and put into a rotten boat with his 3-year-old daughter. Her presence saved him: ‘A
cherubin / Thou wast, that didst preserve me.’ Divine Providence brings them to a
desert island, and The Tempestaddresses a central question of Christian humanism:
how far education and upbringing can improve nature.
The play is original in its fable, and observes the unities of time and place.
Prospero has educated his daughter, but failed to educate an earthy goblin he found
on the island, Caliban, ‘a devil ... in whose nature nurture will never stick’. Caliban
had tried to rape Miranda. Prospero uses his magic to raise the tempest and bring
onto the island those who overthrew him: his brother Antonio and Alonso, King of
Naples; with Alonso’s brother Sebastian and son Ferdinand. He uses the spirit Ariel
to trick and test these noble castaways: Ferdinand proves worthy of Miranda’s hand;
Alonso repents his crime; but Antonio and Sebastian do not wish to reform. They
are like Spenser’s Grill, who prefers to remain a pig: ‘Let Grill be Grill, and have his
hoggish mind’ (see p. 100). They joke about how much money they might make out
of putting Caliban on sale as a fish. At the end of the play Caliban (who has also been
tested, and has failed) resolves (unlike the pig-like nobles) ‘to be wise hereafter, /
And seek for grace.’ Prospero resigns his magic, and will return to Naples to see the
wedding of Ferdinand and Miranda, ‘And thence retire me to my Milan, where /
Every third thought shall be my grave.’
The Tempeststands first in the Folio, with more stage-directions than any other
play; it has been taken as a testament, for its author wrote no more plays on his own.
Prospero is unprecedented. The Duke in Measure for Measureplays Providence in
disguise, but Prospero is a magician who openly creates and directs the action. It is
hard not to liken him to his creator, the actor-impresario-author who had often
likened the world to a stage. After the masque of Hymen (with Iris, Ceres and Juno)
which Prosper o puts on for the benefit of Ferdinand and Miranda, Prospero says:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
We should see a reference in ‘the great globe itself ’ to the Globe theatre. Prospero
later abjures his ‘rough magic’ and drowns his book. Gonzalo then invokes a bless-
ing on the young couple, using a theatrical metaphor: ‘Look down, you gods, / And
on this couple drop a blessed crown, / For it is you that have chalked forth the way
/ Which brought us hither.’ Directors still use chalk to ‘block’ on the boards of the
stage the moves the actors are to make. If the world is a stage, the author is a god who
makes the providence of the plot.
The Tempestand A Midsummer Night’s Dreamare plays which rely greatly upon
the image-making powers of language, and use the transforming power of music.
The speech in which Caliban describes the island, though it draws on Golding’s
version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is an original invention. Caliban’s airy counterpart
Ariel is, like Puck, a spirit who sings and works the transformations commanded by
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 135