The Shakespeare Book

330

is also a brilliant scholar who,
becoming bored with the liberal
arts, plunges into hidden, secret
methods, until finally selling his
soul to the devil in exchange for
ultimate knowledge and power.
Even the most serious
philosophers of the age believed
that there was another realm
beyond Nature, an occult realm
of the spirit, and that its discovery
was the goal of philosophy. The
word “Magic” was used to describe
the knowledge and mastery of this
hidden dimension. Shakespeare’s
contemporary Francis Bacon
was the great pioneer of modern
scientific method based on
physical evidence, yet even he
believed that magic was “sublime
wisdom,” while the brilliant
16th-century mathematician and

alchemist John Dee, perhaps

another inspiration for Prospero,

spent much of his life trying

to communicate with angels.

The loss of human feeling

Yet the problems with Prospero’s

absorption in this other world are

apparent from the start. As the

ship founders in the storm he has

conjured, and the sailors cry in

terror, only Miranda has the

humanity to empathize: “I have

sufferèd / With those that I saw

suffer!” (1.2.5–6). Prospero’s blithe

reassurance that there’s “No harm”

(1.2.16) done seems barely adequate

in the face of such anguish, and

brings Miranda’s all-too-human

response: “O, woe the day!” (1.2.15).

It is with a shock that Prospero

at last learns human feeling and

sympathy from the inhuman 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?” (5.1.21–24).

Prospero’s treatment of Ariel

and Caliban is even more dubious.

He tells the story of how he freed

Ariel from the tree in which he was

trapped by the witch Sycorax, but

he keeps Ariel in servitude. His

treatment of Caliban is worse.

Caliban, the product of his mother

Sycorax’s night with the devil, is

enslaved by Prospero, and turned

from an innocent child of Nature,

who willingly showed his visitors

the wonders of the island, into a

resentful beast. As Caliban retorts,

schooling has brought him no

benefits: “You taught me language,

and my profit on’t / Is I know how

to curse” (1.2.365–366).

One of Shakespeare’s sources

for The Tempest was Michel de

Montaigne’s essay “Of the

THE TEMPEST

A 2009 production by the Baxter

Theatre Centre of Cape Town, with

Antony Sher as Prospero and Atandwa

Kani as Ariel, mixed racial politics with

playful African mythology.

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on;

and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

Prospero

Act 4, Scene 1