The Tempest: 4
Known Sources
· Caliban also probably reflects Shakespeare’s reading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (C. 4th BCE).
· Another important influence on The Tempest was Ovid’s Metamorphoses – written 15 centuries before the ‘discovery’ of the Americas.
· Caliban is similar to ‘the salvage man’[1] in Book VI of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, who is found in an Irish context.
· The Caliban figure was also influenced by the Wild Man in the anonymous play Mucedorus (1610).[2]
· One possible source of Prospero as a magician with a daughter and of the faithful spirit he commands is Anthony Munday’s play John a Kent and John a Cumber (1594). The action in this play takes place[3] in Wales.
· Jonson. In Every Man in his Humour (1598) there are characters called ‘Prospero’. It is claimed that Caliban could be based on the character ‘Cob’ in the same play. Later Jonson wrote a play about magic, The Alchemist (1608). In this play Jonson draws parallels between alchemy and stagecraft[4]. The parallelisms between Shakespeare’s play and Jonson’s plays are such that Oxfordians J.T. Looney and Marie Merkel have argued that Jonson wrote The Tempest![5] Incidentally, The Alchemist takes place in London.
It is also worth noting that The Tempest is in many ways a reworking of As You Like It with its usurped Duke, its sibling rivalry, its ‘other place’, its masque of Hymen, etc.
- within this structure the equivalent of Caliban as malcontent who stays behind in the other place at the end of the play is Jaques.
Even Frank Kermode, who defends the post-colonialist viewpoint, admits that
“there is nothing in The Tempest fundamental to its structure of ideas which could not have existed had America remained undiscovered, and the Bermuda voyage never taken place”.
The Commedia dell’Arte
However, the most important collective source for The Tempest seems to be the Commedia dell’Arte (which may have also influenced John a Kent and John a Cumber, Mucedorus and even Jonson’s plays mentioned above[6]).
In 1611 Flaminio Scala’s Il teatro delle favole rappresentative was published.
- it was a collection of 50 scenarios[7] that was an encyclopaedia of the plays he had performed with different Commedia dell’Arte troupes over the preceding decades.
One of the final scenarios, “L’albore incantato, pastorale” includes
- frustrated lovers,
- an omnipresent mago who manipulates his subjects with magical spells[8] that transfix[9] them or transform them into trees,
- a savage man who serves the magician,
- tempting food that emits flames when one approaches it,
- false deaths and
- buffoonish characters who attempt to[10] steal[11] things from the magician’s grotto[12].
In Il Gran Mago Pantolone and Gratiano plan to kill the magician.
However, the commedia dell’arte, that is most similar to The Tempest is Li Tre Satiri (= the Three Satyrs), which was performed in England in the 1570s.
- It featured[13] a magician, a wild islander who plots[14] with two Europeans to steal00 the magician’s book and control his spirits, and a virginal girl, as well as a storm, a shipwreck and a lost son.[15]
In Li Tre Satiri the magician
- transfixes00 his subjects with immobilizing spells;
- he physically chastises them with invisible torments;
- he imprisons them inside trees (and rocks);
- he tempts the strangers with succulent meals that suddenly[16] appear from nowhere, only to vanish[17] equally suddenly; and
- he haunts[18] them with disembodied[19] voices.
A type of Commedia dell’Arte was summarized[20] by Richard Andrews as follows:
“An isolated island is ruled by a magician, whose power within his territory is limitless[21]. A range[22] of characters find themselves on the island, against their will[23] – they include lovers and others from gentlemanly[24] classes, and more ridiculous figures from improvised comedy. By the end of their encounters with each other and with the magician, reconciliations both sentimental and comic have been achieved: these solutions may involve the magician himself, in relation to his past life.”
Richard Andrews “Shakespeare and Italian Comedy” (2004)
Notice that in the Commedia the mago is morally ambiguous
- he calls on the powers of hell.
In some of the scenarios00 the magician relinquishes his power at the end of the play.
In Li Tre Satiri and Arcadia Incantata comic characters steal clothes from the temple and impersonate pagan gods for the credulous local inhabitants.
Some of the Arcadian scenarios00 end with the shipwrecked characters recognizing their children, whom they thought dead.
At the end of Pantaloncino,
“The magician, declaring that he no longer wishes to practice his art but wants to live with the others, throws away his magic staff and book”.[25]
Shakespeare’s return to the unities in The Tempest compares with the regular use of them in the Commedia dell’Arte.
- Moreover, their retrospective antefatti[26] are similar to Prospero’s initial tale to Miranda (the exposition scene: Act I, Scene ii).
A German Tempest
It is important to remember that the first known performance of The Tempest was at court on 1st November 1611 for the marriage of Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick, the Prince Palatine.
- Nothing could have been more appropriate for this German Prince that a tale based on recent events in the Holy Roman Empire.
Between 1605 and 1611 Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) who was forced from power by his younger brother (Matthias), the latter being the year The Tempest was probably written.
Why did Matthias force Rudolf from power?
One reason was his neglect of state affairs and his obsessive interest in magic!
- both John Dee and Edward Kelly had been employed as magicians at Rudolf’s court.
Rudolph II was and is associated with the Golem of Prague.
This was a brainless drudge made out of clay that, though resentful, could be made to do hard work.
In some versions of the legend the Golem of Prague fell in love and, when rejected, turned violent.
- Golem legends influenced the genesis of Frankenstein.
The Tempest may have been influenced by Die Schöne Sidea (Beautiful Sidea), a German play written by Jacob Ayrer before 1605 (when Ayrer died).
- in this play a magician prince is ousted by his brother and goes to live in a forest with his daughter (Sidea) and a spirit he commands. One day when out hunting the usurper’s son falls into the magician’s hands and he forces him to carry logs for his daughter. Reconciliation finally comes when the cousins fall in love.
- One theory is that both plays are based on an earlier lost English play.[27]
Of course, this putative earlier English play would probably have been based on the Commedia dell’Arte.
Historical Events in Italy
Another possible inspiration for Prospero was Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615).
Della Porta was an alchemist and a playwright[28].
- Crucially, he was a Neapolitan.
On the other hand, in 1551 a fleet of Emperor Charles V’s ships was wrecked off the island of Lampedusa.
- Lampedusa was already notorious[29] for storms, occurrences of St. Elmo’s fire
- local legend says that the storm that wrecked the ships was conjured up by an Algerian Jewish magician.
- There are also textual parallels between the mention of Lampedusa in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso[30] and the description of Ferdinand swimming ashore in The Tempest.
For more on links between Lampedusa and The Tempest read Chapter 8 of On the Date, Sources & Design of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (pp. 85-95) in Google Books:
https://books.google.es/books?id=eT5OAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=Lampedusa+%2B+Charles+V&source=bl&ots=ir6wYLn4QF&sig=a7uk9CHg64HVI6hkep_jPEF4zvg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjplYaio83SAhXrLcAKHQ21DjMQ6AEITDAH#v=onepage&q=Lampedusa%20%2B%20Charles%20V&f=false
A Jewish Prospero
Some commentators see Prospero as a cabalistic philosopher
- this would explain the Hebrew name of his spirit, Ariel and of ‘Caleb(an)’.
- the possible Hebrew origin of Caliban’s name.
- the connection with the Golem.
- the connection with the Algerian Jewish magician.
Smoke & Mirrors
As so often with Shakespeare, this play is about appearance and reality.
The most ‘realistic’ scene is the shipwreck,
- no other play begins with quite such a coup de théâtre as The Tempest’s storm.
The storm is followed by much more fanciful[31] scenes.
However, we eventually[32] learn that it is the shipwreck which has been an illusion and the other scenes that are ‘real’.
The boundaries of reality are an important theme and mistaken beliefs abound[33]:
- Ferdinand and Miranda each mistake the other for a supernatural being,
- Caliban takes Trinculo and Stephano for gods.
- Alonso and Ferdinand each believe the other is dead.
- Stephano mistakes Caliban and Trinculo for a two-headed, four-legged creature.
Consider the layers of reality during the masque:
- the goddesses are supernatural, but they are merely portrayed[34] by actors presenting a masque.
- However, those actors are themselves supernatural, Ariel’s cohorts[35].
- Yet in reminding Ferdinand of this, Prospero reminds us that these spirits are themselves actors in The Tempest.
- Then Prospero goes on to dissolve that reality as well[36], along with “the great globe itself” because “we are such stuff as dreams are made on”.
The dizzying effect similar to the gender game in As You Like It or the multiple audiences in The Spanish Tragedy.
All of the characters are more or less in Prospero’s power and they become increasingly uncertain about the borders[37] between appearance and reality.
Prospero draws the other characters into a maze[38] of increasing complexity.
- Their experiences all seem vividly real and painful but, in the end, the causes of their suffering turn out to be largely illusory.
The point is that
“The world is stranger than man thinks and the experiences of the moment, no matter how intense, lose their reality in the miraculous process of change and transformation through which all life passes.”
Alvin Kernan
Dreams
On the island sleep and waking are states that are oddly hard[39] to distinguish.
Dreaming is centrally important to the perception of illusion and reality; “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”
· Miranda describes the little she remembers of Milan as “far off; / And rather like a dream” (memory as dream)
· Miranda falls asleep during her father’s discourse
· The mariners remain asleep throughout[40] the main action of the play
· Alonso and Gonzalo are overcome with sleep
· Prospero sleeps every afternoon
· Caliban describes his dreams in graphic detail
· Caliban cries to dream again because the imaginary world of the dream seems preferable to the real world. (dream as escape)
Just as in a dream, strange events, shapes and sounds seem real
- dream is the blending point between fantasy and reality.
Prospero must choose between continuing in his dream world or returning to his social reality.
- We could compare the choice to that of kicking drugs.
The Nature of Work
The Tempest is also a discourse about work.
Two conflicting view of work existed then, as now;
- the idea that work strengthens the character (“the Protestant work ethic”, if you like) i.e. creative work, and
- the opposing idea that work was soul-destroying (i.e. toil).
On the one hand, Gonzalo describes his dream “communist republic” in which no-one has to work and in which there is no private property.
On the other, Prospero firmly believes in the therapeutic value (for others!) of hard work, and Ariel and Ferdinand are presented as archetypes of willing workers.
- By contrast, Caliban is the reluctant drudge.
It is interesting to note how the new phenomenon of unemployment was being created at the time The Tempest was written by the Enclosures[41],
- promoted by rural landlords (such as Shakespeare himself)[42].
A Work About Nature
From one perspective (e.g. Montaigne’s and Gonzalo’s) a natural society without all the accretions[43] of ‘civilization’ would be a happy one.
From another, something natural is by definition imperfect and needs to be refined through Art.
Any worldview based on the Great Chain of Being has to take the view that nature is at the bottom under the hierarchy of society.
Prospero’s “Art” is to control Nature through his spirits.
- If humanity is to live in harmony with the rest of Nature he cannot allow it to run wild.
- What is ‘natural’ must sometimes be ordered so that it reaches its full potential.
Humans are also part of Nature and if they are allowed to run wild – to follow their ‘natural’ inclinations – chaos would result.
The purpose of civilization is to bring order and to enable man to use his natural inclinations within a framework of control.
Fathers also nurture their children so that they also achieve their full potential.
The Tempest can be seen as an exploration of the relationship between nurture, civilization and art – on the one hand – and Nature.
Civilizing also involves self-control: a skill Caliban fails to acquire.
- Self-control is a key attribute that makes us human.
From this perspective Caliban is the personification of the wild man,
- capable of some sensitivity and beauty but predominantly evil.
- attempts to civilize him have failed and so he is not fully human.
But we have to ask “Is his evil genetically inherited from his parents (a witch and the Devil) or because he is uncivilized?”
Caliban is natural in the sense that he has no self-control and does not think through the consequences of his actions.
Caliban demonstrates no sense of morality nor any ability to understand or appreciate the needs of anyone other than[44] himself.
Although he can appreciate nature’s beauty, he is self-centered.
- In this, he is little more than an animal; he wants to indulge his desires, without control.
This is what being free means to Caliban, whose cry for freedom (II.2, 177-178) clarifies many of his actions.
In the end he is free, but outside society as he is left on the island.
The play is not categorical about determinism, however.
- As Miranda says (with surprising insight[45] given her isolation!) in Act II, Scene 1, “Good wombs have born bad sons”.
There is room for[46] an alternative interpretation:
- Caliban is aware[47] that he is not the legitimate son of Prospero – rather like Edmund in King Lear – so he rebels against the patriarch.