The Tempest REVIEW
Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a play that I arrived late to. Not literally. I simply have only read it recently and I saw it for the first time at Middlebury college’s Bread Loaf (Thanks to my dear friend, Hilary who got me tickets).
The theme of the play seems to revolve around the subject of power and freedom. All of the characters seem to illustrate just how addictive the ability to use coercive power to control others can be and just how much humans dislike having coercive power used on them. The play demonstrates the lengths that humans will go to get power and the lengths that they will go to obtain freedom when they are exploited by powerful people. The play is full of contentious master-slave relationships.
The main character, Prospero, was the Duke of Milan. But he handed over all the responsibilities of his position to his brother so that he could pursue his studies in the magical arts. It becomes clear that Prospero was interested in obtaining even more power than his political title gave him. He wanted some sort of cultish power as well. He is deeply bitter about his brother taking that political power from him (as though anyone would actually want the responsibilities of such a position without the advantages of it!).
Prospero’s brother, Antonio demonstrates how much power means to him when he strikes a deal with Alonzo, the King of Naples. In exchange for Alonzo’s help evicting Prospero and Prospero’s three-year-old daughter, Miranda from the city, Antonio is willing to have Milan pay tribute to Naples. In short, he makes himself a servant in order to be a master. Later in the play, he tells Sebastian that his “brothers’ servants were once his fellows” but “now they are my men.” Clearly, he relishes the change.
There is also a clear master-slave relationship between Prospero and the inhabitants of the island to which he and Miranda are shipwrecked. When Prospero arrives, he finds the island inhabited by Caliban, the deformed son of the witch who used to dominate the Island. Prospero offers to be a patron of Caliban for some time, teaching Caliban language in return for Caliban’s intimate knowledge of the island. But then Prospero reduces Caliban to a slave, making him haul wood and other such menial tasks. Prospero’s ability to use his dark art magic to inflict pain and suffering on Caliban for any scintilla of disobedience reveals just what a tyrant Prospero is (and may always have been) when he is disposed to be.
Prospero also retains a heavy-handed control over the sprite, Ariel. Ariel had been a servant of the witch, Sycorax. When Ariel refused to do Sycorax’s evil bidding, Sycorax put Ariel in an oak tree and inflicted suffering on her there for twelve years. Caliban frees her when the witch dies and constantly reminds Ariel that she must needs serve him as a result. Prospero has the ability to put her back in the tree for another twelve years and reminds her constantly that he will do so if she does not follow his every command. But unlike his relationship with Caliban, Prospero promises that he will reward Ariel for her service by liberating her someday when he no longer needs her services. Interestingly, later in the play, Caliban reveals that all the beings on the island who must abide by Prospero’s tyranny secretly “hate him.” We much include Ariel in that group I suppose.
There are other characters in the play who also demonstrate just how tempting power is to humans and how distasteful it is to them to be placed in subservience to others. King Alonzo’s brother, Sebastian, at one point in time in the play is on the verge of murdering his own brother in order to obtain his brother’s throne. Antonio, the usurping brother of Prospero encourages Sebastian to commit the murder, seeking to liberate himself from the fealty he promised to Alonzo as a means of acquiring Milan in the first place.
The play opens with a scene on a ship in the middle of a storm that Prospero has sent to shipwreck his enemies and even on the ship, one senses the tension between the sailors and the aristocrats they carry on board. The aristocrats resent any hint of insurrection or disrespect exhibited by the crew of plebians and the sailors resent the interference of the meddling aristocrats trying to tell them how to handle the boat. The whole play revolves around the bitterness and resentment created when humans are made to serve other humans by means of coercive power. Coercive power is something we seem to love when we have it at our disposal and can weaponize it against those below us and yet, the same coercive power is something we hate when those in the hierarchy above us use it on us.
Characters seethe with resentments. Prospero calls his brother “the ivy which had sucked my verdure out.” Prospero will, from time to time, simply use his magic to make people do what he wants. At one point, he nonchalantly puts his teenage daughter, Miranda to sleep when he wants to talk to Ariel privately, saying to Miranda, “I know you cannot choose.” Ariel, who we later come to understand, deeply resents her loss of freedom, still refers to Prospero as “great master” and “grave sir.” “I come to answer thy best pleasure,” she says to him, “to swim, to dive into the fire ….” One suspects that she is obsequious on the surface, but seething on the inside. Prospero responds to any hint of complaint on the part of Ariel with a dismissive “How now, moody!” and asks her if she would like to be returned to her tree.
[The more we see of Prospero’s use of his magical powers, the better we understand why it might have been that Antonio wanted to be rid of him].
Prospero treats Caliban even worse than he treats Miranda and Ariel. He describes Caliban as a “freckled whelp” and “hag-born, not honored with a human shape . . . got by the devil himself.” “A dull thing whom I now keep in service” he says of Caliban. Prospero threatens him with bee and sea urchin stings and cramps if he so much as expresses an iota of resistance. Prospero refers to Caliban as “the most lying slave whom stripes may move, not kindness.” Later he calls Caliban his “abhorred slave which any print of goodness will not take.” “Thy vile race,” he says to Caliban, “had that in it which good natures could not abide to be with …”
And as Prospero’s tyranny over Caliban is the most severe and absolute of all tyrannies in the play, Caliban’s rage is the most virulent and destructive. We get the sense that the use of coercive power will always instill resentment reciprocal to the coerciveness. What is interesting is that Prospero cannot see the relationship between his resentment towards his brother’s theft of Milan, and Caliban’s resentment of Prospero’s theft of the island. Having power to inflict subservience, Prospero has no need for the kind of reflection that might provide him insight into Caliban’s actual nature. His daughter has the capacity for empathy, but he does not.
“Among the oppressed, are many who would like to oppress,” Napoleon once said.
All of this sounds pretty bleak, but there is a ray of hope for humanity to be found on this enchanted island as well. Three of the characters serve as counterweights to the general theme of the corruptive influence of power on the human psyche.
The first of the three characters who remains immune from the love of power is Gonzalo, an honest old counselor to Prospero who helped to save his life when Antonio conspired to be rid of his brother. Gonzalo is a bit of a hippie and something of a John Lennon among all the wretched power-besotted aristocrats. Gonzalo has a cheery disposition and betrays a “60’s-like” optimism about life. You might say that he looks at the world through rose-colored glasses. As he surveys the island, he thinks about what a utopia it might be if we all “imagined” a world without power and control. “A new golden age” he calls it.
I' th' commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things.
For no kind of traffic
Would I admit. No name of magistrate.
Letters should not be known.
Riches, poverty, And use of service—none.
Contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard—none.
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil.
No occupation. All men idle, all.
And women too, but innocent and pure.
No sovereignty—
Translated into modern English this sounds like this:
“In my commonwealth I’d do everything in the opposite way from what's normal. I wouldn’t allow any business. There would be no judges. There would be no school or learning. No riches, poverty, or servants. None of that. No contracts, inheritance, privately owned land, farming, or vineyards. None of that. There’d be no metal-work, no grinding of corn, no wine-making, or making of olive oil. There'd be no work. Men would do nothing at all. Women too, except those things that are innocent and pure. There’d be no kingship—"
“The later end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning,” says Antonio sarcastically in response at this juncture in Gonzalo’s pontificating. “Long live Gonzalo!”
To Gonzalo, all exercises of power involving one human being given coercive power over another are corrosive and destructive to human happiness.
The last two characters that must be considered in this analysis of the play and power are Prospero’s daughter, Miranda, and Alonzo’s son, Ferdinand. These two love-struck teenagers demonstrate how powerful love is in counteracting the alure of power. For, as we observe Miranda and Ferdinand fall in love, we see two people whose current is running in the opposite direction. Their love actually turns them into each other’s servants and makes them delighted to be so. “The mistress I serve … makes my labors pleasures,” Ferdinand says when Prospero makes him haul wood like he has Caliban for so many years. And Miranda, so in love and so capable of empathy, offers to carry the wood for him. Ferdinand refuses. He will have none of it, having no wish to be served by her. “The very instant I saw you, did my heart fly to your service,” he tells her, and “there resides to make me a slave to it and for your sake am I this patient log-man.”
Miranda reciprocates, offering to marry him and even if he refuses, she says, “I’ll be your servant whether you will or no.”
“I’ll be your husband,” Ferdinand responds, “as the enslaved ever wished for liberty” [modern translation]. In other words, he suggests that when you are in love, you actually want to serve the other person with the same intensity that you do not want to serve the person who applies coercive power to you.
It may well be that watching Ferdinand and Miranda’s teenage love affair is what brings Prospero back to his senses. For as the play concludes, he is ready to bury his magic books, dispose of his magic cape, foreswear all his use of magic spells, and release all of his subjects - his brother Antonio, the king of Naples, Ariel and even Caliban himself. At the very end, he sets the powerful Ariel at liberty, and gives Caliban back his island. And then, in the last couplet of the play, Prospero asks the audience to “set him free.”
“As you from crimes would pardoned be
Let your indulgence set me free.”
For no one wants to live out their lives as some extension of another’s will and power.
One last note with respect to the theme of power. Shakespeare also has something to say about the relationship between power and empathy. The play demonstrates the danger of combining power with emotional callousness. One might contrast Miranda’s empathy with the lack of empathy we see in Prospero and Antonio. When the play begins, Miranda stands on some cliff looking at the shipwreck and feels herself shipwrecked to see it. She pleads with her father to relent if he is the cause of the storm. “Oh, I have suffered with those that I saw suffer!” she says. Their cries, “did knock against my heart!”
“Poor souls, they perished. Had I been any god of power, I would have sunk the sea within the earth …”
Prospero’s response betrays a chilly Stoicism. “Tell your piteous heart there’s no harm done.”
Later in the play, Sebastian asks Antonio if he feels any guilt about supplanting his brother in such a nefarious way. “You did supplant your brother Prospero,” Sebastian queries.
“And look how well my garments sit upon me,” replies Antonio. “Much feater than before.” “I feel not this deity in my bosom,” he adds, speaking of his non-existent guilt. “Twenty consciences that stand twixt me and Milan, candied be they and melt ere they molest!”
Thus does Shakespeare draw our attention to just how dangerous power can be when divorced from compassion. It may well be that Prospero’s decision at the end of the play to divest himself of power and to make room for compassion is crucial to Shakespeare's message. Towards the end of the play, Prospero’s charms have all worked to dreadful effect and all of his former enemies have been practically driven mad. Ariel informs Prospero of their wretchedness.
They cannot budge till your release. The King,
His brother, and yours abide all three distracted,
And the remainder mourning over them,
Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly
Him that you termed, sir, the good old Lord Gonzalo.
His tears runs down his beard like winter’s drops
From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works ’em
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.
Prospero replies, “Dost thou think so, spirit?” to which Ariel continues.
“Mine would, sir, were I human.”
This proves to be a pivotal moment for Prospero realizes just how little room there has been for empathy in his life.
“And mine shall,” he tells Ariel.
“Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply
Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick,
Yet with my nobler reason ’gainst my fury
Do I take part.”
Prospero seems to recognize that this sacrifice will involve some period of pain and withdrawal. It is as though his relationship with power has become an addiction to him. He speaks of retiring to Milan where “every third thought shall be my grave.” His surrender of power will not be easy. “Release me from my bands,” he says in a tremendous use of irony. The great and mighty Prospero – so capable of incarcerating and subduing Ariel, Caliban, and his enemies has, by his very use of power, incarcerated himself and must himself plea for deliverance.
Question for Comment: What is your relationship to power when you have it over others or when others have it over you? How do power and love co-exist in your relationships? Or can they? What do you think of Gonzalo’s utopian society – free of all sovereignty? Would we be happier living in such a place? Why or why not?
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