The Tempest – A Sea Storm Full Of Magic And Intrigue
The Tempest written by Shakespeare is often regarded as his final performance before retirement by many critics. Truth be told, it is quite difficult to imagine Shakespeare taking a retirement when his plays still transcend time, fashion or style itself. Unfortunately, The Tempest was the last play Shakespeare wrote entirely by himself. Even though his literary career ended, his art lives on as they are ever immortal. The play is also identified as comical in genre but it also shares some attributes with tragicomedy. The story of The Tempest revolves around an aging magician named ‘Prospero’ who has been living in an exile with his young daughter ‘Miranda’ on a remote island for twelve years. Throughout the course of a single day, Prospero uses his magic to whip up the tempest to shipwreck the people responsible for his banishment to the island. Then he goes on to dazzle and distress the survivors (and his audience) with his art as he orchestrates his triumphant return home, where he eventually plans to retire in peace. For a lot of literary critics and the scholars, Prospero was like a stand-in for Shakespeare, who spent all his life entertaining audiences before he retired shortly after he wrote The Tempest. The play is full of self-conscious reference to the know-how of the theatre in general, but the epilogue seems to also serve possibly as a final and farewell to the stage. In the epilogue Prospero delivers a line alone before the audience as he confess, “Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own” which cannot be helped but make the reader wonder if Shakespeare was actually speaking through this character here. Regardless of the fact whether or not Shakespeare intended the epilogue as a goodbye to his own art, the play does seems to be a nice ending to his brilliant career because The Tempest revisits some of the most important issues and themes to have emerged in his previous plays.
In The Tempest, magic is an impressive and beautiful form of art that infuses the play with a sense of wonder and whole lot of spectacle. This also creates an idea throughout the play that the concept of magic in The Tempest is a craft which is very similar to that of a playwright. Prospero uses his magic to control the natural and the supernatural world, the play also suggests his art is different from the kind of black magic practiced by the witch Sycorax. Although Prospero use his magic to regain his place in Naples, magic is also the reason behind his banishment. If Prospero had never isolated himself with his books, he would have never lost his dukedom in the first place. The protagonist of the play, Prospero is not only a rule but also a philosopher. Throughout the play Prospero uses his magic to put certain events in motion and manipulate them in his own terms. In other words, Prospero is not only a magician but also a control freak. But it is to be also noted that his devotion to the study of magic got himself into trouble at the first place. So before Prospero was physically isolated on the island, he isolated himself socially by making his magic his number one priority. Not only that, but throughout the play we can see Prospero’s growth as well. He went from being a bitter old man being hung up on his exile to a pretty merciful human being. Imprisonment plays a big role in The Tempest in a both literal and figurative way. Prospero and Miranda are forced to live in exile on a remote island, where Prospero enslaves the island’s only native inhabitant Caliban and forces Ariel to do his bidding. Because Prospero forces Ariel to serve him as his eyes and ears on the island, he is no better than the witch Sycorax, who imprisoned Ariel in a pine tree before Prospero came along and rescued the sprite. Ariel may not be a slave but he was more of a lackey of Prospero. Ariel was the embodiment of the archetypal spy.
Although the partnership between Ariel and Prospero was dangerous as he never hesitate to remind Ariel of his servitude. Prospero has a habit of making aware Ariel aware of his power. He also enslaved Caliban the child of Sycorax to do his bidding after Caliban showed him around the island. Prospero even went out to torture Caliban for his rebellion, as slaves were treated in Haiti. Prospero cannot throw Caliban out because there is one slave only and one pair of hands for labor. Killing Caliban would be an act of pure suicide as Caliban is more than his source of food. Loyalty and betrayal is another important theme of The Tempest. Both of these feelings are motivated by how much an individual perceives their position relative to others. Antonio's betrayal of his brother Prospero is the source of conflict in the play, but the action contemporary to the play follows a series of attempted betrayals. Alonso and Prospero would both be murdered by traitors, but this is thwarted by the actions of loyal characters like Ariel and Gonzalo. Loyalty and treachery also serve as the two main personality traits of the players. Loyalty is a farce in the play; everyone follows the courtly rule of swearing loyalty, but gives up on the notion as soon as it is no longer convenient. Antonio's betrayal of Prospero reminds us that even family members cannot be counted on to be loyal. The nearly inhabited island in which Prospero was exiled to represents the sense of infinite possibility for everyone who lands on it. Prospero used it as his ideal place to school and raise his daughter, whereas Sycorax, worked her magic on the island after being exiled from Algeria. Not to mention, the once sole inhabitant of the island Caliban found himself as a slave serving under Prospero while lamenting the possibility of being the king of the island and Gonzalo imagines a utopian society forming on the island. Basically, all these characters envision the island as a space of freedom and full potential. All of these reflected the nature of how England was colonizing countries throughout the 16-17th Century, making the island symbolizing one of its colonies. It also shows how the colonizers extorted the colonized people they took over. While there are many representatives of the colonial impulse present in the play, the colonized have only one representative: Caliban. Considering all of these factors, it can be said the urge to rule and the urge to be ruled seems to be close related. In conclusion, The Tempest is a play that ventures into several concerning themes that dictated all of Shakespeare’s previous plays. It is a play full of fascination and intrigue that keeps the readers engaged throughout the whole story. Not to mention it influenced many of the coming poets and writers in their literary works to come.
Works Cited
- Shakespeare, William. “The Tempest.” Robert Johnson, 1 Nov. 1611. Print
- “The Tempest: Main ideas” Sparknote, https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/themes/
- “The Tempest” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest
