The tempest - William Shakespeare

Personaggi :

Alonso e Ferdinando = re e figlio del re di Napoli

Sebastiano = Fratello di Alonso

Adriano e Francesco = nobili, cortigiani Napoletani con poche battute.

Prospero = legittimo duca di milano

Miranda = figlia di prospero (nome significa meravigliosa dal latino Miror)

Antonio = fratello di Prospero e suo urlatore

Ariel = spirito dell'aria

Calibano = selvaggio schiavo e deforme (può derivare da 'Carib', termine che indica le
popolazioni del nuovo mondo, selvagge e cannibali)

Trinculo = buffone (deriva da trincare)

Stefano = cantiniere ubriacone

Capitano = capitano della nave

Nostromo

Marinai

Iride, Cerere, giunone, ninfe, mietitori = spiriti

ATTO I

Scena I : la scena si apre con la nave in tempesta e il nostromo preoccupato che la nave si
incagli. Incita i marinai a fare del loro meglio. I personaggi sulla barca sono disperati e pensano di
schiantarsi a breve.

Scena II : la scena si apre con Miranda che prega il padre di placare la furia del mare. Prospero
risponde alla figlia che nulla ha fatto se non per amor suo.

Decide che è giunto il momento per raccontare tutto ciò che è successo 12 anni prima e che li ha
condotti sull'isola. Prospero racconta alla figlia che suo fratello tramò contro di lui assieme al re di
Napoli, mentre lui era impegnato nello studio della sua magia. Una mezzanotte poi, Antonio lo
tradì definitivamente, lasciando aperte le porte del ducato e guidando una truppa traditrice, lo
fece imbarcare su un vascello per niente sicuro insieme anche alla sua piccola figlia (neanche 3
anni). Gli dice che iil figlio del re di Napoli organizzò la loro partenza rifornendoli di ogni premura e
dando a Prospero anche i suoi amatissimi libri. La figlia allora chiede perchè lui a un certo punto
innalza un uragano che fece morire tutti quelli a bordo. Prospero risponde che fu una stella a suo
favore, la stessa a cui ora deve continuare a obbedire se non vuole che le si ritorca contro. Poi
chiama Ariel e gli chiede se sia tutto pronto.

Entra Ariel che dice a Prospero che tutto è andato secondo i piani. Ariel è uno spirito capace di
trasformarsi in energia e fasci di luci. Nella notte ha infatti spaventato così tanto l'equipaggio della
nave del re di Napoli da provocarne il naufragio proprio sulle coste dell'isola dov'è esiliato
prospero. Ariel ha poi nascosto la nave con i marinai in una baia sicura, lasciato il figlio del. Re in
un angolo dell'isola e gli altri sono tenuti d'occhio. La seconda nave di scorta li ha abbandonati
perchè convinti di aver visto la nave del re affondare per le fiamme. Sono soli e li attendono i pieni
malvagi di vendetta di prospero.

Ariel chiede poi a prospero quando sarà liberato e prospero per tutta risposta gli rinfaccia ciò che
lui ha fatto per Ariel, ovvero l'ha liberato dal sortilegio a lui inflitto dalla strega Sycorax (dal greco
scrofa+corvo). la strega era nata a Algeri ed incinta era stata trasportata in esilio sull'isola per le
sue atrocità commesse. Ariel sarebbe dovuto essere il suo schiavo ma si rifiuta di commettere tali
atrocità e allora la strega lo imprigiona nella corteggia di un pino. sarà Prospero che udendo le
sue lamentale lo libera, obbligandolo a servirlo con le sue doti magiche. Prospero parla anche di
calibano, il figlio mostruoso, 'mulatto' e deforme della strega che vive ancora sull'isola.

Prospero si reca con la figlia alla roccia dove calibano è confinato per chiedergli di portare altra
legna da ardere. Calibano non è mai di buone parole con loro e litiga sempre con prospero.
Calibano è infuriato perchè prospero ha preso la sua isola (ereditata da Sycorax), l'ha condannato
a essere suo servo e l'ha anche confinato in una piccola roccia. (Riflessione sul pensiero di
colonizzazione di popolazioni e l'imposizione della lingua del colonizzatore -enfatizzazioni date da
errate traduzioni : race = natura e non razza). Calibano dice che si maldice per aver creduto alle
false moine di prospero e di avergli mostrato ogni fonte e fortuna dell'isola. Prospero dice che gli
voleva bene ma il suo animo di bestia ha prevalso sugli insegnamenti che prospero gli ha dato,
viveva con lui e la figlia nella grotta ma poi calibano ha cercato di stuprare la figlia e prospero lo
ha imprigionato. Prospero tiene sotto pugno calibano minacciandolo con la sua magia. Calibano
crede che prospero sia un mago così potente da poter controllare il Dio mago che aveva dato i
poteri a sua madre.

Arriva Ariel (invisibile per volere di prospero) e Ferdinando.

Ariel canta una canzone di benvenuto con l'aiuto degli spiriti dell'isola.

L'incontro tra Ferdinando, prospero e Miranda si svolge con la falsa preoccupazione di prospero
che ferdinando possa essere arrivato sull'isola apposta per rubargliela come ha fatto con il suo
ducato. Miranda, come secondo i suoi piani, si innamora subito del bel principe e anche lui si
innamora di lei. Prospero fa la scenetta del padre preoccupato che mette in guardia la figlia
dall'usurpatore ma in realtà vuole solo aumentare l'attrazione tra i due. Ferdinando tira anche fuori
la spada per difendersi da prospero che lo vuole incatenare ma gli spiriti invisibili capitanati da
Ariel lo bloccano. Ferdinando è costretto a Seguire prospero e farsi incatenare.

ATTO II

Scena I : la scena si apre ddda un'altra parte dell'isola dove si sono radunati tutti i nobili che
erano presenti sulla nave (eccetto ferdinando ovviamente). Antonio e Sebastiano parlottano tra di
loro continuamente sbeffeggiando Gonzalo che cerca di dare consigli a Alonso. Alonso è però
inconsolabile perchè teme di aver perso per sempre anche suo figlio ferdinando, oltre che sua
figlia Clarissa data in sposa al re di Tunisi. Gonzalo affronta apertamente Sebastiano e Antonio e li
intima di continuare a ridere del nulla come hanno fatto fin'ora perchè tanto sono solo due che
parlano, ma a fatti zero (prendere la luna se stesse ferma 5 settimana nella sua sfera).

Entra Ariel suonando una musica solenne. Tutti si addormentano per la musica di Ariel tranne
Antonio, Sebastiano e Alonso. Sebastiano e Antonio dicono al re che gli faranno da guardia e
Alonso cade anche lui nel sonno.

Quando tutti dormono Antonio inizia a cercare di convincere Sebastiano a uccidere il fratello e
dis-ereditare sua nipote Clarissa affinché egli diventi unico re di Napoli. Antonio cerca prima in
modo sottile 'per tastare il terreno' poi sempre più esplicitamente di convincere Sebastiano a
uccidere Alonso proprio mentre sta dormendo. Lo convince e sono pronti al delitto ma entra
subito Ariel che sussurra all'orecchio del fedele Gonzalo di svegliarsi, il quale subito sveglia anche
il re. Gonzalo e il re vedono lo sguardo terrorizzato di Antonio e Sebastiano e gli. Chiedono
spiegazioni. Loro rispondo che hanno sentito un rumore fortissimo come ruggito di leoni e si sono
messi in guardia. Alonso allora decide di muoversi da lì e andare nell'entroterra a cercare
Ferdinando.

Scena II : calibano stavo portando la legna da Prospero come da lui ordinato. Lungo la strada il
temporale si fa risentire e Trinculo (uno dei naufraghi ubriaconi) incontra calibano e decide di
ripararsi sotto il suo mantello perche non c'erano altri ripari. Poco dopo arriva anche Stefano che
è spaventato dalla vista di Calibano, lo scambi per un pesce ma non ha paura di lui per il
proverbio 'un uomo a 4 zampe non potrà prendere terreno a un nobil uomo' (4 gambe = 2 trinculo
e 2 calibano). Trinculo riconosce la voce di Stefano e si ritrovano. Entrambi pensavano che l'altro
fosse annegato. Stefano offre da bere liquore a calibano (pensava avesse al 'febbre') e calibano si
innamora del liquore. Crede che Stefano sia un Dio sceso dalla luna e gli giura fedeltà, tutto per in
cambio il suo liquore celestiale (esattamente come aveva fatto con prospero 12 anni prima per via
dei poteri magici). Calibano gli promette di fargli vedere tutte le fonti dell'isola e si mettono in
cammino. Trinculo e Stefano pensano che tutta la compagnia sia morta e perciò si ritengono i
padroni dell'isola.

ATTO III

Scena I : per ordine di prospero Ferdinando è costretto a trasportare centinaia di ceppi e impilarli
uno sull'altro. Miranda arriva a fargli visita, piange e vuole aiutarlo, poco dopo confessa di voler
diventare sua moglie. Anche Ferdinando è innamorato di lei e le chiede subito di sposarsi.
Prospero da lontano vede la scena ed è Felicissimo, anche se non sorpreso, dato che
probabilmente è stato lui ad orchestrare tutto ciò.

Scena II : calibano cerca di convincere Stefano a uccidere prospero (che Calibano detesta) e
diventare re dell'isola, sposando anche Miranda. Trinculo sarà il vicerè dell'isola. Ariel assiste a
tutta la scena e cerca di dissuadere Stefano dalle parole di Calibano dando del bugiardo a
Calibano con la voce di Trinculo, che però ha come risposta un pugno da parte di Stefano.
Calibano dice a Stefano che Prospero è solito andare a dormire il pomeriggio e sarà allora che lo
dovrà uccidere. Calibano li guida verso la casa di Prospero e Ariel li segue (invisibile) suonando
una melodia.

Scena III : entrano nella scena Alonso. Sebastiano, Antonio, Gonzalo, Adriano, Francesco e altri.
Gonzalo è stanco e vuole riposare, tutti sono affamati. Decidono di fermarsi e accamparsi e
Sebastiano e antonio decidono che uccideranno Alonso quella notte stessa. Mentre si iniziano a
accampare sentono una strana musica proveniente dal cielo e arrivano dal bosco delle strane
forme che imbandiscono un banchetto (sono gli spiriti di Prospero, coordinati da Ariel). Prospero è
invisibile e guarda la scena dall'alto. Sono tutti felicissimi. Poi tra tuoni e fulmini entra Ariel sotto
forma di un'arpia che divora il banchetto (scena che potrebbe riprendere il banchetto di Enea
dell'eneide). Il rinfresco sparisce e rimane Ariel che inizia il suo discorso : siete peccatori e il
destino vi ha fatti sbarcare su quest'isola. Voi spodestate il duca di milano e lo abbandonaste qui
con la figlia. I peccati non vengono mai lasciati impuniti. Alonso, tuo figlio è perso e tu sei
condannato a una lenta rovina che potrà essere sconfitta solo con un sincero pentimento. Poi
Ariel sparisce tra i tuoni.

Prospero si congratula con lui e gli altri spiriti e va a trovare Ferdinando e Miranda.

Alonso e gli altri sono scioccati e antonio e Sebastiano promettono di combattere i diavoli (gli
spiriti). Gonzalo prega un giovane, Adriano, di seguire i 3 disperati e di fermali prima che
compiano qualche gesto dato dalla pazzia.

ATTO IV

Scena I : dopo aver concesso la mano della figlia a ferdinando e averlo messo in guardia
sull'importanza della castità prima del matrimonio, decide di inscenare per loro una masque con
Venere, Ceres (dea dell'agricoltura) e giunone che rinascono l'importanza della castità prima del
matrimonio e il pericolo dell'agire diversamente. Infine Giunone, riconosce la virtù degli amanti e
ne benedice le nozze augurando prosperità a vita. Ferdinando ne è meravigliato. Entrano altre
ninfe e i mietitori ma prospero all'improvviso interrompe tutto. È molto agitato ma dice ai ragazzi
che non si devono preoccupare.

Entra Ariel che riferisce a prospero il piano malefico di Stefano, calibano e Trinculo e allora
insieme a Ariel escogita un piano. Attrae i 3 furfanti ad un albero al quale ha appeso tanti vestiti
(specchietto per le allodole), e quando loro sono tutti presi dal recuperare gli abiti, assieme ad
Ariel Prospero entra in scena cavalcando cani e levrieri e andando contro i 3 furfanti. Essi infine
escono terrorizzati dalla scena.

ATTO V

Scena I : entra Prospero vestito da mago con ariele e dice che il piano è quasi al termine. Ariel
dice che tutti i prigionieri sono esattamente dove li voleva prospero e dice anche che gli fanno
tenerezza. Allora prospero decide di mandare ariele a prenderli e intanto riflette su tutto ciò che ha
combinato negli anni con la magia e decide di fare rinuncia dei suoi poteri di mago. Entrano tutti i
personaggi, tranne Miranda e Ferdinando. Prospero scioglie l'incantesimo che era su di loro e loro
ritornano in se. Poi elogia Gonzalo per la sua fedeltà al re. Rimprovera Alonso per come ha
trattato lui e sua figlia Miranda, e rimprovera anche suo fratello Sebastiano di esserne stato
complice. Rimprovera anche Antonio (fratello di Prospero) di averlo diseredato e che con l'aiuto
di Sebastiano voleva uccidere anche Alonso per far diventare re di Napoli Sebastiano. Prospero
comunque perdona Sebastiano, Antonio e Alonso.

Prospero manda Ariel a prendere le sue nobili vesti e si presenta a tutti come Prospero,
Oltraggiato duca di Milano. Richiede il suo regno ad Alonso in cambio di perdonare tutte le sue
colpe. Il re Alonso vuole sapere da prospero come ha fatto a sopravvivere sull'isola per tutti quegli
anni, anche per riuscire a credere alla sua identità. In cambio della restituzione del suo regno,
Prospero restituisce Ferdinando ad Alonso, il quale lo pensava morto. Ferdinando presenta subito
Miranda a suo padre come sua moglie e Alonso la accoglie di buon grado.

Infine arrivano il nostromo e il capitano della nave che raccontano di essersi svegliati da poco e di
essere stati condotti lì. Dicono anche che la nave è stata messa magicamente a nuovo (è stato
Ariel).

Ariel libera infine Calibano, Stefano e Trinculo vestiti con i costumi rubati. Prospero li denuncia
davanti al Re come e ladri e cospiratori per la sua morte (di Prospero). Prospero dice infine che se
i 3 vogliono il suo perdono dovranno risistemargli la grotta a nuovo. Prospero invita Alonso e gli
altri a passare la notte nella sua grotta e promette di raccontargli tutto ciò che è successo.
L'indomani salperanno per Napoli e celebreranno le nozze tra Miranda e Ferdinando.

EPILOGO
Prospero : rivolgendosi verso il pubblico lo prega di 'liberalo' dal sortilegio che lo lega all'isola con
un applauso, in modo tale che potrà salpare per Napoli. Le parole di lode del pubblico saranno il
vento per le sue vele. Dichiara di aver abbandonato la magia. La sua salvezza sarà il perdono
grazie alla sua misericordia di tutti quelli che gli hanno fatto del male.

ANALISI
Dating
First recorded production 1st November 1611 before King James I at Whitehall by the King’s Men.
External evidence

King’s Men = company of which Shakespeare (Sh) was shareholder and member.

Probably, before this, there were other performances for the public at the Globe or the Blackfriars
(both theatres belonging to the King’s Men). The play was likely to be composed before these
performances.

Internal Evidence: References to a shipwreck in the Bermudas occurred in the summer of 1609
but described in pamphlets written in late 1610

The Tempest dates from 1611.

Different versions
Performed again at court in February 1613 on the occasion of the engagement between the king’s
daughter Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine (a German Prince). The masque in Act IV was
particularly suitable for the occasion (it is in honour of a couple made of a prince and a princess:
The Elector and Elizabeth = Ferdinand and Miranda) the masque has probably been specially
added for this second court performance. Critics’ doubts due to some incongruities here and
there: were some parts cut to make space for the masque?

The Tempest in the First Folio (1623)

The earliest collection was edited by Condell and Heminges (Sh’s fellow- actors). The Tempest is
the first play of the collection. Carefully edited: division into acts and scenes, punctuation, list of
characters, elaborate stage directions describing the stage picture and sound-effects – > they
refer to a staging at court, where elaborate scenery and stage machinery were available

No Real Sources but “Suggestions”

Sh did not invent his own stories bur re-elaborated old ones.

There are only 3 plays for which we cannot find precise sources in chronicles, romance or
folktales. One of them is The Tempest.

There are German and Spanish works of 16th century where a ruler-magician withdraws from
everyday life and takes his daughter with him. Similarities are not close enough to declare them as
its sources.

No sources but “suggestive groupings of ideas and feelings” taken from other works.

The Bermudas
Prospero’s island is definitely in the Mediterranean but Ariel mentions the Bermudas (I.ii.229).

3 pamphlets, published in late 1610, recount a particular shipwreck in the Bermudas, where a
fleet of ships carrying colonists to Virginia was attacked by a terrible storm , which separated the
Sea Adventure from the other ships. The expedition leaders, Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George
Somers, were on board.

1) A True Reportory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates (by William Strachey);

2) A Discovery of the Bermudas (by Silvester Jourdain);

3) The True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in Virginia (official report of the Council of
Virginia).

All Three Pamphlets They recount how the ship managed to reach the Bermudas, the voyagers
landed there and much of the cargo was finally saved. After some time they sailed to Virginia.
Thomas Gates, the governor of the colony, found that mutinies had broken in his absence

story of a storm, shipwreck and rebellion, as in The Tempest.

They found the Bermudas more comfortable than their contemporary name of “the Devil’s
Islands” would have suggested.

1) William Strachey’s Pamphlet

Shakespeare probably knew Strachey personally.

Vivid description of the storm, how the voyagers experienced it influence on Act I, scene i.

Description of St Elmo’s fire this is the form in which Ariel appears (I. ii. 196-8). See book p. 34.

He mentions that the voyagers drank to each other when they thought they were about to drown
“What, must our mouths be cold?” (I. i. 53)

Wonder of the passengers when they landed at the Bermudas, described as “a most prodigious
and enchanted place” (not the Devil’s Islands). Same in The Tempest.

2) Silvester Jourdain’s pamphlet

All Three Pamphlets

- Emphasis on the part played by Divine Providence in bringing about the voyagers’ salvation
same in the play, both in the survival of the Royal party and that of Prospero and Miranda.

- For the pamphleteers the shipwreck is not simply a physical ordeal but has a moral and spiritual
meaning . Sea and storm are natural symbols of men’s inner experience.

- Word “Redemption” in Strachey’s title. Quotations in The True Declaration : “Gulf of despair” at
sea and “tempest of dissension” that awaits the voyagers in Virginia same sense of the
connection of the physical and the Human Renewal through Divine Providence

• These pamphlets had a great inspirational value and reinforced ways of seeing life that were
already present in his drama.

• Much of the colonisation of North America was carried out by men fleeting from religious
persecution (Pilgrim Fathers) the literature of voyages and colonisation is pervaded by a sense of
religious mission and a spiritual meaning.

• The New World offers a New Life theme of human renewal through a merciful providence already
present in others of his late comedies. But Sh. does not share the naivety of the pamphleteers:
the “brave new world” (V, i, 183) Miranda sees is actually an old world (the world of Italy) and
Prospero replies: “’Tis new to thee” (184).

Michel de Montaigne: Of the Cannibals

Published in English translation by John Florio in 1603. Sh. certainly read it. A copy with the poet’s
signature was supposed to be at the British Museum.

Montaigne: talks about how American Indians have established a kind of society exactly of the
kind Gonzalo imagines (II, i, 145-60) and contrasts the innocent perfection of their natural life with
the corruption due to “human art” in supposedly civilised societies.

Contrast between nature and art: a theme in the play. Caliban is nature at its lowest. Prospero,
with his moral and magical knowledge, is art at its highest.

Nurture and Nature

Nurture = Upbringing, education, and environment, contrasted with inborn characteristics, as an

influence on or determinant of personality (Oxford Dictionary).

The contrast between Nurture (or Art) and Nature was common in Renaissance thought.

Is Sh. following Montaigne’s idealism about human nature?

Arguments: pro and against Montaigne

Against: Caliban is the natural man in the play. Sh. depicts Caliban as half a beast and part devil.

Pro: he has also traces of nobility if compared to the total debasement of Trīnculo and Stephano,
representing the dregs of civilization. Caliban speaks in verse unlike the other two.

Another Possible Source of Inspiration

Thomas’ s History of Italy (1549). Confused stories of usurpation and banishment. Name Prospero
(from Latin: “I cause to succeed”), suggests his role in the play.

In Sh.’s times Italy was divided into many small states whose alliances and enmities changed with
great rapidity.

The human characters come from this historical Italy.

Wholly composed by Shakespeare

• In the late stages of his career Sh. seems to have the habit of collaborating with other
dramatists also writing for the King’s Men , for example John Fletcher. The Tempest is the last
play wholly composed by Sh.

• Pericles (1608-9), Henry VIII (1612-13) and The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613) = products of such
collaboration. Co-written.

Cymbeline (1609-10), The Winter’s Tale (1610-11) and The Tempest (1611) = a linked group. Share
the same violence of expression, unreality of atmosphere, and improbability of plotting (Lytton
Strachey).

Act I, scene I The Storm at Sea

Collapse of social roles due to a natural disaster = nature vs social conventions.

Political power and social hierarchies are vain

Startling, violent realism in the opening scene. We are plunged into the fury/confusion of a
tempest.

Human frailty vs natural events

Realism versus enchanted world in the rest of the play. To the shipwrecked party it seems they
have been transported into a fairy-tale. Their experiences are strange, wonderful, unnatural (words
that echo in the play).

A text rich of images of sleep and dreaming.

Realism in Scene One (I i)

Loud noises/voices: mariners have to make themselves heard against “a tempestuous noise of
thunder and lightning”. (stage directions, p. 6) and the shrilling of the master’s whistle.

Language of seamanship: use of nautical terms and vocabulary related to manoeuvres and orders
in an emergency state at sea.

Sounds: probable use of devices: human voices, drums, stones or bullets rolled on a wooden
floor, rockets.

Use of prose, quick pace, swear words.

Realistic and Coarse Language

Indirect allusions: Gonzalo: “He has no drowning mark upon him – his complexion is perfect
gallows” (30)

“A plague upon this howling” (35)

“Hang cur!” (43) “A pox o’ your throat” (40)= smallpox (vaiolo), pox (syphilis).

The ship is “as leaky as an unstanched wench” (I,I, 48) = the ship is compared with a woman
leaking liquids according to the theory of humours women’s bodies are more humid than
men’s (milk, tears, urine, menstrual blood) .

Dreamlike or Nightmarish Events

Voices and songs coming from nowhere

Mysteriously appearing and disappearing banquets (Act III, iii) and masques (act IV)

The sensation (so common in nightmares and dreams) of desperately needing to take action and
yet finding oneself paralysed.

This happens to Ferdinand (I, ii, 466 + 489), when he draws his sword to respond to Prospero’s
threats and to Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian, when they want to fight against Ariel (III, iii, 60).

How do characters behave in this enchanted world?

The noblemen see their experience as being like the “strange tales told by travellers of unicorns
and phoenixes” (III, 3, 21-24).

On seeing Miranda the first time, Ferdinand assumes she must be a goddess and Alonso’s
reaction is the same.

The evil members are inclined to see the island’s strangeness as the work of the devils, an
explanation that reflects their own natures. Sebastian: “But one fiend at a time,/ I’ll fight the
legions o’ver” (III, iii, 102-3). He will also say: “The devil speaks in him” (V, I, 129), referring to
Prospero’s powers.

Act I, ii
• The text turns to poetry: iambic pentameters (good examples: read lines 23-24)

• Prospero takes off his magical garment (24) “So lie there my art” = metonymy, a figure of
speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of
something associated in meaning with that thing or concept: a tool for the job or person (the
press for the journalists), the container for the thing in it (dish for the food).

• Prospero’s story. He has been on the island for 12 years. Miranda was 3 when they came, now
she’s 15.

• Miranda remembers as in a “dream” (45).

• The speech is twisted, almost shattered by the pain and anger it causes Prospero to recollect
these shameful events. He is absorbed in his vivid memories, sometimes thinking aloud.

• He is anxious that Miranda should listen “dost thou attend me?” (78), “Thou attend’st not” (87),
“Dost thou hear?” (106)

• The dialogue alternating Prospero’s and Miranda’s voices is more varied, less boring.

Has Prospero any faults?

“Me poor man, my library was dukedom large enough” (110-11).

“The government I cast upon my brother,/And to my state grew stranger” (75-6)

Prospero renounced his duty as a sovereign, like Lear who had divided his reign among his
daughters. As in Sh’s history plays, the King must be up to his role. Prospero’s trustfulness
encouraged his brother’s disloyalty (94).

See note p. 22 referring to lines 75-77

Typical Examples of Elizabethan Grammar

Lines 18-19: naught (nothing), whence (from where)

Lines 23-30: Thou, thee, thy, mine, art, heard’st

Lines 51-2: “If thou rememb’rest aught ere thou cam’est here, How thou cam’st here thou mayst”

Verbal and noun inflections: conjugations and declensions.

Prospero’s Tale (I, ii)

Yet, we see the island and its inhabitants not only through the voyagers’ eyes but also through
Prospero’s.

Prospero tells Miranda about his magical powers, but also his tragic past.

Although everywhere in the play there are suggestions that “Providence divine” played its part (I,
ii, 159), Prospero’s explanation belongs to the world of men, not to fairy-tale or miracle.

Prospero’s magical powers are integrated with the realistic political story of his past.

Remember Gonzalo’s help (I, ii, 159-168).

Prospero’s Knowledge
He acquires his powers by a long process of study. It was this long seclusion that gave his brother
the occasion and incentive to take his place.

His magic is natural or white, not black. It derives not from the aid of devils, but from observation
and co-operation with natural phenomena like the scientists’ work. Only one point seems to go
beyond this: “graves at my command/ Have waked their sleepers, ope’d, and let ‘em forth”

(V, i, 48-50).

Jan Kott: Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1965)

Kott explains this speech as describing power which is essentially scientific. For Sh’s time it was a
dream but now, in the nuclear era, it is a reality. Nuclear physics has really: “bedimmed/The
noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,/And ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vault/Set
roaring war” (V, i 41-4).

Prospero can see beyond common man’s knowledge, his studies make him able to imagine the
world of the future.

What was happening or had just happened in Shakespeare’s Time? (1564-1616)

• 1492 Cristopher Columbus reaches the New World (San Salvador)

• 1516 Utopia by Thomas More

• 1519 Magellano’s circumnavigation around the world and Cortez’s conquest of Mexico

• 1519 Leonardo da Vinci dies

• 1532 Machiavelli writes Il Principe, Pizzarro conquers Peru

• 1543 Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium

• 1559 Elizabeth comes to the throne •

• 1580 Essays by Montaigne (translated into English in 1603)

• 1600 Giordano Bruno is burnt for heresy

• 1564 Michelangelo dies and Galileo was born

Kott: Prospero’s Drama is the Renaissance Man’s Drama

Sh. lives in a changing world. Great voyages and the discovery of new lands undermined the idea
of the earth as flat and tripartite (Europe, Africa and Asia). The revolution of astronomy and the
scientific advances, especially in physics, question the old order of the universe. Men like
Leonardo conceive of possible flying vehicles and war machines able to destroy fortresses (his
designs show many projects but primitive technology did not allow him to realise them).
Extraordinary monuments are built.

Man is shown in all his power and potentials but also in his smallness.

Aristotle’s theory of geocentric universe, re- elaborated by Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy . A

theory still followed in the Middle Ages Prime

Mover = God

Copernicus’ heliocentric universe

Fear, Apprehension, Anxiety of Renaissance Man

Royal power, moral order, nature, the universe are deprived of their theological power; the
harmony of macrocosm and microcosm (that reflected and supported each other) is lost the
drama of the Renaissance man derives from a bitter wisdom, the loss of his illusions and
obstinate hope.

Prospero’s tale is a summary of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Antonio does not respect the
sacredness of the legitimate sovereign. It is a story of conspiracy and violence, the struggle for
achieving power. Antonio enacts the Prince.

Respect of Classical Unities in The Tempest

Unities in drama: the three principles derived from Aristotle’s Poetics. A play should have a single
action represented as occurring in a single place and within the course of a day. These principles
were called, respectively, unity of action, unity of place and unity of time.

Unlike many others of Sh’s plays, The Tempest respects the 3 dramatic unities (in Winter’s Tale, 16
years pass between act II and III).

Unities of Place and Time

The place is the island (or the sea in front of it). Events set somewhere else or in the past are
narrated and summarised by the characters.

The time is just a little longer than the time of performance. The tempest is 2 hours after midday (I,
ii, 239-41) and the final reconciliation is at six (V, i, 4). Then they all go to dinner. The same
happened for the performances, which generally lasted from three in the afternoon to six.

One Action, but Replicated

Kott maintains that Sh’s plays are based on the principle of analogy more than on the principle of
the unity of action. The central action is duplicated, triplicated, quadruplicated within the plays at
different levels, with different tones and modes, in different social classes, in a lyrical or grotesque
way.

The central action is the violent usurpation of power.

Conspiracies
1) Prospero is ousted from power (supplanted) by Antonio

2) Ariel is ousted by Sycorax

3) Caliban is ousted by Prospero

4) Sebastian and Antonio try to kill and oust Alonso (you see conspiracy from the very beginning,
as in a a laboratory, a gratuitous act of violence and greed)

5) Trinculo, Stephano and Caliban try to supplant Prospero (grotesque and comical parody)

The Island is not Utopia or Arcadia but the Representation of History/Reality

The Tempest is like a play within the play.

Two prologues: the storm and the story narrated by Prospero. Two epilogues: the final scene of
reconciliation and Prospero’s final monologue to the public = frame to the play within the play.

The Tempest is like a morality play, directed by Prospero, within this frame. At the end, characters
and public have confronted the same ordeals (which lasted the same amount of time).

Inner Tempest
• Learning by trial: first the tempest, then the experience of madness caused by the apparitions
on the island. Inner tempest = insanity. The island = a maze (labirinto).

• Prospero wants the royal party to undergo some trials, to experience history (what has
happened), to repeat the same gestures that led to his usurpation. The characters have been
“jostled from their senses”, says Prospero (V, i, 158)

• The suffering caused by Prospero (with the help of Ariel) are a punishment and a cure. The
alleged loss of his son causes a change of personality in Alonso.

In the final scene therapeutic madness is cured with the help of soothing music (“a solemn air”: V,
I, 58).

• A critic defined Prospero a psychiatrist. Shock treatment.

Gonzalo’s comments
Gonzalo acts as the fool in other plays (he is sometimes ridiculed but tells the truth and the moral)

Gonzalo interprets the characters’ insanity as a consequence of their guilt. (III, iii, 104-6)

Gonzalo: “in one voyage/Did Clarabel her husband find at Tunis; And Ferdinand, her brother,
found a wife/Where he himself was lost; Prospero his dukedom /In a poor isle; and all of us
ourselves, When no man was his own.” (V, I, 205-213). Everybody was “out of point”, now they
have found themselves.

Return to the Beginning

At the end the world returns to the moral order, after the play has shown its frailty. The circle
closes, everybody goes back to the point of departure.

In the histories a new king replaces another. Here the same duke rules on his dukedom as before.
Caliban will be the lord of the island again.

Return. History is always the same: it is a history of violence, usurpation, conspiracies. Repetition
seems to show an evil inseparable from human nature.

Concept of Theatrum Mundi = All the world is a stage.

Shakespere’s theatre shows the Theatrum Mundi

A Fairy-tale with a Serious Meaning

It touches important issues of conspiracy and usurpation, repentance and forgiveness, art
(nurture) and nature.

It reflects the problems, dilemmas, crises of the Renaissance man.

At the end of the play it does not claim “they all lived happily ever after”. All is harmonious for the
moment, but the future is outside the play, when the characters will have left the enchanted
island. When the play is over, the real world continues. The Epilogue reminds us of it.

Past Readings of the Play

As a court féerie = fairyland (Dryden had it performed this way in 1669) or as an allegory. For ex.:
Sh’s valediction (congedo) to the theatre, with Prospero = Sh. and Ariel = poetic inspiration.
Another critic saw it as an allegorical representation of ancient initiation ceremonies.

Prospero not just a fairy-tale enchanter, but the “magician” of our times: the scientist, the
physicist or psychiatrist. Unlike the scientist however he is emotionally involved in the subject-
matter of his experiment.

Supernatural and Fantastic Elements

They have a central part and a serious meaning. They are treated realistically. They cause
suffering to the characters who must undergo a trial.

In past readings critics saw them in allegorical terms. For ex. Ariel = poetic inspiration.

The risk of a rigid pattern of abstractions is to obscure the experience of suffering which is central
to the play and is caused by supernatural means.

Ariel: the Servant

• He obeys Prospero’s orders, is his assistant, servant, angel and executioner (aguzzino). He is
but air and is referred to as a bird. Visible only to Prospero and the audience. For the others he is
just a voice, some music.

• He is not just Caliban’s opposite

Fantastic figure with little of the human in it. He has an innocent cruelty, a detachment in
tormenting the royal party. More aware of his ingenuity than of their suffering. Only at one point he
is aware of it (V, i, 17-20).

• Characterised by a distinctive language, delicate and musical, remote from the earth. His great
desire is simply freedom.

Ariel: A Serious Airy Spirit

In the past it was performed as a ballerina, with tulle and veils. Kott suggests he should be played
by a thin young man with a melancholy face and shouldn’t have a precise/historical costume (just
black or white or a neutral one).

Critics saw it as a symbol of the soul, thought, intelligence, electricity, air and Divine Grace as
opposed to Nature.

Caliban: the Slave

He is the most important character after Prospero (Knott)

Baldini (Manualetto Shakespeariano, Einaudi): the poetic world of the play is within the triangle
Prospero – Ariel – Caliban. Everything else is poetically inferior.

Caliban speaks in verse like the “noble” characters and Ariel, who are part of the enacted drama
(unlike Trinculo and Stephano, who are just comical).

In the Storm in Act I Sh. uses prose, too confusion of natural elements, social differences are
erased, all humans are the same in their paucity.

He has his own individuality, does not look like anything known, cannot be closed in an allegory.

The fantasy of Caliban is grounded in Sh.’s time: he is a version (a sombre one) of the stories of
the inhabitants of the Americas brought back by the first explorers and colonisers. He is not the
“noble savage”. He is all natural instincts, untouched by art.

He speaks a material language, desires material things (food, power, wealth, sex). Tendency to
express thoughts as concrete realities. His suffering is physical. But he can also arouse pity.

See: III, ii, 86-93 (an evil, cruel being) and 135- 143 (he can be poetic)

He is more man than monster. He has learnt to speak (language distinguishes man and animals),
so now he can curse. (I, ii, 364-5)

Caliban’s plot is the only defeat of Prospero’s education on the island.

Caliban has been cheated twice: by Prospero’s art (I, ii, 332 and III, ii 40-3) and by Stephano (he
has taken a drunkard for a god). He recognizes he was a stupid to worship “this dull fool” (V, I,
296). He will probably stay on the island, unreconciled, as a King.

Trinculo and Stephano are grotesque (and comic). Caliban is grotesque and tragic. The play
focuses on his drama too. His desire of freedom is not abstract as for Ariel, but means food and
rest from labour. He cannot surrender to his destiny of slave.

A critic (Jean Guéhenno, Caliban parle, 1928) saw Caliban as a personification of the proletariat,
the lower classes.

The Epilogue
A magician who has renounced his magic, an actor deprived of his role: he confronts the
audience deprived of their illusion.

There is nothing to identify Prospero with Sh. (the man retiring from the stage), but there is much
to suggest that we might equate the art of the magician with the Shakespearian art of the play
(“art to enchant”, Epilogue, 14).

Reference to Prospero’s life which continues after the play (through the public?) and to one of the
main themes: forgiveness and God’s mercy.

The Most Famous Quote:

After the masque IV, i, 156-7 (p. 186), Prospero says: “We are such stuff/As dreams are made on,
and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

Fleetingness of the masque and caducity of life .

Shakespeare’s Geography
Shakespeare’s geography is poetic and functional to the play. In The Winter’s Tale Bohemia is on
the sea; in Two Gentlemen of Verona the characters sail from Verona and Milan. In The Tempest,
Prospero and Miranda are put on a boat and left adrift in the sea (I, ii 144): Milan on the sea?

A Sense of Strangeness The voyagers’ view of the island

A sense of “strangeness” pervades the play. The characters believe that magical powers are at
work.

Some (the villains) think they are the devil’s work Sebastian (III, iii, 102-3 and V, i, 129) .

Others think it is a miracle. Alonso: “These are not natural events; they strengthen/From strange to
stranger” (V, i, 227-8). When he meets the boatswain again and learns the ship is undamaged
“This is as strange a maze as e’er men trod,/And there is in this business more than nature/ Was
ever conduct of. Some oracle/must rectify our knowledge.” (V, i, 242-4)

Where is the island?

From the references given (Naples, Tunis, Algiers), it could be Malta, Pantelleria or Lampedusa.

All the action is in the Mediterranean but Ariel brings dew from the still-vexed Bermudas (I, ii, 229)
and Sycorax’s god is Setebos, a god from Patagonia (I, ii, 374-5)

Sh. draws from contemporary knowledge and experience: this is a world in which people cross
the ocean to colonise new faraway lands (the expedition to Virginia, West Indies), the inhabited
globe has doubled and the earth is round not only for astronomers but for bankers and
tradesmen, too.

The Postcolonial Reading

Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin The Empire Writes Back (1989)

• What is the canon?

A body of texts but also a set of reading practices, the enactment of innumerable individual and
community assumptions about genre, literature, writing.

Subversion of a canon = the bringing to consciousness of these practices and institutions and
their articulation, not only by the replacement of some texts with others or redeployment
(ridistribuzione) of some hierarchy of value within them but also by the reconstruction of the so-
called “canonical” through alternative reading practices.

Postcolonial Reading
• Watching reality from the periphery (the margin), not the centre of the Empire.

• Taking into the consideration the effects of colonialism on the colonised, for example hybridity
and “in-betweenness”.

• Taking into consideration the cultural, religious, economic background of the colonised.

• The “other” may have a different ontology (=philosophy of existence): paradigmatic versus
syntagmatic societies Paradigmatic = cyclic interpretation of the world, communication between
man and the world, the world is given fixed ordered. Syntagmatic = communication is between
man and man, the world can change.

• Eurocentric view necessarily defines “otherness”. The “other” is a relative term, depending on
the point of view.

Postcolonial Readings of The Tempest

• George Lamming’s The Pleasures of Exile (essays, 1960) dismantles the hierarchy Prospero,
Ariel, Caliban. This is the most influential re-reading of the play.

• Duplicity and hypocrisy with which this dispossession is enacted. Stress is laid on Caliban’s
eagerness and willingness with which he initially offers to share the profits of the island with the
shipwrecked Prospero and Miranda (I,ii,331). Prospero’s assertion is that in exchange he has
given Caliban the gift of language (I,ii,364). Lamming undercuts (svaluta) this. Caliban’s answer is
legitimate “my profit on it is to curse” .

George Lamming (from Barbados)

Caliban is not the creature outside civilization “on whose nature/Nurture can never stick” (IV, i,
188-9) but a human being (specifically a West Indian) whose human status is denied by the
European claims to an exclusive human condition.

The issue of good government: Prospero is the legitimate duke of Milan and is trying to regain his
reign. But his dispossession of Caliban’s inheritance is evidenced as an injustice: re- reading of
the political allegory of The Tempest.

Leslie Fiedler: The Stranger in Shakespeare (1973)

A text about the borderline figure which defines the limits of the humans in Sh. = the stranger
the Jew, the woman, the witch.

For Fiedler, the play concerns the myth of America and of the Indian, who is the last stranger in
Sh., “the last stranger, in fact, whom this globe can know, until we meet ... the first extra-
terrestrial, whom, until now, we

have only fantasised and dreamed.”

The play represents the first encounter of Europe with figures that cannot be accommodated
within the medieval idea of a close tripartite world (Europe, Asia, Africa)

“No respectable production of the play these days can afford to ignore the sense in which it is a
parable of transatlantic imperialism, the colonisation of the West.”

It is a prophetic, visionary play.

Ania Loomba: Colonialism/Postcolonialism (1998)

Caliban curses Prospero, yet he cannot revolt outright. He must obey because his art
(knowledge, technology, science) is of such power that it would control his mother’s god Setebos
(reference to the New World: I, ii, 374).

Prospero’s continuing power lies not only in his ability to fool Caliban or Ariel but in the threat of
violence (here to Ariel): “If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak/And peg thee in his knotty
entrails till/Thou hast howled away twelve winters” (I, ii, 294-6)

The Tempest: an Increasingly Stimulating Text

The Tempest offered a paradigm (example, model) for a postcolonial reading of canonical texts:
re-reading a text from a different point of view to see what is hidden behind it, to highlight the
untold, to see it from a different perspective.

• Also, there has been a wide use of its characters, imagery and structure as a general metaphor
for imperial-margin relations.

• Many anglophone and francophone writers of the postcolonial world have written answers to
The Tempest from the perspectives of Caliban, Ariel and Miranda. Lamming has re-written The
Tempest in a postcolonial perspective in two novels: Water with Berries and Natives of My Person.
Aimé Césaire: Une Tempête.

Edward Said: Culture and Imperialism, p. 213.

According to George Lamming Caliban “is the excluded which is eternally below possibility... He
is seen as an occasion, a state of existence which can be appropriated and exploited to the
purpose of another’s own development. If that is so, then Caliban must be shown to have a
history that can be perceived on its own, as the result of Caliban’s own effort. [...] The main thing
is to be able to see that Caliban has a history capable of development, as part of the process of
work, growth and maturity to which only Europeans had seemed entitled. (continues )

Each new American reinscription of The Tempest is therefore a local version of the old grand
story, invigorated and inflected by the pressures of an unfolding political and cultural history. [...]
For modern Latin Americans and Caribbeans, it is Caliban himself not Ariel, who is the main
symbol of hybridity, with its stranger and unpredictable mixture of attributes. This is truer to the
Creole, or mestizo composite of the new America.”

“How does a culture seeking to become independent of imperialism imagine its own past? One
choice is to do as Ariel does, that is, as a willing servant of Prospero. Ariel does what he is told
obligingly, and when he gains his freedom, he returns to his native element, a sort of bourgeois
native untroubled by his collaboration with

Prospero. (continues)

A second choice is to do it like Caliban, aware of and accepting his mongrel (of mixed breeding)
past but not disabled for future development. A third choice is to be a Caliban who sheds his
current servitude and physical disfigurements in the process of discovering his essential, pre-
colonial self. This Caliban is behind the nativist and radical nationalisms that produced concepts
of négritude, Islamic fundamentalism, Arabism, and the like.

Re-writings
The same idea of re-writing texts in a postcolonial perspective was applied to other texts:

Jean Rhys (ri:s/, Wide Sargasso Sea: a re-rewriting of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

The Wife of Bafa, by Nigerian writer Patience Agbabi: Chaucer, The Wife of Bath.

Margaret Atwood, Hag-Seed (2016), rewriting of The Tempest. Hag-seed = Caliban= figlio di
strega (I, ii, 366)

Antipodean rewritings of Dickens’ Great Expectations: Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997) and Lloyd
Jones’s Mister Pip (2007)