Prospero
probably wouldn’t be winning any father-of-the-year awards or any sorcerer or
duke awards for that matter either. In the first act, we see that Prospero
seems to be obsessed with magic and fascinated with learning about it. He’s
also so obsessed with his books that they took him away from his duties as Duke
of Milan. And thanks to Gonzalo, a friend of Prospero’s, provided Prospero with
books when he was exiled by Antonio. Prospero tells Miranda, “Knowing I loved
my books, he furnished me/From mine own library with volumes that I prize above
my dukedom” (The Tempest
1.2.198-200). His love of books is further shown when he talks about his
younger brother practically running the dukedom while for “Me, poor man, my
library/Was dukedom large enough” (1.2.130-31). Love makes some people blind
and we can see that Prospero’s love for books probably limited his awareness to
what was going on around him until he was exiled to an island. And on this
island there was probably nothing better to do than practice magic, especially
with the help of the magical Ariel.
Ariel seems to be the vehicle
through which Prospero can perform his magic. He is constantly sending Ariel
off to do his bidding with magic. Whether Prospero is capable of performing
magic or not, evidence seems to point to the latter. In the first act, Prospero
tells Ariel to “Lend thy hand/And pluck my magic garment from me” (1.2.28-9).
This implies that it is the cloak that is also providing magic to Prospero.
However, it could also simply be a way to signal to the audience that Prospero
is in his “magical mode.”
Prospero also seems to have this
commanding quality that actually belittles the people is bossing around. He
calls Miranda “wench” (1.2.167) and I don’t know if it’s just me, but it doesn’t
seem right for a father to call his daughter a wench. He also does a little of
this with Ariel, whom he considers to be his servant that only lives to answer
his magical beck and call. He also holds the matter of Ariel’s freedom over him
– he promises that if Ariel completes a specific task, he will free him. The problem?
He does this several times to Ariel. And another victim that I feel especially
sympathetic for is Caliban. Caliban looks different and everyone believes him
to be a monster because he is the son of the witch Sycorax. In Acts Two and
Three we see Caliban petitioning Stephano and Trinculo that he will serve them
if they kill Prospero. But the thing is, Stephano and Trinculo treat him no
better than Prospero. They ignore him and make fun of him.
One time in the past year, I
happened to see part of the 2010 movie adaptation of The Tempest. I was confused because it was just Helen Mirren and her
daughter on the island. I then figured out that Mirren’s character was changed
to be Prospera just to make a powerful female character. They speak in the
Shakespearean language but some of them have strange costumes. The parts that I
saw showed an interesting portrayal of this play and maybe after we finish this
book, I might try to watch the movie.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. New York: Simon & Shuster Paperbacks. 1994. Print.
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