Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Date of First Performance: 1611
Themes:
- Forgiveness precedes restoration and redemption.
- Love thrives when challenged by surmountable obstacles.
- Usurpation is evil and will not ultimately prosper.
Texts:
- Text With Excellent Notes from Henry Hudson
- MIT
- Illustrated Text (Robert Bell)
Audio:
Movie
- The Tempest (2010)
1. Exposition: Act I, scene i-ii, 374. A shipwreck. The history of Prospero, Miranda, and the island is learned.
2. The Complication or Rising Action: Act I, scene ii, 375-502. Love at first sight. The ideal commonwealth. Subplots woven (Antonio and Sebastian to kill Alonso; Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban to kill Prospero). Ferdinand and Miranda plight their troth.
3. Climax, or Crisis, or Turning Point: Act III, scene iii. Antonio and Sebastian (still plotting to kill Alonso) and Alonso are led to a magic banquet. It vanishes and Ariel (harpy) announces the plight of the "three men of sin."
4. Resolution or Falling Action: Act IV, scene i. Prospero recognizes the marriage contract betwixt his daughter and Ferdinand. Masque. Drunken plotters thwarted. Prospero revealed to all.
5. Denouement, Catastrophe, or Conclusion: Act V. Ferdinand and Miranda are "discovered" playing chess. Alonso sees that his son lives. We close with universal forgiveness and "restitution of all things." Forgiveness has thwarted revenge; all's well. The world is a comedy.
Sound Devices
Blank Verse mostly (1,397 lines)= unrhymed iambic pentameter (five-stress): All noble people (including Prospero and Miranda) and Caliban
Prose: Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban drunk or cursing
Stephano's Song: Four-stress amphibrachic catalectic into irrecular iambic verse returning to amphibrachic.
Ariel's Songs: In "Come unto the yellow sands" (I.ii.375) and "Full fathom five thy father lies" (I.ii.397), we find an alternation of iambic and trochaic lines. In "Where the bee sucks, there suck I" (V.i.88), we have trochaic changing to dactylic in the last two lines.
Masque couplets: five stress rhymed.
Masque songs (songs within the masque) four-stress trochaic
Music for The Tempest by Jean Sibelius (Grooveshark).
Supplementary Notes
- Samuel Johnson on The Tempest
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Shakespearean Criticism (pp. 64--71; he hails from the Romantic period)
- Or here on the Google Drive
- Notes on Coleridge's notes = )
- The French school wished drama to be an entirely convincing, realistic delusion. Coleridge is not of this opinion.
- Dr. Samuel Johnson (according to Coleridge) believed that we could not really be deluded, so it was useless to judge a work by its realism.
- Coleridge taught that participants in literary art needed to be bring, what he calls elsewhere, "a willful suspension of disbelief." So Coleridge is for a middle way where both the viewer and the author have a role to play in bringing the art to its fullness. Either participant could make an error serious enough to mar the relationship. Better writers and better viewers will produce better effects together.
- Coleridge teaches that The Tempest is a "purely romantic drama" and so has elements that stretch the imagination (spirit, magician, wedding blessing masque, etc.) (66). However, Coleridge does not see this as a fault or insult to his reason.
- Question 1 for you to respond to in your notes: How then, is The Tempest a good, rich, rewarding, well-written play, if it indeed has many elements that are romantic, imaginative, unhistorical, etc.? There is a key word that Coleridge focuses on as the quality that justifies and balances the work. What is it?
- Rene Girard (Stanford video; famous modern literary critic): The Tempest
- Question 2 to respond to in your notes: In one paragraph, compare our three critical perspectives. How might they reflect "sea changes" in literary interpretation?
Notes Concerning Sir Thomas More
Arcana:
- Some don't believe that Shakespeare wrote his plays: thankfully, we have good souls like David B. Hart to ridicule them.
Journal Questions
1.1
- 1. How would you characterize the attitudes of the boatswains and royalty toward one another?
- 2. Who is Prospero? Who has sinned against him, and how?
- 3. Who is Miranda? Who has sinned against her, and how?
- 4. Who is Ariel? What does Ariel want from Prospero?
- 5. Describe Caliban.
- 6. Why is Prospero so harsh to Ferdinand?
2.1
- 7. What causes most of the characters to fall asleep? Who remains awake? What do they decide to do? Are they successful? Why or why not? How do they cover for themselves?
- 8. Who is Trinculo? How does he respond to Caliban? Why does he crawl under Caliban's garment?
- 9. Why do you think Caliban speaks (generally) in verse while Trinculo speak in prose?
- 10. What is ironic about Caliban's song?
3.1
- 11. Look over Gonzalo's utopian speech (act 2, scene i). Compare his ideal society with what the reality of what usually follows a divestment of social guidelines (Shakespeare uses Caliban as an example). What would a society of Calibans do in Gonzalo's utopia?
- 12. Compare/Contrast Ariel's and Caliban's servitude unto Prospero.
- 13. Compare/Contrast the Prospero-Miranda-Ferdinand picture of love with the Alonso-Claribel-African King picture. What is the chief difference?
- 14. Find one example of a rhetorical trope you learned last year in AP language. Copy the line or lines and explain how the trope fits the example. Please do not simply find a metaphor or simile.
- 15. What does Caliban say about the island's noises? What does this tell us about Caliban?
4.1
- 16. “We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep” (4.1.173-174). Study the passage this line occurs within. What does the quoted passage mean? Why is Prospero “troubled”?
- 17. What happens when Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo come to kill Prospero? How are they driven away?
- 18. Why does Prospero vow to destroy the instruments of his magical arts (staff and book)?
- 19. The play appeared to be heading into a revenge tragedy; however, Ariel helps direct that course into comedy? How does he do this? What key theme to the play is revealed here?
- 20. What double meanings can you discover in Prospero's epilogue?
Essay Questions from the Past (forgiveness, freedom, magic, and comparisons):
1. So, Caliban was really never free (until the end); now, if Caliban may serve as a representative of enslaved people, can you think of any more modern example where this trading one slavery for another has occurred? Explain.
2. Is freedom synonymous with autonomy? Is anyone really free in the play? In the world? What does the Bible tell us about slavery and freedom, and how does that apply to The Tempest?
3. Prospero's magic was the instrument of his fall and rise. What is our distracting "magic" today? Where have we, too, abdicated our natural and civic duties, fascinated with "magical" sparkling wonders. Where has it isolated us from our natural rights and rulership? Any rise on the horizon?
4. Choose one: A. Compare slavery in The Tempest and THS. B. Compare magic in The Tempest and THS.
5. Is college the tempest your culture (Prospero) has magically constructed for you? Will it end in tragedy or comedy? Drunkenness, failure, and ridicule (Stephano and Trinculo) or marriage and rule (Ferdinand and Miranda to be Duke and Duchess, Prince and Princess, King and Queen)?
6. It appears that Caliban will remain on the island (and perhaps, though less likely, Trinculo and Stephano). What commentary on freedom might this be? If all three stay, who will rule? Were you director, how would you conclude? Why?
Common Concern:
Many interpret Prospero's handling of Ariel as cruel oppression, freedom stealing; however, the tree-binding was certainly worse. Why the verbal heavy handedness or Prospero toward Ariel (and others)? We may imagine a qualitatively different being like a spirit of the air could be a deadly danger to manage. Look at the confidence and superiority one must command when taming a lion or other predator (Ariel means "Lion of God" in Hebrew..and he literally pre-dates mortals). Also imagine that the strain of the entire production must have been heavy on Prospero, like a wound-up, fiercely accomplished director. One imagines a less-than-patient director during an opening-night performance...even, perhaps especially, to his own family.
Quotations:
You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
(Caliban I.ii.363-365)
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-Dong
Hark! now I hear them-Din-dong bell.
(Ariel I.ii.397-405)
Not a hair perish'd;
On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and, as thou badest me,
In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle.
(Ariel I.ii.217-291)
What, ho! slave! Caliban!
Thou earth, thou! speak.
CALIBAN
[Within] There's wood enough within.PROSPERO
Come forth, I say! there's other business for thee:(dialogue I.ii.314-316)
Come, thou tortoise! when?
MIRANDA
What is't? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form. But 'tis a spirit.
...........................................................
I might call him
A thing divine, for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble.
...........................................................
There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple:
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with't.
...........................................................
My affections
Are then most humble; I have no ambition
To see a goodlier man.
(I.ii)
Caliban
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
(III.ii)
Yet with my nobler reason 'gaitist my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel:
My charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore,
And they shall be themselves.
(Prospero V.i.26-33)
PROSPERO Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.
(Prospero V.i.33-56)
You, brother mine, that entertain'd ambition,
Expell'd remorse and nature; who, with Sebastian,
Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong,
Would here have kill'd your king; I do forgive thee,
Unnatural though thou art.
(Prospero V.i.75-78)
MIRANDA
O, wonder!PROSPERO 'Tis new to thee. (V.i.181-184)
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,
Then say if they be true. This mis-shapen knave,
His mother was a witch, and one so strong
That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,
And deal in her command without her power.
These three have robb'd me; and this demi-devil--
For he's a bastard one--had plotted with them
To take my life. Two of these fellows you
Must know and own; this thing of darkness!
Acknowledge mine.
(Prospero V.i.267-276)
Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
(Prospero's epilogue)
 |
| Ferdinand Lured by Ariel (John Millais, 1850) |
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