Ariel asks Prospero for his freedom and Prospero accuses him of ingratitude. Years before Prospero had arrived on the island, a witch called Sycorax had been banished there from Algeria. While on the island, she had given birth to a son Caliban, and had imprisoned Ariel in a pine tree. Ariel had been imprisioned in the tree for twelve years, during which time Sycorax had died, and he would have been left in the tree for ever if Prospero had not released him. Ariel is told that he must continue to obey his master or risk being imprisoned in an oak tree. Ariel promises to be obedient and Prospero assures him that, if he does all that is required of him, he will be given his freedom within two days. Tehre are many possible interpretations of Caliban’s name. Etymologies have been suggested from Hebrew, Italian and Romani. It is most likely, however, that it is an anagram of ‘cannibal’, often spelt ‘canibal’ in the early seventeenth century, or a form of ‘Cariban’, modern ‘Caribbean’.
When Ariel leaves, Prospero wakens Miranda and suggests that they go to see Caliban. Miranda does not like Caliban and does not want to visit him. However, at that moment, he appears carrying firewood for Prospero. Prospero treats Caliban as a slave by day and sends spirits to torment him by night. Caliban curses Prospero and Mirands, claiming that the island had been his until Prospero had used his magic to take it away from him. Caliban insists that Prospero is not only ruthless but hypocritical. When he had first arrived on the island, he had befriended Caliban, teaching him to speak. Caliban had, in return, shared his knowledge of the island with Prospero but Prospero had enslaved him. Prospero insists that Caliban had repaid his early kindness by trying to rape Miranda, and Caliban’s answer is that he only regrets that the attempted rape had been unsuccessful. Caliban is totally dominated by Prospero.
Ferdinand is lured to Prospero’s cave by Ariel’s singing. There, he meets Miranda and her father. Ferdinand and Miranda fall in love immediately and Ferdinand, thinking that his father is dead, offers to make her the queen of Naples. Prospero, who had planned the meeting and hoped that the young couple would love each other, decides that Ferdinand must suffer for Miranda. Otherwise he might not value her highly enough. Accordingly, he uses his magical powers to imprison Ferdinand, and Ferdinand feels that his imprisonment will be worthwhile if it enables him to see Miranda. Miranda is upset with her father but feels certain that Ferdinand’s imprisonment will not last long.
COMMENTARY
Islands have often been selected by writers as a means of allowing characters to develop in isolation. Such a setting was employed by Daniel Defoe for Robinson Crusoe (1719) and, more recently, by William Golding in Lord of the Flies (1954). In both The Tempest and Lord of the Flies, the island may be seen as a microcosm of the world at large. Shakspeare also uses the theme of one brother being usurped by another in As You Like It. In this play, the senior brother lives with some followers in the forest of Arden but also regains his dukedom.
Although this play deals with the exercise of magical powers, it also includes many biblical references that would have been more immediately significant in the seventeenth century. For example, in line 30 Prospero assures Miranda that not even a hair of anyone’s head will be lost. This would have reminded an Elizabethan audience of St Luke’s Gospel 12:7, where Jesus tells his followers that God loves them so much that ‘the very hairs of your head are all numbered’.
This is one of the longest and most significant scenes in the play. It introduces us to the main characters and provides the necessary background information. It indicates Miranda’s sensitivity to the plight of others. In her first speech, she tells her father: ‘Had I been any god of power, I would/Have sunk the sea within the earth (lines 10-11), suggesting that she would have caused the earth to swallow up the sea rather than allow the ship to sink with all its passengers and crew still on board. The fact that she appeals to her father to do what she cannot is the first indication we have of Prospero’s magical powers. This suggestion is strengthened in line 25, when Prospero addresses his gown: ‘Lie there, my Art’. The gown is a symbol of his magic powers. Sorcerers’ gowns were often richly adorned with symbols of the occult. In line 77 hs admits that he was ‘raps in secret studies’ and the use of both ‘rapt’ and ‘secret’ suggests that he was studying magic. This suggestion is reinforced by the use of ‘transported’ in the previous line. To be ‘transported’ could mean ‘conveyed out of one’s body to another place’.
Line 61 introduces a theme that recurs in Shakespear’s plays. Miranda asks if it was perhaps a good thing that they were called: ‘Or bless’d was’t we did?’ In several of his plays a deposed ruler sometimes finds a kind of happiness in his exile. King Lear learns the value of truth and loyalty when he has given up his throne, and Duke Senior finds the forest of Arden preferable to the superficiality of courtly life in As You Like It. Prospero and Duke Senior may comment on the providential nature of their exile, but neither hesitates for a moment to take over his dukedom when it becomes available.
In examining Prospero’s character, we should be careful not to rely too heavily on his self-evaluation. In the speech beginning on line 89, he tells Miranda that he neglected the affairs of state in order to devote himself to his studies; the he trusted his brother completely and gave him absolute power; that the power brought out the faults in Antonio’s character, and that Antonio’s evil was in sharp contract to Prospero’s generosity. Perhaps we should remember that being a rules involves both rights and responsibilities. Prospero wanted the former but not the latter.
There are three other themes in this scene that should be stressed because of their relevance to the play. The first is astrology, which ties in with Prospero’s study of the occult but which was also a perfectly legitimate area of learning. In line 182 Prospero refers to the ‘most auspicious star’ that led him to the island. This is a reference to the widely held belief that our lives and fortunes are influenced by the movements of the stars and planets. The second theme is the interest in the new discoveries. In line 229, foe example, Ariel refers to ‘the still-vex’d Bermoothes’, meaning ‘the perpetually stormy Bermudas’. The islands were named after the Spanish seaman, Juan de Bernmudez, who mapped them early in the sixteenth century. Even in Shakespeare’s day there were stories in circulation about the sudden fierce storms in the area that came to be known as the Bermuda Triangle.
The third point to stress in the language used in commection with Caliban. His mother is referred to as ‘The foul witch Sycorax’ (line 258). It should be remembered that witches were feared in Shakespeare’s day and could be put to death. it is suggested in line 269 that Sycorax would, in fact, have been killed except for the fact that she was pregnant. Although the usual penalty for being a witch in Shakespeare’s day was death by hanging or burning, the death penalty was not carried out if the woman was pregnant. The reference to her being ‘blue-ey’d’, would have meant something very different to Shakespeare’s audience. Blue-tinged eyelids were traditionally thought to be an early sign of pregnancy. The use of ‘litter’ to mean ‘gave birth to’ in line 282 reduces Caliban to the level of an animal. Notice how often animal terminology is applied to Caliban, for example ‘whelp’; in line 283 and ‘dam’ in line 322. This was one method used by Prospero to stress Caliban’s supposed inferiority. In line 321 Prospero goes further and suggests that Caliban was ‘got by the devil’, meaning ‘fathered by an evil spirit’. This is not the straightforward insult that it might appear to a modern audience. In Shakespeare’s day it ws believed that a woman could have intercourse with an incubus or male demon, and this was regarded as a sin for which there was no forgiveness.
In spite of Prospero’s debasing of Caliban, the ‘salvage and deformed’ slave’s reference to the sun and the moon in line 337 as ‘the bigger light’ and ‘the less’ would have reminded his audience of the language of the newly translated King James Bible (1611).
In Genesis 1:16: ‘And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule of day, and the lesser light to rule the night’.