Role of Trinculo and Stephano

By creating a plot that may not even occur, it creates another twist in the real plot. This makes the original plot more serious because Prospero, who is planning against King Alonso’s party, has another group of people planning against him. The sub-plot acts as another story which reveals more understanding of characters when they have been threatened i.e. Prospero. It increases our understanding and knowledge of some of the less intelligent people of the world, and how they try to overthrow Prospero the ruler. It highlights the wrongs of Prospero, which causes Caliban to behave in that certain way by plotting to murder Prospero. Since Caliban is considered to be part of nature, it suggests that Nature will always try to fight back against civilization, because of Prospero enslaving Caliban.

The characters are a part of the plot against Prospero, and they are the characters which started the plot. Because of this, we can see Prospero and how he treats with those who plot against him. We can see his darker side and how he deals with these people, his anger and how he will use his servants. This brings the darker side of civilization into context as the characters portray their dark side. This is shown as Trinculo and Stephano when drunk care about nothing else except for wine “ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool!” and the use of the words “infinite loss” refer to religious aspects but is actually being used to describe the “unholy” wine. This can reflect how the spiritual ideas created by civilization is sometimes abused and used in the wrong ways. It may suggest that nature is in some aspects more truthful than civilization because it does not have “idiots”.

Civilization is also mocking nature through Trinculo and Stephano mocking Caliban. In Act 4 Scene 1 Caliban tells them to speak quietly, because he knows how powerful Prospero is. However Civilization is sometimes arrogant and in this case does not heed nature’s warning. As a result they are all caught because of their stupidity. There seems to be a change of intelligence because in Act 3 Scene 2 Stephano seems to be more intelligent than Caliban, because Caliban chooses to worship a drunken lord. But in this scene Stephano is not smarter than Caliban; in fact he is significantly more stupid. Their roles as portraying these ideas are important, once again linking nature and civilization.

In conclusion Stephano and Trinculo seem to be unimportant characters, but in fact they have an important role in developing many aspects of the play to increase our understanding. One can say that Caliban is also needed to complete the role of Stephano and Trinculo; Caliban being at the butt of each joke. Even with the contrast of nature and civilization between these characters, it still shows that sometimes civilization is not as powerful and can be very weak.