In line 388 Ferdinand is first introduced to us as one of the Royal party who is lost and alone. We find he has been separated from all his other travellers. We discover that he is the Prince and the son of the King of Naples and heir to the thrown. This disheartens him and leaves him crying at his loss. He is led by Ariel towards Miranda. For Miranda this is the second man she has ever seen in her life, and describes him first as a ‘spirit’. Then when they meet falls in love with him, this is the beginning of the Romance aspect of the play. However just as Miranda and Ferdinand start to realise that they have fallen in love with each other Prospero stops them and decides to lock up Ferdinand like a prisoner, ‘he’s a traitor.-Come, I’ll manacle thy neck and feet together. Sea-water shalt thou drink; they food shall be The fresh-brook mussels, withered roots, and husks,’ Miranda takes part in the first confrontation in order to make sure Prospero does not treat Ferdinand too harshly, she says, ‘Make not too rash a trial of him’.
At the start of the Second act the main body of the Royal party emerges and first to speak is Gonzalo who is very optimistic, nearly humorous, in his optimism. He says everyone should ‘be merry’ because they all survived the ordeal, and it is ‘but for a miracle’ that they survived. Sebastian and Antonio then tell jokes amongst themselves about Gonzalo’s behaviour. They continue to be quick of tongue and make comments that the audience would have found funny.
ADRIAN ‘The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.’
SEBASTIAN ‘As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.’
GONZALO ‘How lush and lusty the grass looks! How green!’
ANTONIO ‘The ground indeed is tawny.’
We find that Alonso thinks that his son is dead, because he has found most of the rest of his Royal party except for his son the Prince Ferdinand. This makes him down heartened, as now he has no heir to his thrown and no son. With the loss of the heirs to the thrown Sebastian and Antonio want to overthrow the current controllers of the royal society and take charge themselves, so they begin to plot and form an idea of how to kill the King. However Gonzalo, who wakes and shouts ‘Preserve the King!’ cheats them.
In Act two Scene two the comedy side to the play is introduced. In this section Trinculo the jester and Stephano the drunken butler enter and come across Caliban while he is getting wood. Caliban hears the sound of thunder and hides underneath his cloak. Trinculo enters and since it is now raining he decides although he can see a pair of legs coming from under the cloak and an odd smell of fish in the air. He will hide under the cloak with Caliban. To add to this Stephano comes in. He is singing and evidently drunk. He assumes the four legs under the cloak is some sort of monster and because of his singing is in fits so to calm it he give it some of his alcohol and because Caliban has never has alcohol before it has an immediate affect on him. These three characters form the base for the humorous part of the play and have also their own separate plot to distinguish them from the other plots in the play.
In Act three we go back to the Romantic part of the play, Ferdinand is working hard at his new position as a slave, and Miranda comes to visit him while he works. ‘The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead’, Prospero is not meant to know about this meeting, ‘My father is hard at study. Pray now, rest yourself; He’s safe for these three hours.’ They seem to have a competition in which they compete for who can give each other the most adoring complement. What Ferdinand and Miranda do not know is that Prospero is being a kind and loving father in setting up his daughter with Ferdinand. He is fully aware of what he is doing and has control over it although it does not seem as in fact this is true. Ferdinand promises to marry Miranda and since Alonzo seemingly is dead it makes Ferdinand king. They make regeneration possibilities on such a small island and tears, a pure physical response are bared.
In Act three Scene two Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo are preparing to overthrow Prospero and become the owners of the island with Caliban to help them, as he knows where everything is and where the wood is and where the water is.
In scene three we find Gonzalo weakened and demoralised because he is exhausted and Alonso because he as lost his son, in this last scene Prospero enacts the punishments that he has been building up to. We find that Prospero sorts out all the characters, and there is a marriage between Miranda and Ferdinand that is settled. He also re-unites all the characters in the play and brings them all together for the final scene.
