Bram's Reviews > The Tempest

Knowing that The Tempest is most likely Shakespeare's final play, it's hard to avoid noticing the hints of retirement in the text. Toward the end of the final act, Prospero solemnly describes the conclusion of his practice of the magic arts, just as Shakespeare might describe the end of his writing career:

Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.

Beyond this connection, it’s fun if idly fruitless to try to expand the Prospero-as-Shakespeare angle. For example, Prospero, the Duke of Milan, was usurped by his brother. Was Shakespeare replaced as the king’s or the populace’s most favored playwright? Perhaps he was eclipsed by or had a falling out with Ben Jonson, who felt confident enough to be the first to publish a written collection of his plays (something Shakespeare never did) and who mocked Shakespeare and his Tempest subject matter in one of his own plays, Bartholomew Fair. As I said, it’s idle speculation, particularly when engaged in by someone unfamiliar with the time period. But the text does seem to encourage some autobiographical reading, and it’s certainly fun to consider the possibilities.

One thing that continues to impress me about Shakespeare is his refusal to create blameless heroes. Even if we end up feeling very sympathetic toward someone, there's always something to nag us and remind us that this character isn’t irreproachable. In the Richard II—Henry IV—Henry V cycle, Hal has a remarkable and redemptive character arc, but he must abandon his rowdy friends most cruelly to achieve this. As someone who wants to love and celebrate Hal unreservedly, this fact is like a thorn that pokes me every time I cheer too loudly during the St. Crispin's Day speech.

Like Hal, Prospero has a troubling relationship that mars his character. As mentioned above, he was usurped. But then he became the usurper, enslaving an 'uninhabited' island's sole inhabitant (and therefore the ruler of sorts), Caliban, and treating him harshly. (For the record, Caliban's witch mother usurped the original fairies of the Island, Ariel et al., when she was dropped off by some sailors while pregnant.) The story of the enslavement is morally complicated, it's true. Caliban was apparently well-treated, if still usurped, before he attempted to rape Prospero's daughter, thus leading to the mistreatment and his begrudging service as we encounter them during the three hours of the play (side note: Before Jack Bauer and 24, Shakespeare had already created a drama where the play length occurs in real time). There's also the troubling distinction between Prospero's two slaves, Caliban and Ariel. Caliban, a hideous semi-human monster, is rude and bitter and therefore 'deserves' his slave state and cruel treatment, while obedient Ariel is set free at the story's end. But because Prospero is leaving the island to return to Milan at the conclusion, even Caliban can look forward to freedom once again.

And so in the end, Prospero wins us over with his capacity for forgiveness and his desire to do everyone a good turn, while only desiring to finish off his days in Milan “where/Every third thought shall be my grave.” While he spends much of the play spooking those who’d wronged him with spirit visitations and magical scenes, he eventually leaves anger and vengeance behind. Interestingly, it’s the nonhuman spirit slave Ariel who encourages Prospero to be humane and compassionate:


ARIEL
Your charm so strongly works 'em
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.

PROSPERO
Dost thou think so, spirit?

ARIEL
Mine would, sir, were I human.

PROSPERO
And mine shall.
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 the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance.

Perhaps this suggestion had to come from a nonhuman since treating kindly those who’ve wronged us can seem most unnatural. Shakespeare seems to recognize that this type of forgiveness, especially offered to those who have intentionally affected one’s life for the worse, is exceptionally difficult to bestow. But he also seems to recognize that overcoming this difficulty is well worth it, perhaps more for the sake of the forgiver than that of the forgiven.