events but no one is actually hurt by them. His greatest ambition is to live joyfully in harmony with nature. As he says when his freedom is near, “Where the bee sucks, there suck I. In a cowslip’s bell I lie. There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat’s back I do fly after summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now under the blossom that hangs on the bow” (Act V, Scene 1, 98-104).

Prospero loves his daughter, but his relationship with Ariel is perhaps the one where he, himself, is known most truly. As Ariel says to Prospero, “Thy thoughts I cleave to. What’s thy pleasure?” (Act IV, Scene 1, 183). This kind of attentiveness breeds intimacy and their intimacy is clear when Ariel asks Prospero “Do you love me, master? No?” and Prospero says “Dearly, my delicate Ariel” (Act IV, Scene 1, 52-53).

It is Ariel who guides Prospero toward a compassionate view of his enemies when he says, “…That if you now beheld them, your affections would become tender.” Prospero agrees, “Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury do I take part. The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance” (Act V, Scene 1, 23-36). After everything that Prospero went through in the twelve years leading up this point, he decides he will “break the spell” and let all his enemies go free.

Ariel’s selflessness most closely reflects and affects Prospero’s complete relinquishment of control over others. Prospero has been promising to release Ariel back to the elements. When he has sorted everything else out with all the other characters, including marrying his daughter to Ferdinand, he finally does release Ariel, in spite of their attachment to one another. Theirs is the last exchange before Prospero’s goodbye to the audience.

Prospero knows that by giving up his magic, he will be vulnerable, but he is willing to live with uncertainty. His daughter’s future is secure and he has reinstituted his honor. He will live free of magic tricks from here on out. As he says in the epilogue, “Now my charms are all o’erthrown, and what strength I have’s mine own” (Epilogue, 1-2).

In the end, we applaud a very unlikely Shakespearean hero. By subverting the efforts of the conspirators, and the fools, and by removing obstacles from the starry-eyed lovers, Shakespeare delegates them all as diffused subplots and makes Prospero emerge as the stoic figure that orchestrated it all (Cantor, 68).

As to the transformation of Prospero’s already tempered character, I submit that it is the example of Ariel’s joy and generosity, the love from Ariel, and the love for Ariel that purifies Prospero and propels him to the final elevation of enlightened sage. As Ariel asks in his last line before being released by Prospero, “Was’t well done?” Prospero’s answer is, “Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free” (Act V, Scene 1, 291-292)

Works Cited

Cantor, Paul A. “Shakespeare’s The Tempest: The Wise Man as Hero.” Shakespeare Quarterly 31.1 (1980): 64-75. JSTOR . Web. 12 Apr. 2015.

Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul Werstine. The Tempest . New York: Washington Square, 2004. Print.

“The Tempest By William Shakespeare About The Tempest.” About The Tempest . Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2014. Web. 26 Apr. 2015.

Zimbardo, Rose Abdelnour. “Form and Disorder in The Tempest.” Shakespeare Quarterly 14.1 (1963): 49-56. JSTOR . Web. 12 Apr. 2015.

Explore the theme of transformation in 'The Tempest '. Show with particular reference to Prospero, how the characters in the play undergo change.

Transformation in the Tempest

Explore the theme of transformation in ‘The Tempest ’. Show with particular reference to Prospero, how the characters in the play undergo change.

Transformation manifests itself in a number of ways throughout The Tempest, the play is based around revenge, mainly the revenge of Prospero, and so by the end of the play, with the use of his magic on the characters there is some sort of transformation or resolution in the characters. However, this simple transformation of character is not as simple as it appears and the conclusion of the essay sums up the difficulty of ‘closure’ in the play.

‘The Tempest’ revolves around the sayings and doings of one character. We first meet Prospero in Act 1, where he is established as the most prominent character in the play, with the most power. He uses this magical power, which he acquired from studying books, to manipulate the events that take place throughout the performance. For this reason, he has the ultimate control over all of the characters. At the start of the play Prospero is agitated, bitter and resentful, having been severely mislead by his brother, Antonio, and being exiled by the King of Naples. He has set up the situation we find the play in. We see several different sides to Prospero’s character for the duration of the play. Firstly, a loving father, a love for magic and a love for learning, and it was because of this love for both magic and learning that caused him to neglect his responsibilities as the Duke of Milan. This love soon transforms into a scrupulous master and we see how he controls his two slaves, Ariel and Caliban. In the instance of Caliban he asserts,

Prospero: For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps,

Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up…

(The Tempest, I.2.326-7, William Shakespeare)

Using blackmail and threats, he keeps his slaves on top of his requests, however he does love Ariel and is constantly praising her good work, by the end of the play the spirit is freed, whereas Caliban is regarded as a “Abhorred slave”. In the end Prospero does finally accept Caliban, and so modifies his attitude, yet he still regards him as being “as disproportioned in his manner as in his shape” (5.1.288-9). In the last part of the performance, Prospero has forgiven all his enemies and gives up his magic; showing that he has acknowledged that he was a catalyst for his usurpation. This transformation of his personality and long felt resentment of being usurped by Antonio and Alonso is, irrevocably, shown when he gives up the art that caused him to be overthrown as Duke of Milan.

One of the very few characters in the play that was not entirely transformed by the end of it was Caliban. The son of the dead witch, Sycorax, Caliban was left on the island for years without human contact, and in Act I, he declares his natural authority over it, “This Island’s mine by Sycorax my mother…” (1.2.332). When Prospero and Miranda arrived they taught him love and language. Prospero’s assuming power over Caliban was endorsed by Caliban’s portrayal of a savage seeking a new master. Before long, Caliban transformed into a dark and resentful devil worshipper:

Caliban: [ Aside ] I must obey; his art is of such power,

It would control my dam’s god Setebos… (1.2.373-4)

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A ‘wild’ and ‘uncivilised’ savage, he subsequently endeavoured to rape Miranda, after which he was condemned as Prospero’s slave. Since then, he has served Prospero out of fear and trepidation, constantly reliving the wrongs he has suffered, and so the reciprocal relationship between the two characters transformed, from being harmonious to contemptuous. We find that, when the dignitaries arrive on the island, and Caliban is given, “celestial liquor” (2.2.99) by Stephano, he immediately turns traitor on Prospero and plots to have him killed. In addition to that he promises to be the slave of both Trinculo and Stephano, which shows how little he has learnt from living with Prospero, and reiterates his representation of a savage in search of a new master. This repeat in the pattern of his behaviour shows how little he has been transformed. At the end of the play, he says that he has learnt his lesson, but whether this was to reduce the punishment he thought he would receive is questionable, here he states:

Caliban: And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass

Was I to take this drunkard for a god

And worship this dull fool!

Ariel, an airy spirit is native to the island and was condemned to timeless suffering by the evil witch Sycorax, trapped inside a pine tree, who had been the previous ruler of the island. Since Prospero’s arrival, she has worked as his slave, as he had rescued her from the tree. However, unlike Caliban, she has been cared for by Prospero and does his bidding unreservedly. She has a certain child-like facet that renders her willing to please and eager to remind her master of her devotion and dexterity, for this Prospero treats her with affection.

Ariel: Do you love me master? No?

Prospero: Dearly, my delicate Ariel. (4.1.48-9)

However she still yearns for freedom, which Prospero promises her if she completes the tasks he sets her this last time, and so she undergoes physical transformations throughout the play and at the end she is given the freedom she has desired. Ariel also plays a part in transforming Prospero, when at the beginning of Act V, she describes Prospero’s enemies to him and succeeds in making him sympathise with them, therefore causing him to forgive them later on.

Ariel: …if you now beheld them, your affections

Would become tender.

Prospero: Dost thou think so spirit? … And mine shall. (5.1.18-21)

The daughter of Prospero, Miranda is about fifteen at the time the play is set. Brought up by Prospero since she was three, he adores her and describes her as a “cherubin“ who provided him with the courage to tolerate all the destitution they suffered in Milan and at sea. The minimal transformation that she goes through, almost wholly concerns Ferdinand, the son of Alonso. Ferdinand’s arrival on the island effects Miranda in diverse ways. He is the first man, excluding her father and Caliban, which she has ever met; this has transformed her idea of men and has given her a vision that she now applies to all mankind. And so, her reaction is one of revelation and interest, yet she remains shy and reserved. When he first arrives he is forced to do manual work by Prospero as a punishment, yet there is a desired effect on Miranda and as she grows to love him, we see a change in the way they address one another. She shows a highly developed side of her personality that she has not demonstrated in the presence of her father, and her initial timid persona towards Ferdinand transforms, showing an ability of manipulation and an element of control over what she chooses to show those around her,

Miranda: …but by my modesty,

The jewel in my dower, I would not wish

Any companion in the world but you… (3.1.54-56)

In this example she pledges her virginity to Ferdinand, this is unexpected from her as she is so isolated from society, yet she understands the attitudes of the people that she has never been around. Ferdinand is warned by Prospero not to “break her virgin-knot” before the wedding or they will experience misfortunes beyond both of their control and they “shall hate it both”. Ferdinand heeds this warning and the sanctimonious marriage takes place. Their marriage is a transformation organised by Prospero before Ferdinand’s arrival on the island, it was a political move to secure Prospero’s place as the Duke of Milan and ensure Miranda’s future by making her Queen. However, Prospero never mentions the power that he and his daughter are regaining because of this “rich gift”, or the true price or purchase of his daughter’s hand, and the fact that the marriage is not consummated before the ceremony is equally important to him because it is his prime bargaining chip and will secure both of their positions in Italy. Ferdinand and Miranda’s love is the same sort of instant physical attraction that Romeo and Juliet had, although Romeo and Juliet’s love wasn’t influence by a mischievous spirit like Ariel and a powerful father like Prospero.

King Alonso of Naples begins his entrance as a man who wants control, “Where’s the master? Play the men.” (I.I.8-9). However, once he arrives on the island, with his companions, and he comes to a realisation that his son is dead, he becomes a withdrawn character who says little and wants to hear even less. He is one of Prospero’s enemies, having plotted with Antonio to usurp him from the dukedom of Milan. Once he is confronted with his crime, he immediately communicates his guilt and regret, knowing that he caused pain and sorrow, which he is now feeling for his son.

Alonso: Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat

Thy pardon me my wrongs. (5.1.118-9)

He accordingly reinstates Prospero as the rightful Duke and ultimately transforms himself by asking for their forgiveness, showing true penitence, which would never have come from him before this experience, and has cleansed him and brought about a new beginning, symbolised through the betrothal of Miranda and Ferdinand.

Antonio was willing to kill both his brother and his niece to gain the dukedom of Milan. Having usurped Prospero’s estate and wealth, we soon find that he is prepared to kill Alonso, who had helped him carry out this deed, and have his new accomplice, Sebastian, become king.

Antonio: My strong imagination sees a crown

Dropping upon thy head. (2.1.205)

He is relatively blunt about his lack of moral principles and ethics, when it occurs to Sebastian that Antonio had done a similar thing to his brother and his reply is truly frank and honest,

Antonio: And look how well his garments sit upon me,

Much feater than before. (2.1.269-70)

His lust for power makes him unable to identify with lesser beings, and he is always seeking new authority, at whatever cost. But whether his visions to kill Alonso, would have been carried out remains unclear, as it was Prospero who provided the correct circumstances for the suggestion and controlled the situation, despite the fact that he wasn’t there. Prospero may not have implanted the ideas there, however he organised that potentially fatal situation. Antonio experiences minimal transformations by the end of the play consisting of a loss of dukedom and a step down in status.

Antonio’s most recent conspirator is Sebastian. Along with the belief that Ferdinand is dead the two proceed to kill the King so as to instigate Sebastian’s promotion to King. Currently the prince, Sebastian’s desire to become king is easily brought about by a little persuasion by Antonio. Infact, if it was not for Prospero’s intervention through Ariel, to wake Gonzalo at the almost definitive moment of their plan, just before they kill the King, Alonso would have been murdered and the play turned into a tragedy. Neither Antonio nor Sebastian are satisfactory redeemed by the end of the play and Prospero’s forgiveness almost wavers as he come to address the two, and pronounces that he could, “justify them traitors” (5.1.128), but in a peculiar contradiction , he forgives “thy rankest fault” (5.1.133). Sebastian’s character also has an element of sarcasm, firstly, when himself and Antonio ridicule Gonzalo’s efforts to appease the king, and secondly he refers to Ferdinand’s survival as “a most high miracle” (5.1.177); which we know that he is considerably irritated by, as it obliterates his plans to become King and so not only is he not sorry for his wrongs but he is completely unchanged by them.

Stephano is Alonso’s butler, and Trinculo is his Jester, the two are put into the play for comic relief but also participate in transforming Caliban. Stephano arrives on the island on a barrel of wine and soon gets drunk. When he encounters Trinculo and Caliban he rapidly reproduces the same affect on them. He soon takes the role of the leader among the three of them and believes that he and Trinculo are the sole survivors of the tempest. Caliban informs him both of Prospero and Miranda. He agrees to kill Prospero and take Miranda as his wife. This plan is easily stopped by the sheer vainness that accompanies himself and Trinculo, who, incidentally distrusts Caliban but believes him to be a successful money making scheme, if taken to England and put on show. Prospero effortlessly delays them by exhibiting elegant clothes that they stop to sample. When Prospero assembles his enemies together, and comes to address Caliban and his newly found friends, he succeeds in ensuring their loss of dignity, and the dignitaries are appalled at the state at which their employees are found but they do agree to take Trinculo and Stephano back to Naples.

It is important to note how the characters react differently to the same situation. In Act III scene 3 before Antonio and Sebastian decide to make their murderous move on Alonso, later on in the evening, their conspiracy is interrupted by the appearance of a huge banquet (summoned by Prospero via Ariel). Ariel addresses Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian. Accusing them of being “three men of sin” (3.3.53) and persist to slander them and their actions against Prospero in Milan. They all react in different ways. Alonso and takes this as proof that his son, Ferdinand, is dead, and subsequently develops suicidal thoughts, stating,

Alonso: I’ll seek him deeper than e’er plummet sounded,

And with him their lie mudded. (3.3.101-2)

Sebastian contrasts this reaction by threatening to fight “their legions o’er.” (3.3.103) Here he demonstrate his bravery but also shows his inability to take criticism. Antonio follows his example, and exits with him, “I’ll be thy second” (3.3.104). Gonzalo as a spectator understands the guilt of all three and that the revelation by Ariel, will work on their minds throughout the play,

Gonzalo: All three of them are desperate. Their great guilt,

Like poison given to work a great time after,

Now ‘gins to bite their spirits. (3.3.105-7)

The scene is important in that Alonso recognises Ariel’s words as being that of Prospero; and the great guilt of Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian begins to take them over, at the thought of Prospero being alive and so nearby.

In conclusion, a major theme running throughout the entire work is forgiveness versus vengeance; Prospero causes the tempest out of a wish for revenge, but by the end of the work, he decides to forgive the crimes against him, fabricated or otherwise. Prospero declares his friends repentant, though they are not; Alonso expresses his regret, but Antonio, who has the most to be sorry for, expresses no remorse. The circle of forgiveness remains unresolved by the end of the play, but, in a moment of irony, Prospero believes that closure has been reached. Throughout the play, Prospero does direct a disproportionate amount of blame towards Alonso, leading him to abduct and enslave Alonso’s son Ferdinand; when confronting his friends Prospero’s actually call his Antonio “a furtherer in the act”, a great understatement of Antonio’s actual role as prime perpetrator of the crime against Prospero. Alonso expresses complete penitence, asking Prospero to “Pardon me my wrongs” (5.1.119), and he achieves some sort of reconciliation with Prospero, through his willingness to cooperate with Prospero’s wishes of reconciliation. Also ironic is that the only crime that Prospero charges Antonio with is conspiring to kill Alonso, which Prospero himself arranged through Ariel; although Prospero focused his great anger on Antonio almost exclusively in Act I, by the end of the play he has quite ironically forgotten his primary motivation in causing the tempest and brining the dignitaries and their companions to the island. In this sense, the transformation that the characters have undergone has not been that great.

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Explore the theme of transformation in 'The Tempest '. Show with particular reference to Prospero, how the characters in the play undergo change.

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Prospero’s Mirages of Power Struggle and Conscience in The Tempest Lauren Gifford

Of all William Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest emerges as one of the strongest testimonies to the morality of its characters as they respond to Prospero’s egocentric motives, which are resolved by breaking the vice of power for the sake of his goodness. Prospero’s moral boundaries are constantly tested as his conscience tempers his thirst for power from developing into villainy. Prospero attempts to elucidate his concerns as the overbearing, patriarchal archetype and father of Miranda, but does so at the expense of his own contentment. In Spiritual Values in Shakespeare, Ernest Marshall Howse argues, “One interesting modern study says that The Tempest is a religious drama of the type of early religious mystery plays from which the art of theater developed; and that, and such, it is an allegorical account of those inward experiences with which mystics have struggled from the darkness of sin and error into the light of wisdom and truth” (129).

It is apparent in the beginning of the play that Prospero wants to inspire wonder and awe in Miranda by disclosing a history of political errors in which his dukedom to Milan was stolen and usurped. Prospero sustains his relationship with his daughter by trusting her to understand the motives for his actions. As Murray M. Schwartz and Coppélia Kahn say in Representing Shakespeare, “Shakespeare shows us a pattern of doubt and reassurance, of a father’s obsessive need for attention and a daughter who fulfills it, and also of a man preparing to relinquish something precious by clutching it more passionately than ever” (p. 37). By illuminating Prospero’s nature to “rule” over Miranda as well as over Caliban and Ariel, Shakespeare places his power struggle as a paramount problem that surfaces in his reactions to these characters’ entreaties for freedom. His complex past with Sycorax, the mother of Caliban, seems to be an opposing relationship that has taught him to be skeptical about trusting others. Prospero prides himself on saving Caliban from the wickedness of Sycorax’s imprisoning, but regards the monster with contention.

Caliban’s sense of nativism to the island is inherent, and he is most affronted by Prospero’s sense of ownership and right to command him. Prospero threatens Caliban to do as he says, demanding Caliban’s obedience and reverence. As Caliban says, “I must obey/His art isof such power/It would control my dam’s god, Setebos/And make a vassal of him” (I.ii.375-76). Prospero’s knowledge of the gods coupled with his mastery of sorcery make him a formidable character, and makes Caliban initially submissive to Prospero’s demands. Prospero’s presence looms over the budding romantic relationship of Miranda and Ferdinand, and he proves to be a hostile, domineering paternal figure who interferes too much for his daughter’s sake. However, Miranda and Ferdinand’s romance is developed through Ferdinand’s perseverance and endurance of Prospero’s trials of true love in which he tests Ferdinand’s genuine intentions. In governing the actions and choices of Miranda, Prospero’s fault of desiring to “play God” dictates the psychological pattern of control he learns to manage by gradually letting go of Miranda as his daughter.

Ariel, the ethereal spirit who maintains Prospero’s conscience and saves him from the corrupting powers of magic, is a character who not only influences him with secret information, but also changes his perception on the significance of staying true to his word. As a victim of a personal injustice, perhaps Prospero’s hardened character remains rigid as an affirmation to not make other errors, but this injustice is what mobilizes him to make amends to Alonso and his court. This paradox is central to the plot of the play, and reveals Prospero’s determination to be dependent on virtue rather than the sorcery he has practiced. Harold C. Goddard states in The Meaning of Shakespeare, “And forthwith follows a wonder that genuinely deserves the name- the forgiveness and reconciliation that Prospero has just resolved on. Here is a divine right of kings to which even the strictest equalitarian could not object…Here is the counterpart and antithesis of Macbeth’s surrender to the Witches. As they tempted him to crime and death, so Ariel tempts Prospero to forgiveness and life” (p. 669). This divine intervention on Ariel’s part assuages Prospero’s inner conflict, and shows him how to reject the evil threatening to dictate his life. Ariel’s angelic direction shapes Prospero’s perception of his actions, and helps resolve hispeace with himself. Prospero’s morality rigidly defines how Miranda is socially and culturally oriented, and also implicates her to perform her role as a daughter who adheres directly to the rules of her father’s game. Prospero’s psychological development can be applied by using the abstract of conscience (defined through the id, ego, and superego), and by Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. These two theories serve as the composition of Prospero’s mentality witnessed through his efforts to control, and use his self-pride as a device that assures him of the righteousness of his intentions. How Prospero’s conscience surfaces after patterns of deviance against morality and social norms is the focus of the falling action of The Tempest. As Kenneth Gergen says, conflicts caused by the creation of the Super-Ego lead to the creation of a guilty conscience. The conscience develops into a powerful force, independent of reason and instinct. It leads to feelings of guilt based on perceived expectations of society (Gergen, 11). By definition, the ego is the developed part of the mind socializing the individual with society, precluding a repression of natural desires. Miranda’s absence of ego is most apparent in her unfamiliarity with society, portrayed by the fact that her love, Ferdinand, is the third man she has ever seen in her life. The super-ego controls the sentiments of disapproval society forms, restricting instincts from what is right behavior. Prospero’s shaping of Miranda’s super-ego typifies his maniacal drive to assert Miranda’s morality, and it is the motif of how The Tempest is dependent on Prospero’s reasons for interfering in his daughter’s life.

In contrast, Kohlberg postulates that the six stages of morality development individually provide a unique perspective in which reasoning is established according to the consequences of actions in society. These six stages closely model Prospero’s moral development as they unfold through his actions, illustrating how he abuses his power to affect and mold Miranda’s conscience, almost as if he was creating it himself like God. These six stages are: obedience and punishment orientation, self-interest orientation, interpersonal accord and conformity, authority and social-order maintaining orientation, social contract orientation, and the establishment of universal ethical principles (Gergen, 119). Correspondingly, each of these stages is echoed by Prospero, and demonstrates his conversion in character through the cognition of truth and falsity allowing him to see the consequences of his actions, and their effect on his soul. The first stage occurs through his demands of Miranda’s attention to his words, and the second through seeking his self-interested revenge on his brother Antonio. Thirdly, he establishes interpersonal rapport with Ferdinand after a series of interactions. Fourthly, he uses magic to embolden his power as an authoritarian figure of the island. In the fifth stage he makes peace with Alonso and forgiving his brother and the other lords for their faults against him. Finally, Prospero firmly concedes to the marriage of Miranda and Ferdinand by changing his relationship to all of the characters from hostile and revengeful to peaceful and celebratory.

Unlike Shakespeare’s Tragedies, The Tempest encompasses the complexity and strength of the human mind by using parallelism to portray the internal struggles of the psyche as it wins over adverse conditions. Prospero’s recognition of his daughter’s independence juxtaposed with his own choice to free himself from magic shows that the power of the human spirit has the ability to triumph over fate. Prospero’s moral development proves that humanity can transcend life’s unfortunate circumstances, and exemplifies how deeply reality is affected by the moral judgments of conscience.

Works Cited

Bevington, David. The Necessary Shakespeare. 3rd ed. University of Chicago, Chicago: Pearson Education, Inc., 2009

Gergen, Kenneth J. The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. Washinton, D.C.: Basic Books, 1991. Goddard, Harold C. The Meaning of Shakespeare. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951.

Howse, Ernest Marshall. Spiritual Values in Shakespeare. New York: Abingdon Press, 1955.

Schwartz, Murray M, and Coppèlia Kahn. Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

The Tempest Themes

Theme is a pervasive idea, belief, or point of view presented in a literary work. Themes in The Tempest, a masterpiece of William Shakespeare , present the issue of freedom and confinement, including themes of betrayal, compassion, and love. Some of the major themes in The Tempest have been analyzed below.

Themes in The Tempest

The Illusion of Justice

Prospero is expelled from his own dukedom when his elder brother rises against him and usurps his powers. The rest of the play is about Prospero plotting on taking the powers back from Alonso. This shows that justice is done if Prospero gets back his throne. However, he keeps Caliban and Ariel his slaves and does not release Ariel despite promises. Prospero uses exploitation and manipulates the situations in his favor, which is contrary to his idea of justice. He uses Ariel against his enemies, as well. When he becomes a merciful monarch, he releases slaves, forgives his enemies, and even abandons using magic. It shows that justice means the happy ending that Prospero establishes by the end of the play.

Superiority of Human Beings

The play revolves around the happy ending and shows the superiority of human beings in a bleak way. When Prospero and his daughter Miranda are stranded on the island, they live there for almost twelve years. Yet, they know how to exploit other humans and creatures for their ends. Ariel is at the beck and call of Prospero, while Miranda deals with Caliban, who tries to attack her. Though Ariel remains faithful, Prospero does not trust him. He believes that he should keep him until they have the means to escape or leave the island.

Allurement of Rule

Human nature loves the romance of allurement in the shape of barren land for adventure as well as an island for the allurement of infinite power . Prospero finds it very easy to rule the island when he has magical powers. Prospero has infinite possibilities of ruling the island all by himself without having resisting subjects . He successfully educates Miranda, his daughter, and exploits Ariel. Caliban protests against Prospero, but this allurement of the rule does not happen. Gonzalo also imagines setting up a utopia over the island for his own rule. Caliban’s proposals lights imaginations of Stephano to set up his own government, having full power too. Even his wishful thinking of marrying Miranda brings laughter when he states Trinculo as his future viceroy, along with Caliban.

Power and Exploitation

In the first instance, Antonio exploits power given by Prospero. When Prospero delegates him Milan to him, he uses it to expel the same person from the dukedom. Prospero goes into exile to save his life. When Prospero learns about Ariel, a sprite, he starts exerting his own power on him. This unique magical power gives him opportunities to take revenge from his enemies. This is another show of power and exploitation. With Ariel, Prospero, also becomes the master of Caliban, the son of a witch, having subhuman nature. Prospero continues exploiting both of these spirits with his magical powers until he changes his heart and learns to forgive his enemies.

Prospero uses magic to keep himself and Miranda safe using magic. He also controls sprites like Ariel and half-witch, Caliban. The incident of tempest and ship tossed during the storm shows is also magic. In the end, he leaves magic as he learns to forgive and sets Ariel free.

Revenge and Forgiveness

At first, Prospero is shown ruling an island, keeping Ariel and Caliban as a slave. He learns magic from books to exact revenge on his enemies. He is determined to seek justice by taking the rightful place of the duke from which he was overthrown by his brother. This revenge takes him too far as he exploits sprite, Ariel, and witch’s son, Caliban. Prospero succeeds in exacting revenge, and he finally forgives his brother. Similarly, when Caliban, too, follows the same path for wrongs and maltreatment by swearing allegiance to Stephano as his new master. Although Prospero shows him the way by the end. Almost all the characters either have conscience or remorse.

Power of Language

Most characters in the play use the power of language to seize power, confuse, confound, convince or manipulate. Prospero stands tall among other characters as he uses superior language. He is good at speaking because he reads books. Through his wit and words, he uses Ariel for his ulterior motives. This even becomes prominent in the case of Caliban, who has not only learned the language but also tries to use it against the mentor Prospero. He clearly curses Miranda telling her that he understands; her father as well as the daughter. When Prospero and Caliban battles for power using language, their speech becomes rhythmic. Caliban tells Prospero that all others hate him for his power of language.

Colonization

When Prospero and his daughter Miranda lands on the island after they are exiled, Caliban and Ariel are the real inhabitants. However, Prospero uses his power and knowledge to display his superiority on the original inhabitants. Due to this colonization, Ariel laments losing his freedom, and Caliban curses that he has learned language from Prospero. They consider Prospero and his daughter as settlers who have colonized their land. Prospero does not see Caliban fit to rule his island. Caliban also conspires to throw him out of his land to end his rule.

The Supernatural

The existence, power, and use of supernatural powers and supernatural entities are seen in the play. The first sign of the power of the supernatural emerges when Prospero is exiled to the island, and he finds magic. He uses magic to enslaves a sprite, Ariel, and then the son of a witch, Caliban. Ariel’s presence is entirely supernatural. First, when he brings tempest in the sea, and second is when he causes Ferdinand to fall in love with Miranda at the request of Prospero.

Slavery is shown in two ways in the play. At first, Ariel is shown working as a slave under Prospero. He is promised freedom once Prospero achieves justice. He bears through the discomfort and helps Prospero to cause havoc on his enemies. Caliban is also a slave doing other chores for him and Miranda.

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Margaret Atwood

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Like the play on which it’s based, Shakespeare’s The Tempest , Hag-Seed is a novel full of transformations, in which characters constantly change roles, ascend to power, or fall into disgrace. The novel’s protagonist, Felix , initially sees such transformations as inherently false and unjust; he devotes most of the novel to returning himself and his adversary, Tony , to their original states. However, as his revenge plot progresses it becomes evident that rather than betraying the natural order of things, transformations can also help characters improve their lives, and Felix’s habit of clinging to a static notion of his own place in the world proves unhealthy and unrealistic. Ultimately, the novel affirms the positive role of change and transformation in bringing out the best parts of human nature and facilitating personal growth.

Felix spends most of the novel trying to reverse the major transformation that occurs at the outset: Tony’s rise to prominence within the theater festival, and his own fall into disgrace. He sees his nemesis’s ability to change both their positions so abruptly as evidence of his “devious” and immoral nature. Moreover, he sees himself, by virtue of his talent and creativity, as inherently entitled to his fame and cushy job; any deviation from his privileged status is a violation of his core being. Indeed, Tony’s rise to political power after usurping Felix emerges as a series of hoaxes and bribes. He becomes a state minister with demonstrably bad morals and no clear qualifications. Tony’s trajectory characterizes the idea of personal transformation as inherently false and insidious. At the same time, it’s interesting that Felix feels this way, given that he’s a director who excels at creating his fantastical effects onstage, transforming his actors from ordinary people into exotic and powerful characters. At the beginning of the novel, it’s clear that he doesn’t see transformations onstage as having any relation to ones that occur in real life.

As Felix begins to stage Shakespeare productions at the Fletcher Correctional Center , he experiences and observes transformations that are natural and good—particularly in the extent to which they meld theater and real life. No one thinks that the prisoners will take to Shakespeare, but the program proves hugely successful. Transforming into characters like those in Macbeth and Julius Caesar isn’t a betrayal of the prisoners’ natures; rather, it brings out their latent creativity and confidence and helps them address the violence and crime that has shaped their lives and led to their incarceration. In this sense, transformation affirms their good qualities and helps them work through their mistakes.

Similarly, Felix thinks of his persona as a teacher as inherently a pose; when he dresses in his stereotypically academic clothes, he imagines himself donning the costume of a “genial but authoritative retired teacher and theatre wonk.” However, by the end of the novel he becomes this person he’s pretending to be, and this transformation is a marked improvement on the self-centered and duplicitous nature with which he began the novel. Even some of the artificial transformations that occur within Felix’s staging of The Tempest lead to beneficial changes in real life—Felix throws Frederick and Anne-Marie together in an extremely contrived set-up, but he sparks a sincere and positive romance that rescues both young people from loneliness.

In many cases, it’s actually by avoiding change and clinging to stability that characters bring falsity into their lives. Felix frequently hallucinates that his dead daughter Miranda exists and keeps him company. Her ghostly presence allows him to ignore the terrible change that her death wrought in his life. However, as the years pass, he feels that Miranda’s spirit is becoming unhappy and restless in the circumscribed, static life she shares with him. At the end of the novel, he realizes that by conjuring up Miranda’s little-girl persona he’s not preserving her spirit but “keeping her tethered to him.” When he gives up her hallucination, he feels that she’s “fading” and “losing substance.” While this isn’t a pleasant transformation, it’s presented as important and unavoidable, both for Miranda’s tranquility and Felix’s mental health.

On another note, it’s also interesting that when Tony and Sal visit the prison to see the production of The Tempest , they see the prisoners as having falsely transformed themselves by becoming actors. Atwood presents their views as punitive and ungenerous—just because of the prisoners’ criminal past, the politicians see them as unworthy of intellectual growth and a new life. However, their beliefs are very similar to the ones with which Felix begins the novel. This juxtaposition shows how much Felix’s own views have transformed over time.

While not every transformation in the novel is positive, they always help people develop; rather than betraying their essential character, they reveal it. Ultimately, the novel embraces transformations, using them to promote an essentially fluid version of human nature, which is defined by the changes it undergoes rather than the extent to which it stays the same.

Transformation and Change ThemeTracker

Transformation and Change Quotes in Hag-Seed

What to do with such a sorrow? It was like an enormous black cloud boiling up over the horizon…He had to transform it, or at the very least enclose it.

Miranda would become the daughter who had not been lost; who’d been a protecting cherub, cheering her exiled father…What he couldn’t have in life he might still catch sight of through his art: just a glimpse, from the corner of his eye.

Watching the many faces watching their own faces as they pretended to be someone else—Felix found that strangely moving. For once in their lives, they loved themselves.

It’s necessary to look like the version of himself that’s become familiar up at Fletcher: the genial but authoritative retired teacher and theater wonk, a little eccentric and naïve but an okay guy who’s generously donating his time because he believes in the possibility of betterment.

If she’d lived, she would have been at the awkward teenager stage: making dismissive comments, rolling her eyes at him, dying her hair, tattooing her arms…

But none of this has happened. She remains simple, she remains innocent. She’s such a comfort.

His magic garment is hanging in there too, shoved to the back. The cloak of his defeat, dead husk of his drowned self.

No, not dead, but changed. In the gloom, in the gloaming, it’s been transforming itself, slowly coming alive.

…the island is a theater. Prospero is a director. He’s putting on a play within which there’s another play. If his magic holds and his play is successful, he’ll get his heart’s desire. But if he fails…

Idiot, he tells himself. How long will you keep yourself on this intravenous drip? Just enough illusion to keep you alive. Pull the plug, why don’t you? Give up your tinsel stickers, your paper cutouts, your colored crayons. Face the plain, unvarnished grime of real life.

Prisons are for incarceration and punishment, not for spurious attempts to educate those who cannot, by their very natures, be educated. What’s the quote? Nature versus nurture, something like that. Is it from a play?

Imprisonment and Marginalization Theme Icon

“That’s not bad,” says Anne-Marie. “Maybe with more feeling. Pretend you’re falling in love with me.”

“But,” says Freddie. “Maybe I am falling in love with you. O you wonder!”

“We could put them on show,” says TimEEz. “Gibbering lunatics. Street people. Addicts. Dregs of society. Always good for a laugh.”

You called me dirty, you called me a scum, You called me a criminal, a no-good bum, But you’re a white-collar crook, you been cookin’ the books, Rakin’ taxpayer money, we know what you took, So who’s more monstrous…than you?

…it’s Ariel who changes Prospero’s mind, from revenge to forgiveness, because despite the crap they did, he feels sorry for the bad guys and what they’re being put through…so we take it that’s okay—to change our own minds.

But at least he’s given them a start. His life has had this one good result, however ephemeral that result may prove to be.

But everything is ephemeral, he reminds himself. All gorgeous palaces, all cloud-capped towers. Who should know that better than he?

…That was his idea, if not of hell exactly, then at least of limbo. A state of suspension, somewhere on the road to death. But on second thought, what did he have to lose? The Road to death is after all the road he’s on, so why not eat well during the journey?

What has he been thinking—keeping her tethered to him all this time? Forcing her to do his bidding? How selfish he has been! Yes, he loves her: his dear one, his only child. But he knows what she truly wants, and what he owes her.

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The Tempest Adaptations and Transformations

Julie Taymor’s film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ contains many alterations from the play. These differences include how Taymor’s decision to change Prospero’s gender affects the actions and reactions of other characters. Filmic advantages are used successfully to enhance how the audience perceives the gender change of the protagonist, as well as how the behaviour of the minor characters are altered because if it. The relationship between the characters is heightened by makeup, camera angles, casting, costuming and the performances of the actors themselves. Taymor uses these visual echniques of film to her advantage, even adding in an extra scene at the end of the film. The transformation of Prospero into Prospera affects the way the reader views the judgement, treatment and release of Caliban. The parent-child relationship is also altered by the gender change, as is the protagonist’s interaction of Ariel. Taymor uses the sex transformation, the difference in gender stereotypes and the relationships which ensue, to make the filmic version of ‘The Tempest,’ vastly different from the play. William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ explores the relationships and the effect of one person aving power over another. From the beginning of the play, the reader is shown an unstable and complicated relationship existing between Prospero and Caliban. The reader gets a glimpse of their bond. ‘I must eat my dinner. This island’s mine by Sycorax my mother, with thou tak’st from me... thou strok’st me... then I lov’d thee, and show’d thee all the qualities o’th’ isle... Cursed be that I did so! ’ The interaction shows the reader that the relationship between Prospero and Caliban was initially amiable, but turned malicious with the intended rape of Miranda. Julie Taymor’s film daptation shows Helen Mirren’s performance as the character of Prospera to be no less of a dominating figure than her male counterpart, Prospero, in the play. Because of this character strength, the film progresses similarly to the play via its dialogue. Nevertheless, the audience does discover changes in the dynamics of the Prospera-Caliban relationship. Prospera is less physically intimidating, which enables the audience to view Caliban as an almost dominant figure. The gender change also makes Prospera a weaker protagonist due to the power and volume of her voice. I’ll rack thee with old cramps, fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar, that beats shall tremble at thy din. ’ Helen Mirren’s threats are less intimidating than Prospero’s and comes across debilitated; therefore the viewer is less likely to take her blackmail seriously. Even though Prospera is a lesser figure physically, the audience is shown how she uses other techniques to maintain dominance in her confrontation with Caliban. In the first encounter with Caliban in both the play and the film, the audience is presented with a malcontent slave, unwilling to come forward and speak to Prospero/Prospera and Miranda. There’s wood enough within. ’ When, however, Caliban does come forward, he tries to gain a physical advantage by standing on a large rock. The camera angle shows the backdrop of the sky, clearly demonstrating his attempted superiority. The appearance of Caliban poses a threat to Prospera, yet psychologically he is easy to conquer even without the advantage of magic. ‘I must obey. [his/her] art is of such power, it would control [me]’. Prospera and Caliban’s actions show the audience how Prospera uses her words and magic rather that physical dominance to subdue Caliban’s attempted overthrow of power.

It is clear to the audience that the protagonist has subdued Caliban previously using such means, as he can be overpowered easily. Taymor’s ‘The Tempest’ clearly demonstrates the capability of Prospera to stand up for herself despite her physical disadvantage. The character transformation from Prospero to Prospera changes the dynamics of the relationship between the protagonist and Caliban. Prospero uses physical dominance and voice to subdue Caliban but Prospera, however, needs to threaten Caliban with her powers to subdue him for she has no physical presence. The different performances f the protagonists in relation to Caliban, makes the two mediums of ‘The Tempest’ vastly different. The relationship between Prospera and Miranda is also changed through the gender adjustment of the protagonist. At the beginning of the play, the audience glimpses a tender scene between Prospero and Miranda: ‘O, cherubin... thou did smile, infused with a fortitude from heaven. ’ The audience views the relationship between parent and daughter, as one of superiority, ‘thou art inclin’d to sleep. ‘Tis a good dullness... give it way,’ and sub ordinance, ‘your tale sir... would cure deafness. ’ The dialogue in both mediums emphasizes the arent-child connection and influence between the protagonist and Miranda. In the film, Julie Taymor places Prospera atop a cliff, using a long shot to confirm the appearance of power. The audience immediately sees Prospera as powerful due to her dark, masculine clothes and short hair. When Prospera’s face is revealed, the audience gets a glimpse of her in extreme determination, conjuring up the huge storm whilst her daughter begs at her feet. Taymor demonstrates the power differential through camera angles and positioning Prospera and Miranda at different heights; Prospera is looking down at Miranda who kneels below her.

Taymor’s costuming also plays a major role in the audience’s realisation of the difference in status between the two women. Prospera is dressed in heavy, dark clothing whilst Miranda stands beneath, dressed in a white sheet. The symbolism that occurs in this scene tells the audience that not only is Miranda psychologically weaker than her mother; she is also considered naive and pure due to her light, sheer clothing. Taymor must use this extra scene to establish Prospera’s superiority. The audience’s instruction in the hierarchy of the island is not necessary in the play because the audience views Prospero with reverence due to his asculinity. Taymor constantly creates differences between the protagonists of film and play. Prospera makes an effort to demonstrate her love for Miranda, by constantly attempting to make physical connections between them. The readers do not receive this visual intimacy in the play. Prospera’s face comes close to Miranda’s and she is always directing her daughter with an arm around her shoulders. The gender change from Prospero to Prospera creates a unique bond that cannot be achieved with Prospero as the protagonist. The difference between Prospero and Prospera’s parenting is that in the play, Shakespeare encourages the eader to view Miranda as a weak character, ‘Oh my heart bleeds... please... father’ who will grow up to be subordinate compared to her dominant father. In the film, however, the audience see Miranda as following her mother’s powerful existence, therefore being a stronger person in the film rather than in the play. Julie Taymor’s ‘The Tempest’ explores the way in which the diversification from Prospero to Prospera influences the audience’s viewpoint of characters close to them. In the film of ‘The Tempest’, Prospera achieves a deep and peculiar connection to her daughter that is contrasting the reader’s interpretation of the ather-daughter connection that exists in the play. Furthermore, the gender transformation that Taymor explores, affects the treatment and judgement of not only Miranda and Caliban, but the spirit Ariel, too. The audience’s first encounter with Ariel in the film and the play begins with complete submission and admiration on Ariel’s behalf, with Prospero/Prospera being completely dominant. ‘All hail, great master, grave sir, hail! I come to answer thy best pleasure... to every article. ’ The relationship between the protagonist and spirit is initially amiable, ‘that’s my... brave spirit... Ariel, thy charge xactly as perform’d. ’ The audience, however, soon discovers underlying bitterness and vexation existing in their unusual relationship. Ariel wants to be freed from his enslavement to the protagonist, ‘is there more toil? ’ but is easily overpowered in the play, as Caliban was, with Prospero’s booming voice and physical dominance sending him into submission once more. ‘Does thou forget from what torment I did free thee... Malignant thing! ’ The domination shown by Prospero in the play is not quite parallel with the weaker performance of Prospera. Helen Mirren’s voice in the film is less intimidating, as is her appearance.

This makes Ariel gain a physical advantage and able to stand up for himself. Prospera’s interaction with Ariel also differs from her male counterpart because when Ariel is discharged, ‘I shall miss thee, but yet thou shalt have freedom,’ he becomes extremely close to Prospera and affectionately strokes her shoulder. The audience sees that, because she is a woman, he does not respect Prospera as much as he did Prospero, for he feels comfortable enough to touch her. The physical contact present between them shows the audience that Prospera is a weaker protagonist than Prospero, allowing herself to be controlled in this way.

The reason for Prospera’s weakness is due to Taymor’s direction; she creates a character that is weak and is able to be overpowered, which clashes with Prospera’s previous affirmation of dominance and confuses the audience. The difference between Prospero and Prospera in relation to Ariel shows the weaker stereotype of women against men, which, in this scene, eventuates to be correct. Juxtaposing the film and the play, Taymor does not succeed with her choice to change Prospera’s gender. Taymor’s version of ‘The Tempest,’ introduces the audience to an additional scene in the film, in which Prospera frees Caliban.

In the play, Prospero dismisses the group of Trinculo, Stephano and Caliban by saying, ‘Go to, away. ’ His female counterpart’s concluding statement is one of deep ambiguity; ‘this thing of darkness, I must acknowledge mine,’ only Caliban is present to hear this apology. After Prospera’s concluding statement, she and Caliban share a stare that lasts for fifteen seconds, where she inaudibly apologises and allows him to leave. He then walks up the stairs and opens the door at the top, whilst not looking back. The symbolism of this allows the audience to judge for the last time whether Caliban’s enslavement was justified.

Prospera stares remorsefully while Caliban exits swiftly into the open air of his island. The camera angle, shown through Prospera’s person; promotes the understanding that Caliban is now dominant, as Prospera is looking up at him. As he exits, the audience is only shown himself walking through the doorway into the clear blue sky, signifying his reclaimed freedom. Taymor encourages the observer’s final judgement of the relationship between Prospera and Caliban to be one of sympathy to the lesser. The audience considers Prospera’s apology and recognises that she is, deep down, apologetic for her actions and willing to make amends.

The audience finally realises her sincerity as she tosses her staff into the water. The audience watches as the staff shatters and notices the beautiful music that is played when it has broken, symbolising peace due to its destruction. The audience respects Prospera for her sacrifice but recognises the power that still remains with her. Once again she stands atop a cliff in a longshot. This camera angle with the addition her severe clothing emphasizes her remaining power and how it has transformed from magic back into her dukedom. Taymor adds this additional scene to give a conclusion to the film, ompared to the obscure ending of the play. The ending to the film is successful because it creates closure to ‘The Tempest’ and makes the audience understand the reality of human nature. William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ varies significantly from the film version due to the success of using filmic advantages such as expressions, clothing and camera angles. The gender change of the protagonist causes the audience to view other characters differently as a result. Prospera is viewed throughout the film as a powerful character who establishes her dominance through magic unlike Prospero, who is physically dominant.

The other difference between the film and the play is that Prospera, being a woman, is more forgiving and able to be controlled. She also interacts with her daughter and is a role model to her in a different way than Prospero. Taymor uses filmic techniques successfully to portray her characters in different ways and to summarise the open ending of the play. The audience is intrigued by the most noticeable change between the two; the gender swap of the protagonists and this cast alteration is primarily what makes Julie Taymor’s 2010 film adaption of the play so interesting.

Author: Angel Bell

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Hsc module a: 20/20 essay notes for the tempest and hagseed.

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margaret atwood
textual conversations
the tempest
william shakespeare

What is a textual conversation?

To truly understand what we are supposed to be looking out for in our critical evaluation of Hag-Seed and The Tempest , we refer to the rubric for Module A: Textual Conversations.

The rubric dictates that students are to explore how the “comparative study of texts can reveal resonances and dissonances between and within texts” and consider how the reimagining or reframing of certain facets of a text “ mirror[s], align[s] or collide[s] ” with the other text. Put simply, students are to consider the similarities and differences between the representation of “ values, assumptions or perspectives ” in the two texts to then impute a reasoning to why these aspects of the texts may mirror, align or collide with one another based on context, authorial perspective, audience and more.

The textual conversations between Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest , and Margaret Atwood’s modern appropriation of the tragicomedy , Hag-Seed , is a complex one. To really comprehend this conversation we must consider how each text is influenced by the other, but is also a product of the composer’s context, values and perspective, ultimately shaping overall meaning.

How does context influence this textual conversation?

Context informs composers’ perspectives and so, shapes their purpose and meaning. As such, it is important to keep these social influences in the back of your mind as you navigate the textual conversations.

Some of Shakespeare’s contextual influences include:

Renaissance Humanism vs Christian Providentialism

The growing prevalence of Renaissance Humanist ideals during Shakespeare’s composition of The Tempest espoused the outlook that individuals were capable of acting autonomously and were not following a predetermined path dictated by religious providence. This further fostered a climate of individuals seeking power, knowledge and new adventures. Shakespeare’s presents the nuances within these humanist ideologies through his portrayal of Prospero whose quest for knowledge and agency in creating his own destiny leads to his ethical and moral turpitude as explored further below.

The Age of Discovery

The Tempest was written during a period when many great expeditions were undertaken by Europeans to colonise new lands. In that same period, Montaigne’s Of the Caniballes gained wide recognition following John Florio’s translation of it into English in 1603. The essay introduced the idea of cultural relativism: the concept that human behaviour is a product of culture and as such cannot be judged by those without this cultural context.

These endeavours to colonise the non-European world included the institution of European governance systems in conquered territories and often resulted in the unjust subjugation of native peoples to allow for the exploitation of their land. This is manifested in Shakespeare’s portrayal of how Prospero deems himself of greater civility and intelligence than the island native Caliban. He then enslaves and exploits the spirit as a means to his own selfish ends, serving as an allegorical parable for the intricacies in the implications of European Colonisation at the time.

The Great Chain of Being and the Divine Rights of Kings

The Great Chain of Beings was the Elizabethan belief that there was distinct hierarchy from everything within the universe as dictates by God, and that monarchs were in power by divine mandate itself, and thus had the divine right to only be answerable to God. In alignment with this ideology, Shakespeare’s entire work is a quest to restore this hierarchical structure that was displaced by Antonio’s greed for power and Prospero’s own neglect for his duties as a ruler due to his preoccupation with his studies. As Prospero questions the failure of the Great Chain, he realises that to truly restore order they must all engage in introspection, repentance and forgiveness, in a true display of compassion.

Some of Atwood’s contextual influences include:

High Incarceration Rates

At the time Atwood was composing her work, incarceration in the United States was the highest it had ever been since the early twentieth century. Furthermore, there was a stark disparity in the demographics of these incarcerated peoples where ethnic people of colour were disproportionately represented. Influenced by both the overwhelming incarceration in America, and Canada’s adoption of the Nova Scotia Restorative Justice System that challenged traditional adversarial justice, Atwood explores intricacies the inmates’ experiences as an alienated and marginalised collective.

Shifting Social Paradigms

Atwood reflects the growing empowerment of females in modern society through her distinctly different representation of women in Hag-Seed . While in The Tempest , Miranda was characterised to be of innocent purity and passivity, Felix’s daughter is more empowered in her role as the catalyst of his ethical transformation.

Concepts and Themes in the Textual Conversation

Pursuit of Revenge

Both texts ultimately expose the futility of revenge to provide emotional fulfilment and its incapacity to serve as a solution to resolve suffering and loss. Felix and Prospero are both motivated by revenge and as a result, neglect their moral obligations. Prospero is blinded by his desire to restore his position as prescribed by God’s Great Chain of Beings, but in exacting his revenge he is deceitful and cunning, in neglect of the Christian ideals of compassion and mercy. Similarly, Felix too falls prey to the corruption caused by his desire for vengeance against Sal and Tony.

Sample Topic Sentence: In The Tempest , Shakespeare exposes how the sophisticated nexus between hubris and the inherent human desire for power and revenge leads to ethical turpitude and ultimately impedes individuals from achieving personal fulfilment.

Imprisonment

As Felix famously sums up that The Tempest is “ a play about prisons ”, the recurring motif of prisons is evident throughout both texts to the extent that Hag-Seed is quite literally set in a penitentiary centre.

The most salient interpretation of these prisons is both protagonists’ confinement within their obsessive pursuit for revenge. It is only when he forgives his enemies that Prospero is truly set free. We also see that individuals such as Caliban in The Tempest and the prisoners in Hag-Seed are imprisoned within society’s perception of them.

Ultimately, both composers advocate for empathy, compassion and forgiveness for individuals to break free of these internal shackles as further discussed below.

Compassion and Forgiveness for Reconciliation

Shakespeare presents the perils of an obsessive thirst for vengeance only to provide a solution for it through compassion and forgiveness. The Jacobean-Christian principle of unconditional forgiveness and divine absolution of sin underpin Shakespeare’s portrayal of how Prospero’s forgiveness and renunciation of magic and his past grievances in “ this rough magic, I here abjure ”, are the key to his reconciliation. Through returning to the Christian ideals of compassion and forgiveness, Prospero manages to restore order.

While Atwood’s appropriation still asserts the enduring relevance of self-reflection and compassion for personal development, her postmodern secular context challenges Shakespeare’s representation of unconditional Christian clemency through the relative lack of reconciliation between Felix and his adversaries. Despite this distinction, Atwood does, in agreeance with The Tempest , propose the futility of seeking revenge through Felix’s confession after he exact his revenge through the hypophora “ Why does it feel like a letdown? ”.

Both texts didactically warn against the pursuit of vengeance yet explore reconciliation in distinct ways, reflective of their contextual influences.

Good vs Evil and the Alienation of the ‘Other’

Shakespeare represents the conflict between Renaissance Humanism and the predeterminism of Christian Providence through his portrayal of Prospero’s moral ambiguity. Prospero’s kindness towards Miranda and his altruistic reconciliation at the end of the play starkly contrast his cruel subjugation of Caliban and Ariel, and his shipwrecking of his enemies.

Alternatively, Shakespeare also explores the Christian Providence through his relatively one-sided judgement of Caliban to be the ‘evil spirit’ and Ariel as the ‘good spirit’. He presents how Prospero deems that Caliban, as Sycorax’s offspring, must be evil without hope for redemption. Ultimately Caliban is the alienated ‘other’ and his anger at his mistreatment drives his behaviour which ultimately, fulfils Prospero’s judgement of Caliban’s evil tendencies.

In contemporary society, this overly reductionist judgement of good and evil characters leads to incarcerated individuals struggling to reintegrate into society and being marginalised both within the system and after they complete their sentences. Reflective of this, Atwood presents the ethical depravity of individuals in power, such as Sal, and presents a more human side of the prisoners to challenge audiences’ assumptions about the personal characters of incarcerated individuals.

So, both composers blur the distinction between wholly altruistic or wholly corrupt motivations to challenge audiences’ assumptions about the prevalent perceptions of good and evil in their respective contexts.

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Transformation: The Tempest and Don Quixote

Transformation: The Tempest and Don Quixote - Essay Example

Subject: Literature
Type: Essay
Level: College
Pages: 2 (500 words)
Downloads: 7
Author: emmett34

Extract of sample "Transformation: The Tempest and Don Quixote"

Transformation: The Tempest and Don Quixote In the story of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it started with a storm that tossed the boat which aboard the King of Naples, Alonso, his son Ferdinand, his brother Sebastian and a usurping Duke of Milan named Antonio. Together with the team are Adrian, Trinculo, Francisco and Stefano. A girl named Miranda was watching the ship at sea fighting the storm. With her was her father named Prospero. Magical Prospero actually sent his servant spirit, Ariel, to create the storm.

He explained to his daughter how they came to live on the island and why he ordered such task to Ariel. They were once part of Milan’s nobility. Prospero was a Duke and they once lived a life of extravagance and comfort. But his own brother, Antonio, removed his power and put him and Miranda in a boat and abandoned them at the sea. Because of this, Prospero asked Ariel to destroy the ship and dispersed the passengers across the island. He ordered Ariel to be invisible and spy on the passengers promising him to be freed soon.

In the story, there was a transformation of the character of Prospero. It can be observed that Shakespeare based the story on revenge. Prospero acted with revenge in the story. Because of the magic used by Prospero, the king and his comrades have gone mad in the story. Ariel pleaded for the sake of the passengers. In the end, Prospero was moved by Ariel’s plea and requests and showed them the mercy which they did not even give to him and his daughter years ago. He promised to renounce magic after he reinstates the sanity of his enemies.

Prospero also freed Ariel from his entire obligation. The king admitted and realized his mistakes and thereafter restored Prospero as Duke of Milan. Antonio was forgiven by Prospero but did not reunite with him. There was a good transformation in the characters of the story. Prospero let go of his revenge and forgave those who hurt and harmed him and his daughter. King Alonso also transformed and saw the wisdom and repented on his mistakes. He restored Prospero as the Duke. Prospero in return, promised to renounce his magic which symbolizes power.

Another story also showed transformation of characters in a different way. In Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, a noble gentleman named Quixada lived between Aragon and Castile. This dignified fellow went crazy over books about Knights. He spent everything in buying these books and filled his thinking with the enchantments, battles, challenges, giants, castles, captured princesses, rescues and impossible deeds. He decided to turn himself into a knight wanting to redress the wrongs and rescue captured maidens.

He decided to change his name to Don Quixote de la Mancha. But he was living in a fantasy. He went on an adventure with a deluded character. Because of reading too much tales about the knights, he ended up with a disintegrated reason, living his life as a knight in a tale. He had a lot of adventures involving him with lot of scratches, cracked bones and missing teeth. But this story showed us the fantasy with reality. The character of Don Quixote showed us how wrong and mad he is. But regardless of the pain in pursuit of that wrong, he continued to believe he is right.

In this story, we can observe the transformation of a very dignified gentleman. His pursuit and obsession of books showed how smart his character is. But in the end, he ended up being a fool who lived in a fantasy of being a knight. The two stories described two different kinds of transformation. The story of The Tempest by Shakespeare demonstrated the positive transformation. He illustrated the change of the character with revenge to someone who had forgiven his enemies in the end. On the other hand, Don Quixote displayed the negative transformation of a character.

From a very noble man Quixada, he transformed to a mad and foolish character of Don Quixote who lived in fantasy.

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The Tempest: A+ Student Essay
On Shakespeare's troubled island, the wish to murder and steal is all too human. By setting up a false contrast between Caliban and the human characters, Shakespeare makes The Tempest ' s pessimism all the more devastating. At first, we are led to believe that there is nothing human about Caliban: the facts of his breeding, behavior, and ...
A Modern Perspective: The Tempest
A Modern Perspective: The Tempest. By Barbara A. Mowat. Somewhat past the midpoint of The Tempest, King Alonso and his courtiers reach a temporary still point in their journey on Prospero's island. Shipwrecked, they have searched for the lost Prince Ferdinand; now, exhausted, they give up the search. Into this moment of fatigue—and, for ...
Transformation In Shakespeare: Play Themes
The Tempest is one of those and, more, it is in many ways the climax of the theme in Shakespeare' works. It might therefore be instructive to look at transformation in that play. The word that is usually used to talk about transformation in The Tempest is 'metamorphosis.'. It means, simply, transformation by means of magic.
On the Symbolism of The Tempest
Source: "On the Symbolism of The Tempest," in Shakespeare and the Spectacles of Strangeness: The Tempest and the Transformation of Renaissance Theatrical Forms, Duquesne University Press, 1998, pp ...
The Tempest by Shakespeare: Study Guide & Literary Analysis
Welcome to the enchanting world of The Tempest by William Shakespeare! Written around 1610-1611, this play is believed to be one of the last that Shakespeare wrote on his own. It combines elements of magic, betrayal, love, and forgiveness, set against the backdrop of a remote island full of mysterious spirits and powerful forces.
The Tempest: Full Book Analysis
Full Book Analysis. Prospero's desire to return home to Italy and reclaim his position as the rightful Duke of Milan drives the plot of The Tempest. However, we don't know about Prospero's history until the second scene of the play. Instead, the play begins by hurtling the audience straight into the action. The first scene opens on a ship ...
Role Of Transformation In The Tempest
835 Words 4 Pages. 'The tempest' is a beautiful and very graphic piece of work. The play revolves around 'Prospero', the former Duke of Milan. Here I will ty to give a personal interpretation of how and why Prospero's character was transformed. Shakespeare uses many different techniques to express his thoughts.
Loss and Restoration Theme in The Tempest
Loss and Restoration ThemeTracker. The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Loss and Restoration appears in each scene of The Tempest. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis. How often theme appears: scene length: Act 1, scene 1. Act 1, scene 2.
"The Tempest" by William Shakespeare Literature Analysis Essay
Exclusively available on IvyPanda. In his play The Tempest, William Shakespeare illustrates the transformation of many characters who have to re-evaluate their values, attitudes, and perceptions. This paper is aimed at discussing such a person as Ferdinand whose love for Miranda is one of the main themes explored in this play.
The Tempest: Themes
The Illusion of Justice. The Tempest tells a fairly straightforward story involving an unjust act, the usurpation of Prospero's throne by his brother, and Prospero's quest to re-establish justice by restoring himself to power. However, the idea of justice that the play works toward seems highly subjective, since this idea represents the view of one character who controls the fate of all ...
Shakespeare's The Tempest essay, summary, quotes and character analysis
Plot Summary: A quick plot review of The Tempest including every important action in the play. An ideal introduction before reading the original text. Commentary: Detailed description of each act with translations and explanations for all important quotes. The next best thing to an modern English translation.
The Transformation of Prospero
Amidst the widely diverse theories that exist about The Tempest, this essay will focus primarily on the personal transformation of Prospero, and aim to prove the thesis: The myriad power dynamics between characters in The Tempest serve ultimately to illustrate facets of Prospero's transformation from disenfranchised magician to overlord to ...
Explore the theme of transformation in 'The Tempest '. Show with
However, this simple transformation of character is not as simple as it appears and the conclusion of the essay sums up the difficulty of 'closure' in the play. 'The Tempest' revolves around the sayings and doings of one character.
Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Shakespeare's The Tempest
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.
Prospero's Mirages of Power Struggle and Conscience in The Tempest
Unlike Shakespeare's Tragedies, The Tempest encompasses the complexity and strength of the human mind by using parallelism to portray the internal struggles of the psyche as it wins over adverse conditions. Prospero's recognition of his daughter's independence juxtaposed with his own choice to free himself from magic shows that the power ...
Themes in The Tempest with Examples and Analysis
Theme #2. Superiority of Human Beings. The play revolves around the happy ending and shows the superiority of human beings in a bleak way. When Prospero and his daughter Miranda are stranded on the island, they live there for almost twelve years. Yet, they know how to exploit other humans and creatures for their ends.
Transformation Of Human Values In Shakespeare's The Tempest
Insightful discoveries may cause an individual to re-evaluate their initial perspectives, changing their values and attitudes over time. These transformative discoveries may occur due to confronting and provocative situations, as well as through interactions with others. William Shakespeare's 1610 pastoral comedy play ' The Tempest ' highlights ...
How Does Shakespeare Present Prospero's Transformation In The Tempest
The Tempest by William Shakespeare, is a play which depicts a betrayal between family members, compassion to enemies, survival on the island, enslavement, and union between lovers. Prospero, the duke of Milan and a powerful magician, is a character from The Tempest who have been living on an island where he gets stranded with his daughter ...
Transformation and Change Theme in Hag-Seed
Transformation and Change Theme Analysis. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hag-Seed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. Like the play on which it's based, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Hag-Seed is a novel full of transformations, in which characters constantly change roles, ascend to power, or fall ...
The Tempest Adaptations and Transformations Essay Example
The Tempest Adaptations and Transformations. Julie Taymor's film adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' contains many alterations from the play. These differences include how Taymor's decision to change Prospero's gender affects the actions and reactions of other characters. Filmic advantages are used successfully to ...
HSC Module A: 20/20 Essay notes for The Tempest and Hagseed
As Felix famously sums up that The Tempest is " a play about prisons ", the recurring motif of prisons is evident throughout both texts to the extent that Hag-Seed is quite literally set in a penitentiary centre. The most salient interpretation of these prisons is both protagonists' confinement within their obsessive pursuit for revenge.
Transformation: The Tempest and Don Quixote Essay
The essay "Transformation: The Tempest and Don Quixote" describes two different kinds of transformation. The story of The Tempest by Shakespeare demonstrates the positive transformation. Don Quixote displays the negative transformation of a character. From a very noble man Quixada, he transformed to a mad and foolish character of Don Quixote ...
The Tempest
Throughout The Tempest there is a theme of lessons learned, presenting the characters the potential for spiritual growth. For Prospero two lessons prove influential in his transformation. Most significantly, the twelve years on the island is designed to teach him to face his faults. Intrinsically Prospero is a good man, yet his consumption by ...
[2404.07143] Leave No Context Behind: Efficient Infinite Context
Leave No Context Behind: Efficient Infinite Context Transformers with Infini-attention. This work introduces an efficient method to scale Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) to infinitely long inputs with bounded memory and computation. A key component in our proposed approach is a new attention technique dubbed Infini-attention.