“To act her earthy and abhorred commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years; within which space she died,
And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans”
Prospero is telling Ariel this because he has asked for his freedom from him, he has said no and is telling him without him he would still be in the pine. Ariel went from being imprisoned by Sycorax, to perform her evil magic, to being imprisoned in the cloven pine and then finally to be imprisoned by Prospero to do his deeds before he can get his freedom.
Ariel had been able to achieve freedom from the pine but he then was imprisoned by Prospero for twelve years. Then, at the end of the play he was able to obtain his freedom from Prospero after Prospero achieved his plan of revenge.
There are more subtle types of physical imprisonment in the play, I think one of the most important ones is very subtle. It is the imprisonment of Caliban in his grotesque appearance. This appearance is the reason for Caliban’s actions and the actions towards Caliban in the play.
“A freckled whelp hag-born - not honour’d with
A human shape.”
This shows Prospero’s contempt for Caliban, it also shows why Caliban is so fickle in his admiration of people. He starts serving anyone that is nice to him ; Prospero, Stephano and then back to Prospero towards the end of the play. Also, in the BBC Shakespeare’s version of the play, Caliban is portrayed as a crouched, almost crippled “man” and he is also portrayed with an evil side to him. Almost as if his awful exterior covers a just as awful interior. I don’t really agree with this because reading the play I have got the image of him being very unconfident in himself and that causes him to be imprisoned by so many people throughout the play.
Another type of physical imprisonment involving Caliban in the play is his imprisonment to stay in the cave at the other side of the island. He finds this imprisonment more painful than the others because twelve years ago before Miranda and Prospero came to the island Caliban had been able to do whatever he wanted in the island, he had no restrictions because he owned it with his mother Sycorax. Prospero banished him to the other side of the island and into a cave after Caliban tried to rape Miranda.
Caliban: page 42 lines 341-343
“and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
the rest o’ th’ island.”
Prospero does a lot of imprisoning of other people on the island, another man he imprisons is Ferdinand. He imprisons him in two ways. One physically, in the prison collecting wood and the other magically when Ferdinand drew his sword and Prospero froze Ferdinand in his own body. I believe he imprisons him for two reasons. The first is the one most focused on in the play, Prospero wants Miranda and Ferdinand to fall in love gradually and really make the most of the time they have. The second is the one not looked at in the play at all and I have just realised that it is a possibility. When Ferdinand first arrives on the island he stands up to Prospero and so I believe that Prospero may just be trying to show Ferdinand how powerful he can be. He may just be, in the hypothetical sense, flexing his muscles a little bit. Trying to show Ferdinand that he shouldn’t mess with him and that he was very powerful.
Mental :
In the play there are a lot of cases of mental imprisonment, some are more subtle than others. The first type of mental imprisonment I recognised in the play was the way Prospero was obsessed with achieving revenge on the men that betrayed his trust. This was mainly his brother. Prospero was so desperate to acquire the revenge that he had desired for the period he had been stuck on the island. He needed to get his own back on them and make them feel the amounts of pain his daughter and he had suffered on the island. I believe that this thought of revenge was the fuel to his fire that made him act in such a way to Ariel and Caliban. Prospero was imprisoned by these thoughts and that is why he made the tempest and brought his betrayers onto the island. However, he doesn’t want to kill his betrayers and this shows although he is vengeful, he doesn’t want to kill them. I also believe that this imprisonment in the vengeance of his betrayers makes him work even harder in his magic. While he is working even harder in his magic he doesn’t realise but he has imprisoned himself in his books and in the magic.
Prospero, while he was Duke of Milan, spent most of his time in study. It was either learning spells or reading great literature, this may have improved his magic and his knowledge but it didn’t make him a great leader nor a great Duke of Milan. This imprisonment cost him the dukedom and it also cost him his brother. However, Prospero does realise this and at the end of the play he decides he wants to be free and throws his stick and magic books into the ocean.
Caliban is imprisoned both mentally and physically, he is imprisoned physically both by his foul exterior and also by Caliban. He is mentally imprisoned because he always needs a leader figure. At first it was Prospero and Caliban was desperately unhappy at Prospero’s actions and being a slave. Nevertheless, when Stephano came along brandishing “celestial liquor” Caliban was more than happy to kneel before him and even lick Stephano’s boots a number of times! This shows Caliban’s need for leadership but in spite of this when he gets it he always hates it. This is shown most at the end of the play when Caliban actually begs Prospero to forgive him and to take him back as his slave this is completely the contrary to what Caliban had told Stephano earlier in the play.
The other type of mental imprisonment is of people wanting to be imprisoned. Miranda and Ferdinand imprisoned willingly in their love for each other. Ferdinand is willing to do anything for Miranda, even if that means being out in prison and being stopped from seeing her he is willing to do it because he loves her. She is willing to disobey her father to go and see him because she loves him.
Magical:
Following on from the last type of mental imprisonment, Ferdinand was imprisoned in his own body by Prospero because he drew his sword against Prospero. This shows Prospero’s powers and how strong they are.
Prospero controls all of the men on the island one way or the other. He uses Ariel to lead Ferdinand to Miranda, he uses Ariel as a Harpy to scare Gonzalo, Alonzo, Sebastian and Antonio.
