Prosperos relationships throughout William Shakespeares play the Tempest.
Matthew Meaney 11GR English Coursework. : DRAFT. Prospero’s relationships throughout William Shakespeare’s play the “Tempest”. Since Prospero is the central character of the play, most of the relationships shown and developed in the play concern him. He has his main dealings and relationships with Miranda, Ferdinand, Alonso, Antonio and Caliban. Miranda is his daughter, and was exiled along with him to this island. Prospero has cared solely for her in the last sixteen years, and thus is very protective of her. Prospero is the only male that Miranda has seen. He helps Miranda and Ferdinand to become betrothed, and as a kind of test he makes Ferdinand do chores to establish whether in a sense he is “worthy” of Miranda. Prospero is uneasy about his daughter, Miranda and Ferdinand getting together. When he sees the true love between them, and that his little girl is not so little anymore, he consents to their marriage. His relationship with Ferdinand is much shorter than his relationship with Miranda obviously. In order for him to test Ferdinand Prospero accuses him of various things, such as being a spy, but the fact that Ferdinand repeatedly exclaims, “any burden is made, light if he can see the face of Miranda pleases Prospero”. It almost shows to him that Ferdinand is committed to his daughter and is prepared to do anything for her. Part of Miranda's new status as being grown up is shown in the long scene where Prospero finally tells her the truth about her background and how they came upon the island, and her exclamation of "Oh brave new
world, that hath such people in't." when she sees the noblemen, more people than she has ever seen singly before, all at once. She had only ever seen her father and the half human monster Caliban before and was very intrigued and interested when these new beings appeared on the island. This is all part of Prospero’s plan. Caliban is the monstrous son of the dark witch Sycorax, who was the ruler of the island previously. Caliban then took charge after his mother, of the island and Prosper actually usurped rule from him, a fact which is given very little ...
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world, that hath such people in't." when she sees the noblemen, more people than she has ever seen singly before, all at once. She had only ever seen her father and the half human monster Caliban before and was very intrigued and interested when these new beings appeared on the island. This is all part of Prospero’s plan. Caliban is the monstrous son of the dark witch Sycorax, who was the ruler of the island previously. Caliban then took charge after his mother, of the island and Prosper actually usurped rule from him, a fact which is given very little thought to in the play! Prospero did look kindly onto Caliban at first, but after his attempted rape of Miranda, Prospero’s daughter, Caliban was reduced to the status of common slave, with Prospero as his master. After the attempted rape, it is no wonder that the relationship between Caliban, Miranda and Prospero is very uneasy and Caliban has no respect from Prospero or indeed his daughter Miranda. Prospero continually insults and orders Caliban about, always being backed by the power of his 'art.' This however leads us to wonder if Prospero is abusing his power: ruler of the island. He not only orders Caliban around but he also orders Miranda and Ariel around in certain parts of the text. In return, Caliban insults Prospero and always complains about the work he must do. This is expected. His attitude towards Prospero may be shown by the following stated to Prospero in argument "You taught me language, and that I know how to curse be my profit on't." This fact is true and Caliban did not know how to speak when Prospero arrived on the island and Caliban has learnt to curse. Caliban therefore may be feeling hard done by – at first before Prospero and Miranda arrived on the island he had a free run an island to himself. He was in total control and decided what he did and when he did it. Now Prospero and Miranda have arrived on the island his power has slowly been taken away and he is now left with nothing. He is simply ordered around by Prospero and has no choice in what he does. This leads me to question if Caliban really did try to rape simply in spite of what was happening to him and the loss of power that he was suffering. In the end however, with the tone of reconciliation found at the end of the play, Caliban is forgiven and has the island to himself once more as Prospero sails away. In my opinion it is only now that Caliban is totally happy in the play. Twelve years previous to the opening of the play, Prospero was ousted from his Dukedom, by Antonio who was aided by Alonso, who took over his power similar to the way that Prospero took over all power from Caliban and demoted him to a worthless slave. Thus, when ""my enemies are delivered into my hands"" he can take revenge, while teaching Alonso a lesson. By making Ferdinand wash ashore away from the nobles, the nobles think Ferdinand must have died in the storm. This is all part of Prospero’s plan for revenge which works accordingly well. This is very distressing news to Alonso, since he has just marries off his daughter, Claribel, to the King of Tunis, and with Ferdinand gone he has no heirs to take over the throne when he dies. This show's Prospero's attitude towards Alonso now, but as the play develops, particularly towards the end where Alonso meets up again with Ferdinand, Prospero is seen as forgiving towards Alonso and they talk together as two nobles. This is the first time in the play when, in my opinion, Prospero is portrayed as a forgiving, overly friendly character, usually he is played as the classical old wise man/magician. Prospero takes on the role of mentor and educator as seen here; he has taught Alonso not to be politically expedient; for the sake of a quick foreign alliance he gave up his only daughter. Antonio is quite an evil character: quite soon after the nobles land on the island he and Sebastian hatch a plot to kill the sleeping King Alonso. In fact, it is only the magic 'hand' of Prospero who stops them, again in the role of educator, and in this case, protector. This shows Prospero’s real inner character and I feel that in parts of the ply he puts on a front, a different façade to impress and show others what he is trying to do, for example when he takes on the role of educator. Does he really want to do this or is he simply forced to because he is the “magical” character in the play that has extra special powers that others do not have? Dialogue is the main way in which we find about the character of Antonio with very little speech on his part: he uses his sharp wit with Sebastian to tease the king’s councillor Gonzalo, and at the end of the play we see his attitude towards Prospero, even when he is forgiven for past wrongs, he is still quite stubborn and unrepentant. The dialogue between Prospero and Antonio in the last scene also shows friction between the brothers since the incident, sixteen years before. Another character who Prospero has a deep relationship with is Gonzalo, councillor to King Alonso. Gonzalo helped Prospero and Miranda by giving them food and shelter when they were set afloat on the seas, they would most probably not have survived to make it to the island without his help and I feel that prospero feels in some way indebted to Gonzalo for his good doing and kindness towards them. Gonzalo is also wise and is optimistic in the face of doubt, as illustrated by the fact that while Antonio and Sebastian complain about the island they have landed upon, Gonzalo tells him what he would do to the island if he could: set up a utopia, a land of 'no sovereignty' and equality. At the end of the play, everybody gets together for the last scene; Prospero shows that he hasn't forgotten the kind deed of Gonzalo in the past, as he thanks him for helping them. This exposes some of Prospero’s deeper inner character. Prospero also has a relationship with the character Ariel, similar to t he type of relationship that he had with Caliban. More of a slave master relationship than a loving compassionate relationship like the one that he shares with his daughter Miranda. Prospero, again, is quite harsh to Ariel, as he is to many of the characters in the play. We see this when the spirit, Ariel, asks for its freedom and in Prospero’s opinion it asks to early and Prospero reminds it of its background and verbally scalds Ariel. With the ending of the romance, Ferdinand and Miranda get married, Prospero gets back his Dukedom and gets ready to resume his duties and a kind and fair ruler, Caliban gets back the island to himself once more, Ariel the spirit gets its freedom, and the play ends with reconciliation, and a hope for the future, symbolized as well by the new world., Through the relationships of the characters with Prospero, we can see the process of forgiveness and how the characters have changed for the better.