SOURCE: Henze, Richard. “The Tempest: Rejection of a Vanity.” Shakespeare Quarterly 23, no. 4 (autumn 1972): 420-34.

[In the following essay, Henze presents an allegorical interpretation of The Tempest—with Caliban, Ariel, and Prospero embodying the flesh, spirit, and soul, respectively—that articulates a theme of utopian illusions rejected in favor of worldly responsibility and true freedom.]

In the fourth act of The Tempest, Prospero, with the aid of Ariel, calls forth a masque, “a vanity of mine art” (IV. i. 41),¹ in order to celebrate the love of his daughter and Ferdinand. The scene plays for a few minutes; then Prospero suddenly remembers Caliban, “after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise” the figures “heavily vanish.” Although this masque is contained in only one scene, the theme of which it is a part, how a man should live, pervades the play. Prospero, as he grows in knowledge and strength on the island, discovers that man cannot live in a fantasy apart from this world, and the rejection of the masque becomes part of a larger rejection of passive life in general. In this paper, I want to explore this larger rejection and the dramatic context in which it takes place.

Critics of The Tempest have recognized that the play lends itself quite easily to a symbolic or allegorical interpretation. As Mark Van Doren notes, “The play seems to order itself in terms of its meanings; things in it stand for other things, so that we are tempted to search its dark backward for a single meaning.”² Most of these searches for meaning have centered in three characters in the play: Caliban, Ariel, and Prospero. According to G. Wilson Knight, Ariel is “a personification of poetry itself,” Caliban represents “the animal aspect in man,” and Prospero “is a god-man, or perhaps the god in man.”³ Theodore Spencer, in his book Shakespeare and the Nature of Man, calls the play Shakespeare's last treatment “of the three levels in Nature's hierarchy—the sensible, the rational, and the intellectual.”⁴ And James E. Phillips describes the play in terms of the three sub-souls of man. Caliban is the “vegative or quickening power” in man's soul, Ariel is similar to the “sensitive soul in Renaissance man,” and Prospero is “the rational soul.”⁵ While most critics would not agree on any one interpretation of the play, most do agree with Van Doren that the characters in the play seem to represent something more or less than individual human beings.

But there have been critics too, like Elmer E. Stoll and Virgil Whitaker, who have disagreed with Van Doren's kind of reading. Whitaker, in Shakespeare's Use of Learning, feels that “Ariel, Caliban, and the other spirits are a mechanism in the plot of the play and a means of making its meaning clear, but not a part of that meaning.”⁶ And in Shakespeare and Other Masters, Stoll decides that he “cannot believe that there is any allegory (which … says one thing and means another), or symbolism (which … means the thing it says and suggests another), or even ‘veiled biography’ here.” This is “only a rather simpler story of his than usual, a romantic fantasy”; the search for inner meaning is “unwarranted by the text and the spirit of the poet”; Ariel and Caliban are “beings more actual and convincing than Miranda and Ferdinand themselves.” But then, in attempting to deal with the characters, Stoll admits that Ariel does seem to represent something—“a power of nature, like wind and water, harnessed for the time to man's service, and delighting in it, yet ever ready to break loose.”⁷

I think that the characters are a part of the meaning and that things in the play do stand for other things. Characters like Ariel, Caliban, even Prospero, seem to be other than individual human beings. At times the play seems even to become an outright allegory. In order to discuss Caliban and Ariel, one needs to treat them as allegorical figures and use them as a key to the rest of the play. Although I shall be concerned here with one set of symbolic meanings in The Tempest, I do not therefore exclude or deny the multitude of other topics, problems, and oppositions that Shakespeare glances at in the play. Nor do I deny that other interpretations of Caliban and Ariel are possible.

Caliban and Ariel, rather than simply existing separately in a recognizable world, also personify parts of every man's being—in The Tempest, of Prospero himself. To begin, it is profitable to go back to Erasmus and his discussion of the common Renaissance idea of the three parts of man:

The first part is the flesh, wherein the malicious serpent through original trespass hath written the law of sin, whereby we be provoked unto filthiness and coupled unto the devil, if we be overcome. The second part is the spirit, wherein we represent the similitude of the nature of God; who after the eternal law of his own mind hath graven therein the law of honesty, whereby we be knit into God, and made one with him. The third part is the soul, partaker of the sensible wits and natural motions, which if she, forsaking the flesh, cleave unto the spirit, becometh spiritual; but if she follow the corrupt affections of the flesh, then joineth she herself unto an harlot, and is made one body with her that, being an evil, strange, flattering, foolish, and babbling woman, breaketh her promise, and forsaketh the husband of her youth. Wherefore if we incline unto the spirit, it maketh us not only blessed, religious, obedient, kind and merciful; but also teacheth us to desire celestial and necessary, pure, perfect, and godly things, to obey God more than men, and though some affections be disguised with visors of virtue, yet not to be deceived with them. If we incline to the flesh, it maketh us beasts, despisers of God, disobedient, unkind, and cruel. …⁸

Now perhaps Shakespeare did not know this passage from the Enchiridion, but, as Virgil Whitaker tells us, it is more important to see where Shakespeare shared the ideas of his age than it is to determine precisely where he derived them (p. 9). And Walter Clyde Curry points out in Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns that Shakespeare had “an astonishing capacity for absorbing traditional materials without the exercise of any great scholarly efforts.”⁹ This separation of spirit and flesh is traditional. In the ninth article of The Thirty-Nine Articles, which Shakespeare must have known, we hear that because of original sin, “the flesh lusteth contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world it deserveth God's wrath and damnation.”¹⁰ It follows, therefore, that one's conduct is proper when one leans away from the lusts of the flesh toward the freedom of the spirit. I think that the distinction Erasmus so neatly made works for The Tempest, and as Whitaker notes, the only proof that we can have, finally, that Shakespeare “knew or used a philosophic concept will normally be the pragmatic one that it ‘works’ as a key to his meaning” (p. 6).

Caliban works as an allegorical figure representing the flesh that, without conjunction with spirit, can be filthy and malicious. Ariel represents spirit, that portion of man that is in likeness unto God. The third part of man, soul, is represented by Prospero himself.¹¹ As he, soul, controls Caliban, flesh, and frees Ariel, spirit, he achieves his highest expression; he becomes kind, merciful, and wise. When Prospero governs Caliban and Ariel freely serves Prospero, the man represented by the three together is conducting himself properly. It is not easy, as Prospero discovers, to resist the lust of the flesh. To do so he must consider, as Erasmus did, “how filthy and beastly it maketh us,” how it “withdraweth us from all honest studies, taketh away the use of reason” (p. 523). Since fleshly lust often afflicts man, the struggle against Caliban is a constant one. Prospero tells Miranda,

We'll visit Caliban, my slave, who never
Yields us kind answer.
MIRANDA.
'Tis a villain, sir,
I do not love to look on.
PROSPERO.
But as 'tis,
We cannot miss him. He does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices
That profit us. What, ho! slave! Caliban!
Thou earth, thou! speak!

(I. ii. 308-14)

Caliban nearly succeeded in an attempt to rape Miranda; so Miranda does not like to look upon him. Prospero, however, realizing that the flesh, properly subjugated, is necessary to do the chores required of man since his first fall, accepts Caliban for what he is.

The danger on the isle is that one will ignore Ariel, spirit, the part of man “wherein we represent the similitude of … God,” and “incline to the flesh,” Caliban, a “poisonous slave, got by the devil himself” (I. ii. 319), and become “beasts, despisers of God.” That Caliban represents corrupt flesh is indicated by several things: his gluttony and drunkenness, his role as a slave of Prospero, his constant punishment by pinching, as well as Prospero's statement that Caliban is necessary to carry out menial chores. Caliban is not naturally a part of man; man's flesh is not in itself corrupt. Saint Augustine decides in The City of God that “it is not the body as such but only a corruptible body that is burdensome to the soul. … The soul is weighed down not by the body as such, but by the body such as it has become as a consequence of its sin and punishment.”¹² Before flesh can become corrupt, man must commit a spiritual sin, the sin of pride, and turn himself voluntarily from the godly within himself. But after the spiritual sin has been committed, Caliban, fleshly sin, easily follows and makes beasts of his servants.

Caliban's mother was a “damn'd witch” who was banished from the society of reasonable men, but “For one thing she did / They would not take her life” (I. ii. 266-67). This one thing was to become pregnant. The father of her child, according to Prospero, was the devil. Since Caliban's mother mated with the devil to produce corrupt flesh, she seems to represent man's first capacity for sin, the spiritual sin of pride that led him to eat of the fruit, a sin not because the fruit was evil but because it was forbidden. Saint Augustine said, “if they were forbidden to eat of that one tree, it was not because of any evil in the tree but for the sake of the value of a pure and simple obedience which is the great virtue of a rational creature subject to its Lord and Creator. … The only sin was disobedience” (p. 330). She, man's first spiritual sin, was not immortal; each man, if he is to commit spiritual sin, must commit it himself; if he chooses, he may avoid spiritual sin. But fleshly sin, the offspring of spiritual sin, remains; ready to trouble any who come its way, and equally ready to avoid men who live without spiritual sin. Caliban continually threatens man, but only those men who are brought by the accidents of fortune to his island. Prospero, with the strength of his art, which is a reasonable trust in Providence gotten through study of the proper books, is able to avoid despair and pride and to make Caliban his slave rather than his master.

Caliban reminds Prospero that when he first arrived on the island he

          strok'dst me and mad'st much of me, wouldst give me
Water with berries in't; and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day, and night;

(I. ii. 332-36)

If the soul continues to cultivate the flesh so, Caliban soon will make the island his. As Prospero discovered, Caliban is by nature a rebellious slave who can only be controlled by strict, but patient, authority.

When flesh is chastised, as Caliban is, Ariel, the spiritual in man, can freely serve man. When Prospero first came to the island, Caliban ruled and Ariel was imprisoned because it would not serve lust: “for thou wast a spirit too delicate / To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, / Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee” (I. ii. 272-74). Prospero freed Ariel: “It was mine art, / When I arriv'd and heard three, that made gape / The pine, and let thee out” (I. ii. 291-93). That art and the patience and wisdom that it reveals controls the action of the play.

This action takes place on an island, to which Prospero was borne by stormy seas after he was driven from his dukedom. The island, “this most desolate isle” (III. iii. 80), and the ocean itself may be treated as symbols. The island represents the condition one is in when separated from fortune, when one can either despair or continue to trust in Providence. “O the heavens!” says Miranda, “What foul play had we that we came from thence? / Or blessed was't we did?” “Both, both, my girl!” answers Prospero. “By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heav'd thence, / But blessedly holp hither” (I. ii. 59-63). Hither is the place of despair or of recognition of proper place in the order of nature. Prospero, tossed from his state by unnatural rebellion and his own neglect of duty, makes of the island a blessed state of recognition.

Prospero's rightful realm, however, was his dukedom, in which he failed to wear properly the mantle of rule. As he tells Miranda:

          Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal arts
Without a parallel; those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies.

(I. ii. 72-77)

A ruler, whether duke or king, should not be so rapt in studies that he neglects his duty to his subjects.

Whether Shakespeare took his view on order, “divine right and the mutual relation of monarchs and subjects from the official Book of Sermons” as Alfred Hart says in Shakespeare and the Homilies,¹³ from Hooker sometime after 1594 as Whitaker thinks,¹⁴ from Hall and Holinshed,¹⁵ or from any one of a dozen other sources, he did hold it. The ruler, for Shakespeare and his age, was God's vicegerent on earth who must fulfill his God-given role if disorder is to be avoided. If he neglects his duty, confusion follows. Perhaps Richard II contains more references to divine right and kingly rights and duties than the other plays, but the doctrine appears in at least twenty of Shakespeare's plays.¹⁶ Rebellion is always wrong, but so is lack of attendance to duty. Prospero, “rapt in secret studies” neglects responsibility, and, as for Lear and Richard II, disorder follows.

This interest in duty is part of the Renaissance concept of nature; as man fulfills his role in life, he is most noble. When Prospero turned to studies instead of government, he selfishly violated his duty to society in order to satisfy his private pleasure. This conflict between private pleasure and the pleasure of duty was recognized generally. According to Bacon's Advancement of Learning,

There is formed and imprinted in everything an appetite toward two natures of good; the one as everything is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is a part or member of a greater body; whereof the latter is in degree the greater and worthier, because it tends to the conservation of a more general form. The former of these may be termed “Individual or Self-good,” the latter the “Good of Communion.” … Thus it is ever the case, that the conservation of the more general form control and keeps in order the lesser appetites and inclinations.

[V, 7]¹⁷

Since one's lesser appetites are best controlled when one performs one's duty in society, the contemplative life is less worthy than the life of active duty. The contemplative life that Aristotle preferred has as its support “private good, and the pleasure or dignity of a man's self; in which respects no question the contemplative life has the pre-eminence” (V, 8). But the public good is the one that men should desire, for “men must know that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and Angels to be lookers on” (V, 8). Prospero gives up his role of onlooker to become a participant when he becomes again a ruler. In choosing to return to society, he chooses the greater good which cannot be envisaged in a Christian society, Anders Nygren says, “from the point of view of the isolated individual, but rather from that of man in society, man in his relation to God and to his fellowman.”¹⁸

Prospero on the island, then, has not been always as patient and wise as we see him in the play. Faced with the threat of malicious flesh and the pleasant temptation of intellectual solitude he has risen finally to a higher level of being, to a cultivation of the godlike within himself. This progression from one level of being to another seems itself allegorical. While a duke, Prospero cultivated knowledge and engaged in secret studies. Driven to the island, he attempted to cultivate Caliban. When Caliban accuses Prospero of mistreating him, Prospero replies,

                                        Thou most lying slave,
Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have us'd thee,
(Filth as thou art) with humane care, and lodg'd thee
In mine own cell till thou didst seek to violate
The honour of my child.

(I. ii. 344-48)

“In mine own cell” here is in his own self—until the danger of Caliban's corruption became apparent. Then, after he discovered that Caliban's lusts should be ruled, not cultivated, Prospero returned to his books and from them gained the philosophic mind. Finally, Prospero leaves his books also as he rises to a third level of being, that where the spiritual is free to guide him.

In this threefold progression, Prospero achieves in turn each of the three perfections that Renaissance writers like Hooker recognized in man. Man, according to Hooker,

doth seek a triple perfection; first a sensual, consisting in those things which very life itself requireth either as necessary supplements … ; then an intellectual, consisting in those things which none underneath man is either capable of or acquainted with; lastly a spiritual and divine, consisting in those things whereunto we tend by supernatural means here, but cannot here attain unto them. They that make the first of these three the scope of their whole life, are said by the Apostle to have no god but only their belly, to be earthly-minded men. Unto the second they bend themselves, who seek especially to excel in all such knowledge and virtue as doth most command men.

[I. xi. 4]¹⁹

But man is not satisfied with either of these two because he has a soul that makes him somewhat divine: “So that Nature even in this life doth plainly claim and call for a more divine perfection than either of these two that have been mentioned” (I. xi. 4).

While a duke, Prospero had already risen to the second pleasure, that of study. After cultivating Caliban for a while on the island, he soon returns to his books. But the final pleasure is a spiritual one, standing above both mind and body. Prospero finally balances books and duty in order to rise to the highest level. He learns that, as Erasmus said, “all manner of learning should be tested in due season and measure, with good judgment and discretion” (p. 498).

Apparently Prospero has not yet achieved complete knowledge of proper measure and degree by the beginning of the play. If he had, he would realize that a duke should prize his dukedom above all but his God. But, according to the Folio reading, he can now still say, “Gonzalo, … / Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me / From my own library with volumes that / I prize above my dukedom” (I. ii. 161-68). If the Folio “prize” were emended to “Priz'd”—perhaps a d-e misreading—the chronology would be more appropriate. In that case, although Prospero “priz'd” his books “above my dukedom,” he has already learned on the island to reorder his values. We do not see him prizing his books at all during the course of the play's action; instead we see him giving full attention to the business of regaining his dukedom. Since he is willing a few hours later to “drown my book,” surely he has already, in Act I, learned that a duke's primary responsibility is his dukedom. With either reading, however, the point remains that Prospero's studies have helped him discover his proper role.

On the island he properly throws off the mantle of study and takes up the scepter of rule while retaining his supremacy over fleshly lust and his affinity with spirit. To study books, Prospero discovers, is not in itself enough, but from his books Prospero is able to gain the art, the patience, and the wisdom that enable him to control Caliban. “I must obey,” says Caliban. “His art is of such pow'r / It would control my dam's god, Setebos, / And make a vassal of him” (I. ii. 372-74). Reasonable patience, trust in Providence, natural imposition of order on himself—these are his art, art capable of controlling Caliban, of preventing him from working any mischief, and, finally, of making Caliban himself seek wisdom and grace. Caliban, aware of the importance of the books, advises Stephano and Trinculo to first destroy them; then Prospero will lose his magic and have no “spirit to command” (III. ii. 102).

The magic that Prospero is able to perform seems to derive from knowledge. This combination of knowledge and magic was a relationship recognized by Renaissance writers.²⁰ According to Bacon in The Advancement of Learning, the “honourable meaning” of “magic” is knowledge:

I must here stipulate that magic, which has long been used in a bad sense, be again restored to its ancient and honourable meaning. For among the Persians magic was taken for a sublime wisdom, and the knowledge of the universal consents of things. … For as for that natural magic which flutters about so many books, embracing certain credulous and superstitious traditions … it will not be wrong to say that it is as far differing in truth of nature from such a knowledge as we require, as the story of King Arthur of Britain … differs from Caesar's Commentaries in truth of story.

[IV, 366-67]

Magic that converts

silver, quicksilver, or any other metal into gold, is a thing difficult to believe; yet it is far more probable that a man who knows clearly the natures of weight, of the colour of yellow, of malleability and extension … may at least by much and sagacious endeavour produce gold; than that a few grains of an elixir should in a few moments of time be able to run other metals into gold by the agency of that elixir, as having power to perfect nature and free it from all impediments.

[IV, 367-68]

Magic can be true wisdom or the vain effort of the lazy man to get something for nothing; Prospero's magic is that of wisdom. From the knowledge he has he is able to divine that certain events are going to happen in the near future. He hears the storm approaching, sees the ship, and foresees by means of his magic that a shipwreck is imminent.

Prospero tells Miranda that fortune has brought the ship to the shore:

By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune
(Now my dear lady) hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore; and by my prescience
I find my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star, whose influence
If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop.

(I. ii. 178-84)

Although fortune is now in his favor, Prospero himself must take advantage of this “most auspicious star” if the fortunate occurrence is to do him any good. If Prospero neglects his opportunity, he will bind himself to an unnatural order; his fortunes “will ever after droop.” As Prospero, with the help of Ariel, does take advantage of the confusion to further the cause of order, he affiliates himself with spirit and regains his dukedom. The “best pleasure” that Ariel serves is not the study of books or the cultivation of Caliban, but the attempt by Prospero to become again a proper duke. And, as Prospero becomes again a ruler rather than a scholar, Ariel is freed while Prospero serves the greater good.

The tempest blows, and all but the mariners abandon ship. Most of those from the ship immediately begin to feel despair and sorrow. Prospero asks Ariel,

Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil
Would not infect his reason?
ARIEL.
Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd
Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners
Plung'd in the foaming brine and quit the vessel …

(I. ii. 207-11)

Refusing to trust Providence as Prospero did when adrift, those from the ship become victims of fortune. The ship here seems a symbol of the confused state which Prospero, having again taken upon his shoulders the responsibility of ruling, will return to order. Prospero says,

I have with such provision in mine art
So safely ordered that there is no soul—
No, not so much perdition as an hair
Betid to any creature in the vessel …

(I. ii. 28-31)

Before that art brings order on the island, however, most of the wanderers suffer. Two, Stephano and Trinculo, drunk and unreasonable, become connected immediately to the fleshly Caliban. The others, except for Ferdinand and Gonzalo, despair or attempt to perpetrate additional misdeeds until they are finally led with Prospero's aid to patience and repentance.

Of the others, Alonso puts off hope, and Sebastian and Antonio plan to kill him. At this point (III. iii.) we have “Solemn and strange music” and Prospero enters invisible to the men below. Several “strange shapes” also appear, bearing a banquet. They “dance about it with gentle actions of salutation; and, inviting the King, etc., to eat, they depart.” When the men attempt to eat, Ariel flies in as a harpy, “and with a quaint device the banquet vanishes.” Then Ariel accuses Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio of sin and threatens punishment.

If Prospero represents soul and Ariel spirit, then we might say that they represent, in this scene, soul and spirit within the King Alonso and his followers. The feast, then, becomes an image created within each man by his own soul and spirit. Some direct evidence supports this interpretation. Gonzalo apparently sees the feast spread and hears the harmonious music at the beginning of the scene: “Marvellous sweet music!” he says. And he sees the strange creatures. But apparently he does not hear the harpy accuse the others and threaten retribution. For after Alonso's fearful reaction to Ariel's speech, Gonzalo asks him, “I' th' name of something holy, sir, why stand you / In this strange stare (ll. 94-95). Alonso replies, “O, it is monstrous, monstrous! / Methought the billows spoke and told me of it” (ll. 95-96). Quite clearly Gonzalo has seen only the harmonious part of the vision, the feast spread; only the three accused ones have witnessed the disharmonious interruption.

Banquet spread and banquet interrupted, then, are separate visions; and they are internal visions—imagined rather than actual. The banquet is an image of order, satisfaction, fullness; it is in fact a momentary utopian dream. But unless the man himself be orderly, the utopian dream will be immediately destroyed by guilt and fear as it is destroyed for the three guilty men. For loyal Gonzalo, however, the interruption does not occur.

When the feast is brought in by Prospero's “meaner ministers” (perhaps doubts, hopes) everyone notes the harmony. Antonio says that he will now believe any traveler's tale: “Travellers ne're did lie, / Though fools at home condemn 'em” (ll. 26-27). Alonso decides to “stand to and feed,” to partake of the order, the fullness. But such satisfaction is not possible when one is disorderly. “Thunder and lightning” occur, Shakespeare's usual emblems of disorder. Ariel, as a harpy, claps wings on the table and the banquet vanishes. Then he calls Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian “three men of sin” whom destiny has brought to this island that “man doth not inhabit.” Ariel continues, “I have made you mad; / And even with such-like valour men hang and drown / Their proper selves” (ll. 58-60). The criminals have lost their “proper” selves, have brought themselves to the madness of guilt, doubt, and fear. Antonio and Sebastian draw, and the harpy cries, “you fools! I and my fellows / Are ministers of Fate” (ll. 60-61). If Ariel and the shapes are, as the play seems to indicate, parts of the essential makeup of every man, and if they are ministers of fate, then the agents whereby fate works are no more or less than man's own character and being. Fate still remains outside man; Ariel says that he is a minister of fate; he does not say that he is fate itself. But fate works through man's character; and so, in a sense, a man, the subject and ruler of his own character, is the subject and ruler of fate. How he orders the elements within himself or allows them to order him determines what his fate will be. Or another way to put it is that a man's choices determine his salvation or damnation.

Ariel now accuses the criminals of supplanting Prospero. As spirit, that part which helps a man maintain order within himself, Ariel is quite properly fulfilling his function at this point. Under the direction and control of Prospero, he is leading sinful men back to nature, to “clear life ensuing.” Prospero compliments Ariel on his effectiveness: “They now are in my power” (l. 90). The unnatural men, through the prompting of spirit, through guilt, have now been led back toward reason, but they have not yet attained that order within themselves that will lead to order in the realm. Alonso decides to commit suicide; he needs to learn patience. Sebastian and Antonio attempt to fight the visionary shapes; they remain incapable of repentance just as Caliban remains incapable of nurture. At the end of the play, they, like Stephano and Trinculo, are two that a ruler must “know and own” just as Caliban is a “thing of darkness” that Prospero must “acknowledge mine.” Although Prospero includes Sebastian and Antonio in the general forgiveness, their only “repentance” is Sebastian's remark that “The Devil speaks in” Prospero (V. i. 128).

Even while he is guiding Alonso back to patience and order and preparing for the attack by Caliban, Prospero supports Ferdinand in his patience. Ferdinand swims to shore and hears Ariel sing (I. ii. 387): “Where should this music be? I' th' air or th' earth?” At first, close to despair, he is able to hear only at a distance the song of spirit:

It sounds no more; and sure, it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the King my father's wrack,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air.

(I. ii. 388-93)

Then, after he meets Miranda—innocence—and falls in love with her, he bears patiently the trials put upon him and proves himself worthy of being united with Miranda. Finally he is able himself to witness spirit; he, like Prospero, has learned patience and has not let flesh overcome him; he has asserted the spiritual within himself. To celebrate this “Fair encounter / Of two most rare affections” (III. i. 74-75), Prospero calls forth the masque.

This masque is performed by Ariel and “the rabble” under the direction of Prospero: “A contract of true love to celebrate / And some donation freely to estate / On the blest lovers” (IV. i. 84-86). The masque continues until Prospero remembers Caliban; then it vanishes abruptly. Prospero calls the masque a “vanity,” an illusion: he tells Ariel,

                    Go bring the rabble,
O'er whom I give thee pow'r, here to this place.
Incite them to quick motion; for I must
Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple
Some vanity of mine art. It is my promise,
And they expect it from me.

(IV. i. 37-42)

Such a vanity is achieved by the spiritual in man, by Ariel and Prospero's art. The masque is not based on actuality; it is derived from the imagination. The rabble seem to be the various impulses of the imagination that the spiritual in man can gather into an orderly vision. Prospero tells Ferdinand that these are

                              Spirits, which by mine art
I have from their confines call'd to enact
My present fancies.
FERDINAND.
Let me live here ever!
So rare a wond'red father and a wise
Makes this place Paradise.

(IV. i. 120-24)

While the masque is playing, we are momentarily in an imaginary paradise. The first paradise, which Gonzalo wishes to re-establish, is past, and his wish, as he knows, is only a fancy. So with Prospero's masque too; it is a fanciful fiction that lasts only so long as one is able to forget Caliban.

The reapers enter, and join with the nymphs in a graceful dance “towards the end whereof Prospero starts suddenly, and speaks; after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish.” Prospero says,

I had forgot that foul conspiracy
Of the beast Caliban and his confederates
Against my life. The minute of their plot
Is almost come.—[To the Spirits] Well done!
                    Avoid! No more!
FERDINAND.
This is strange. Your father's in some passion.
That works him strongly.

(IV. i. 139-44)

The masque, a thing of spirit as well as are the books that teach Prospero patience, cannot, like patience, subdue the passions of unrestrained flesh. It is chased away by the coming, by even the remembrance of the treachery of Caliban. A spiritual utopia is impossible even to imagine when one feels passion. The moment Prospero is troubled by passion his art fails him—his patience and trust in Providence are momentarily disturbed. The confusion and hollowness that end the masque will continue until Prospero is again able to conquer his vexation and subdue Caliban.

Miranda recognizes that Prospero is “touch'd with anger,” more touched in fact than ever before, when he tells Ferdinand that the actors, “all spirits,” have “melted into air.” Thus too shall men disappear: “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep” (IV. i. 156-58). But then Prospero qualifies his pessimistic outline of man by admitting that he is vexed:

                    My old brain is troubled.
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity.
If you be pleas'd, retire into my cell
And there repose. A turn or two I'll walk
To still my beating mind.
FERDINAND. Miranda.
We wish your peace.
PROSPERO.
Come with a thought!

(IV. i. 159-64)

It is easy to be thrown off the track here by the very magnificence of Shakespeare's poetry. But when one pays attention to exactly what is being said by that poetry one discovers, first of all, that Prospero is angry. Since he is speaking from passion, not from reasoned consideration, his pessimistic view of the world as unsubstantial pageant is not authoritative. Although the spiritual, the masque in this case, has vanished for a time when the anger persists, it will and does return with the return of reason and peace. Prospero himself immediately realizes, and tells Ferdinand, that he has spoken in the weakness of anger. His brain was troubled and momentarily infirm. He wants to still his beating brain, and peace returns with the thought: thought, i.e., reason, overcomes passion and permits the return to reliance on spirit and control of flesh. Ariel returns immediately with the return of reason to Prospero. And although the masque itself does not return, although it is merely pageant that feeds the spirit and not the body, the thing of which it is a part, the spiritual of man, does return and remains with Prospero for the rest of the play.

The masque in The Tempest is a fanciful ideal world, a world than man can inhabit only momentarily because man's permanent place is in this world where the lusts of the flesh as well as duty have their place. The imagined ideal of a paradise is not finally achievable in The Tempest, or in life, because it is a fantasy in which a man's duty has no part. The greater good for man is the good of life in society, and utopian dreams do not support this greater good of fellowship. According to Hallett Smith, “Ethically, pastoral supports the contemplative life, and as such it is always vulnerable to the objection that virtue can consist only in action.”²¹ The very thing that makes a dream of an ideal world possible also makes it unattainable. The civilized man, like Prospero, is the one who desires a return to simplicity and nature in order to escape the responsibility and disorder of life. But such escape is only fanciful, for the place to correct disorder is at home. Prospero must finally realize that he cannot turn from himself or his dukedom; he must attend to Caliban and his misled subjects.

Although man must live in a world other than that of fanciful masque, man can yet be reasonable and responsible. So Prospero proves as he rights affairs in his realm and guides his subjects back to order. First, with the help of Caliban, he proves his power to resist corrupt appetite. Ariel returns to Prospero:

ARIEL.
Thy thoughts I cleave to. What's thy pleasure?
PROSPERO.
Spirit,
We must prepare to meet with Caliban.
ARIEL.
Ay, my commander. When I presented Ceres,
I thought to have told thee of it, but I fear'd
Lest I might anger thee.

(IV. i. 165-69)

Ariel cleaves to thought; spirit cleaves to reason. Prospero calls on spirit in order to meet another attack by flesh, but Ariel will not remind him of Caliban because the remembrance may cause anger which will force the retreat of spirit and the improper advance of flesh. Prospero asks where Ariel left “these varlets.” Ariel replies that, “redhot with drinking,” the drunkards stumbled into the “filthy mantled pool beyond your cell” (IV. i. 182). So drunkenness leads them foully astray.

The King finally finds his way and repents after approaching despair. Prospero forgives him—as well as the less-moved Sebastian and Antonio:

Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst 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.

(V. i. 25-30)

Earlier Prospero was angry; he still needed his magic robes. Now he is able to forgive wrong and to act as the agent of returned order. With order achieved, he is able to put aside his magic, for he has learned enough to be patient and charitable.

Clearer reason brings awareness of fault: “their rising senses / Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle / Their clearer reason” (V. i. 66-68). Prospero reminds the three of their guilt and tells them that they are “pinch'd fo't now” (V. i. 74). With the pinching, reason returns:

                    Their understanding
Begins to swell, and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore,
That now lies foul and muddy.

(V. i. 79-82)

The son is found and Gonzalo calls on the gods to bless the young couple, “For it is you that have chalk'd forth the way / Which brought us hither” (V. i. 203-4). The gods lead men to order and peace when men cooperate. Prospero rejoices that so much has been found: a wife for Ferdinand, a dukedom for Prospero, and each man for himself “When no man was his own” (V. i. 213). The return to nature and order that a man accomplishes on the island is a finding of his true and higher self. Alonso says, “These are not natural events; they strengthen / From strange to stranger” (V. i. 227-28). He is wrong, for although strange, they are natural.

Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban are brought forth to be accused. Prospero says, “Two of these fellows you / Must know and own; this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine” (V. i. 274-76). Caliban fears he will be “pinch'd to death,” but Prospero accepts the flesh as part of himself, but a part that henceforth will be kept in order. Some indication exists that Prospero has finally succeeded in imposing decency upon Caliban. The constant danger of rebellion is past, Caliban has lost, and he accepts his defeat: “I'll be wise hereafter / And seek for grace” (V. i. 294-95). He will not only be useful but, possibly, good.

Prospero, now attuned to the spiritual and in control of the corporeal, no longer needs to rule by magic or force. The free state that he attains apart from his magic is his noblest. But that freedom requires that he return to his dukedom, for the same reason that his passive, ideal life was not achievable. Bacon tells us in The Advancement of Learning,

After the creation was finished, it is set down unto us that man was placed in the garden to work therein; which work so appointed to him could be no other than work of contemplation; that is, when the end of work is but for exercise and experiment, not for necessity; for there being then no reluctation of the creature, nor sweat of the brow, man's employment must of consequence have been matter of delight in the experiment, and not matter of labour for the use.

[III, 290]

But after the fall, man had to labor for his daily food, and work of activity became more important than work of contemplation. And so things remain. Each man labors according to his place in the order of things, and the place of the duke is at the head of his dukedom.

But Prospero returns to his dukedom a different man, for he has learned patience; he has learned to control flesh; he has learned to balance learning and responsibility and to bear affliction, neither delighting in being afflicted, for such is pride, nor despairing; he has learned to think of death without wishing for it or fearing it, considering, as Erasmus would have one do, “how full of grief and misery, how short and transitory, this present life is; how on every side death lieth in wait against us, and suddenly catcheth us; how unsure we are of one moment of life; how great peril it is to continue that kind of life, wherein if sudden death should take us, as it often fortuneth, we were but lost for ever” (p. 522). Prospero is surely prepared for any accident.

The Tempest indicates that in this world where men pass their transitory lives, no utopia exists where one can entirely escape the weight of his own being. He may escape momentarily the complexities of life by imagining for himself an ideal world where love and reason reign or where fruit grows without cultivation, but the imagined world can exist only as long as he is free from the moment at hand. The very men who most feel the yearning for escape, sophisticated men like Prospero, are the men who have least chance to escape, for they have too little time to pass in fanciful worlds. The masque in The Tempest is part of a larger context. As a creation of the contemplative imagination, it springs from the same desire for a passive life that leads one to study and seclusion. And like passive life apart from the world, the fanciful world of the masque cannot be sustained by a reasonable and proper man, for he must live in the real world of duty and action.

Notes

1. All Shakespeare quotations are from The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. George Lyman Kittredge (Boston, 1936).

2. Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare (New York, 1937, 1947), p. 322.

3. G. Wilson Knight, The Crown of Life: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare's Final Plays, 2d. ed. (London, 1948), pp. 210, 211, and 242.

4. Theodore Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man, 2d. ed. (New York, 1949), p. 195.

5. James E. Phillips, “The Tempest and the Renaissance Idea of Man,” SQ [Shakespeare Quarterly], XV (1964), 150, 152-53, and 157.

6. Virgil Whitaker, Shakespeare's Use of Learning (San Marino, Calif., 1953), p. 323.

7. Elmer E. Stoll, Shakespeare and Other Masters (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), pp. 281-84.

8. Miles Coverdale, “Abridgement of the Enchiridion of Erasmus,” in Writings and Translations of Miles Coverdale, ed. George Pearson for the Parker Society (Cambridge, 1844), pp. 504-5.

9. Walter Clyde Curry, Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns (Baton Rouge, La., 1937), pp. 165-66.

10. Cited in Whitaker, op. cit., p. 79.

11. Interpretations of Caliban and Ariel as the “gross genius of brute matter” and “the spirit of the elements” or as various Aristotelian souls may work just as well as this one, but perhaps they work no better.

12. The Fathers of the Church, trans. Gerald S. Walsh, S. J., and Grace Monahan, O.S.U., vol. XIV (New York, 1952), bk. xiii, p. 319.

13. Alfred Hart, Shakespeare and the Homilies (Melbourne, Australia, 1934), p. 5.

14. Whitaker, pp. 198-209.

15. E. M. W. Tillyard, in Shakespeare's History Plays (London, 1944), feels that Hall deserves as much credit as Holinshed, if not more.

16. See Hart, p. 27.

17. The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, 7 vols. (London, 1861-70). In parentheses I give volume and page number.

18. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip S. Watson (London, 1953), p. 45.

19. Richard Hooker, The Works, ed. John Keble, rev. R. W. Church and F. Paget, 7th ed., 3 vols. (Oxford, 1888). In parentheses I give book, chapter, and paragraph number. Virgil Whitaker assures us that Shakespeare knew Hooker; see Shakespeare's Use of Learning, pp. 198-209.

20. Whitaker notes that Shakespeare's system of magic is not very carefully worked out (p. 323). Its significance seems clear, however.

21. Hallett Smith, Elizabethan Poetry: A Study in Conventions, Meaning, and Expression (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 57.