The tempest Shakespeare’s play

One of Shakespeare’s plays, the tempest was composed in the seventeenth century. The tempest is unique in its plot and inspiration, as opposed to earlier Shakespearean works that were founded on real-life people and events. None of the personalities are based on The Tempest. Tempest can therefore be termed as a play about the complexities of human nature and a reminder of the thin distinction between happiness and tragedy. This paper seeks to highlight the portrayal of the tempest as a tragi-comedy and its eventual transition to conform to Elizabethan religious expectations. The paper also aims at explicating the construction of one’s self and Montaigne self.

The play begins in a ship where Alonso the King of Naples and his entourage are caught up in a storm. Among the notable members of this entourage are Antonio who is Prospero brother and the Duke of Milan and Sebastian the son of the King. The storm has been created by Prospero who has mastered the art of dark magic after being banished by his brother in to this remote island. Twelve years earlier, Antonio and usurped Prospero from his throne and seized all his property and title. Prospero and his daughter Miranda were placed on a raft and left to the sea. Miraculously, they were able to arrive on an Island inhabited by Caliban a descendant of a witch Sycorax. Upon his arrival, Prospero rescues a sprite, Ariel who had been enslaved by Sycorax.

The entourage from the ship is cast ashore and separated into three groups. Ferdinand, the king’s son is brought to Prospero where she meets Miranda and the two fall in love. On another part of the Island Alonso fears for the death of his son and his searching for his body along the shores of the Island. Antonio is with Sebastian in a separate part of the Island, where he encourages to murder his brother and usurp his throne just has he had done to his brother. All this happens while two clowns Trinculo and Stefano are united with Caliban where they hatch a plan to murder Prospero.

Prospero harnesses is a magical power to create ghosts and an imaginary banquet brought before the king’s party, where he threatens Antonio, Alonso, and Sebastian of their sins. He further goes ahead punishes Caliban, Trinculo, and Stefano with a run through a briar patch and swim in a scummy pond. After achieving retribution by calling out those who wronged him, Prospero arranges for a king’s party banquet where he duly recognized as the Duke of Milan. He manages to repair broken relationship with all of his aggressors. Prospero leaves the stage to the audience’s applause.

One of the major characteristics of revenge as portrayed in literature and evident in The Tempest is that there is always an avenger and the avenged (Lanpher iii). In this case, the avenger is portrayed as seeking for retribution and justice in a way that the one who wronged them will receive vengeance that equals their sin. In her analysis of this concept, Lanpher says “The poet or author…acknowledges the perspective of the avenger by allowing him to express his motivations, desires, and justifications for revenge…” (Lanpher iii). The idea here is to give the audience an opportunity to understand both the rewards and risks of the impending vengeance and have an expectation of the results.

The main aspect that leads most of the characters to seek retribution in a revenge play is the struggle between good and evil where the protagonist is always searching for one or the other depending on the plot. In his analysis of this concept, Johnson describes revenge as a situation where ”a hero, against whom a wrong has been committed…embarks on a quest to ‘make it right’” (17). The idea here is that some evil has been committed against the protagonist and the only way to make it right is through revenge (McIntyre 13). In this case, revenge describes a situation where the evil nature of one individual is to be corrected or made right through revenge that is also portrayed as the best alternative.

A common characteristic found in most revenge plays is the existence of a supernatural being or power that is instrumental in the execution of the revenge. While analysing part of the plays that contain revenge from the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, Lanpher makes it very clear that some form of spirituality or supernatural aspects surrounds the process of enacting vengeance (20). Normally, the supernatural being plays a significant role in enacting the judgment and the intention may be to rouse fear or to cause some form of feeling of reprisal in an individual (Johnson 17). At the end of the day, the supernatural being is the one who engages the revenge directly or their powers are invoked upon to make the retribution successful.

At the beginning of the play there is a strong sense of retribution from Prospero. When causing the storm, he says that he is doing so because there in the ship lies his oppressor. This sets the undertone for revenge against his brother who usurped him from his throne as the Duke of Milan. Since his brother and wronged him Prospero feels that he has the right to enact revenge to Antonio who not only seized his throne and property but also banished him and his daughter to die in the sea. Using his acquired skills in Magic it is clear that Prospero can largely cause harm to his brother. His use of magic in making decision and creating circumstances for revenge can be demonstrated by the storm and the banquet. Besides, his brother Prospero has conflicts with Alonso and Sebastian, for taking an interest in Prospero’s dukedom. The enslavement of Caliban can also be deduced to mean revenge for his acts of aggression towards Miranda.

Interestingly even though the play’s initial stages portray Prospero’s vengeance against his aggressors, the revenge mission dissipates midway. The plot of the play turns around through the protagonist own words ”the rarer action is/ in virtue than in vengeance.” It is also critically important to underscore the repetition of the phrase ”Not a hair perished” in respect to the shipwreck. Being possibly one of Shakespeare’s last works the play privileges reunion and reconciliation unlike his previous works. For the tempest it seems that living well and allowing your enemies watch is the best type of revenge.

This shift in approach by Shakespeare points to more religiously acceptable doctrine. Besides this notable shift in doctrine The tempest also alludes to the bible in various instances. The plot itself is largely about exploring human isolation and civilization. The island in the play can be termed as a representation of the garden of Eden. Prospero with is magical abilities is the God like figure, while Ferdinand and Miranda are the first men, while Ariel and Caliban represent good and evil. Further biblical allusion can be presented as Abel and Cain in the relationship of Prospero and Antonio. Scholars have also alluded Prospero to the story of Joseph who was banished by his brothers only to go and reign in a foreign. The invocation of religion in The Tempest helps answer pertinent issues wickedness and corruption, and forgiveness and redemption.

Caliban is severally referred to as a ”natural man”. In the seventeenth century, society was divided into a hierarchy of God, king, man, woman and beast. This classification was predominantly based on a patriarchal culture, religious belief and in some instance emotional stability. The beast was therefore lowly regarded in this age, incidentally a natural man was considered a beast. The position of Caliban in the play is marred with mixed explanations with some viewing him as a monster, others as victim of colonialism as well as a disadvantaged member of the society.

In his first appearance in the play Prospero describes Caliban as ”A freckled whelp, hag-born — not honoured with / A human shape“ the physical description is further amplified by Trinculo who mockingly asks whether he is indeed a man or a fish. Stefano on the other hand describes him as ”moon-calf and deformed creature. Notwithstanding his physical features Caliban is presented as good person through his prior interactions with Prospero where Prospero teaches him about God. However, he is inherently untamed as demonstrated by his attempts in raping Miranda which to him seems like a natural behaviour. Reproductive urges are a natural function of animals, but humans modify their desires with reason and through social constraints. Without reason to modify his impulses, Caliban’s behaviour aligns him with the animals. Yet, at the same time, he is clearly more than a beast.

Caliban is a child of Sycorax and the devil, he is thus not an ordinary victim of social injustice. This portrayal of Caliban helps to depict the complexity of nature. Nothing can be examined from one angle exhaustively. illustrate the best that human nature has to offer, through resolution and promise. Harmony and order are restored in a world where chaos has reigned — the natural world that Caliban covets. This natural world will be restored, but if the ending of the play is meant to suggest a restoration of order and a return to civilization, what then does the natural world represent? Human nature is often brutal, sometimes evil, and perhaps we are meant to understand Caliban as being no better or worse than anyone who is wholly human.

In the painting ‘the Two Fridas’ two women are portrayed as loners, rebellious and they lived under the confines of most social requirements. During this period, women were not only expected to be meek but quiet and they were not supposed to speak in public. This shows the exact character of Miranda that even when she suspected her father of using magic to cause the tempest, she did not do anything about it. Instead, she even went ahead and decided to be quiet about the whole thing.

In ‘The Waterhouse’, Miranda is portrayed as full of virtue just as she appears in the play ‘The Tempest’. She remains compassionate even after finding out the evils that surround her. She never sought for revenge but instead chose to become quiet through the whole ordeal. The scene portrayed by Hogarth shows Act III when all the elements of the play come together and some of the characters have already made connections of various concepts in the play.

In conclusion, it is evident that the play The tempest invokes numerous instances of revenge play. However, as the play evolves the tragic-comedy perspective dissipates paving way for the ascendancy or religion and religious doctrines. The play further explores the nature of human and their behaviour. This paper has further explicated this theme by examining the construction of Caliban and Montaigne view of self. The paper also offers a brief introspection on the role visual cultural sources to explore human nature.

Works Cited

Gerber, Monica and Jonathan Jackson, J. Retribution as revenge and retribution as just deserts, Social Justice Research, 26.1 (2013), 61–80

Johnson, Dan. Eliciting an emotional response: An analysis of revenge and the criminal justice system. LSD Journal, 1(2011), 12-19.

Lanpher, Ann. P. The problem of revenge in medieval literature: beowulf, the canterbury tales, and ljósvetninga saga,doctoral Thesis 2011.

McIntyre, Matthew, ”Corporeal Violence in Early Modern Revenge Tragedies.“ Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2012.