Dec 27, 2009

The Tempest | Where is Miranda's mother?

Miranda is the only female character in The Tempest, and in the play's second scene, we learn that she came to the Island with her father, Prospero (the former Duke of Milan) when she was three years old. Directed to recall her life in Milan, Miranda dimly recalls "Had I not/Four, or five, women once that tended me" (I, ii, ll.46-47). But while Miranda can recall her nurses, she has no recollection of her mother. In that same scene, Prospero makes the only explicit reference to Miranda's mother in the play, first noting that "Thy mother was a piece of virtue" and then adding that...