SOURCE: Hall, Grace R. W. “Shakespearean Typology: The Several Identities of Characters in The Tempest.” In The Tempest as Mystery Play: Uncovering Religious Sources of Shakespeare's Most Spiritual Work, pp. 49-71. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 1999.

[In the following excerpt, Hall argues that The Tempest may be read as Shakespeare's version of a Mystery Play, and surveys its characters in terms of their biblical counterparts.]

“Who's there?” “Are you a man?”

Macbeth 2.3.8, 3.4.57

Bethell averred, “More has been written about character than about any other theme in Shakespearean criticism. … [B]ut there is still some haziness about the principles governing Shakespeare's presentation of character.”¹ Brook noted that “Shakespeare's verse gives density to the portrait.”² The density may be explained in part by what Bethell described as “The mixed mode of character presentation favored by Shakespeare and the popular dramatic tradition [which] depends for its validity upon the principle of multiconsciousness.”³

Shakespeare's use of the multiconsciousness mode of representation has led to a wide variety of identifications for Prospero. Almost two hundred years after the First Folio appeared with The Tempest as the lead play, Clark asked, “Who is Prospero?” and pointed out that his question “has agitated the minds of countless thousands who have been charmed by The Tempest. Some have wondered whether he is intended to be the personification of Destiny. Others have conjectured that he is Shakespeare himself.”⁴

Being somewhat confused by Prospero's many traits, James found Prospero is “Jupiter … of Cymbeline … in a heavy disguise of mortality. Here is no crude descent of a god. God Prospero may be; but he is also a very human, impatient old gentleman. His humanity is as perfectly set out as his divinity. … But [Shakespeare made] … an all too human character of his divinity in The Tempest.”⁵

Prospero has been described by Tillyard as a ruler who has made a tragic mistake and then repented of it, and interpreted as a “Superman” by Knight, “an harmonious and fully developed will” by Dowden, “an artist of a kind” by Zimbardo, as “the representative of Art” by Kermode, as “the instrument of judgement” by Traversi, as “a philosopher” by Clark, as “the prototypical Supreme Being, whom indeed the pagan hierophant was deemed to represent” by Still, and as the symbol of “reason” or the “thinking, understanding mind with its crowning faculty, reason” by Wagner.⁶ Although it may appear as Traversi suggests that Prospero is judging, his role is not as judge, but as “schoolmaster,” who brings awareness of the law to the untaught and the recalcitrant.

Wagner's identification of Prospero with reason not only reduces him from man to symbol, but divests the play of its divinity in exalting man's reason. Wagner does extend her description of Prospero—“He is reasoning mind plus knowledge”—but she sees Prospero's books as “a symbol of scientific knowledge” rather than books of magic. This interpretation is not compatible with either Prospero's drowning of his book (5.1.57) or Shakespeare's comments about the separation of the branches of knowledge and Leontes's rationalism gone irrational in The Winter's Tale.

Wagner emphasizes reason in her thesis that Shakespeare is concerned in The Tempest with the expulsion of pagan ideas that have crept into Christianity. Reason and the new scientific thinking appear to her to be the method by which Shakespeare expunges error and spurious ideas from Christianity.⁷ She fails to recognize that it was science in the first place that provided a false framework on which both Paganism and the church could build their cosmologies. Copernicus did not create an entirely new pattern for the heavens. Much earlier Heraclides of Pontus (born c. 400-380 b.c.) assumed “that only the interior planets, Mercury and Venus revolved around the sun, while the sun and the other planets revolved around the earth.” Aristarchus (c. 217-c. 145 b.c.) “placed the sun in the center of the planets.”⁸ For centuries mainline scientists rejected the possibility of a heliocentric model and subscribed to the erroneous Ptolemaic model of the heavens. Shakespeare, unlike Wagner, subordinates the new science, magic, and reason to human need and plays the music of the spheres in a different key with new authority figures. Those figures—masters, not gods—will be described in this [essay]. …

Prospero does not figure primarily or fit solely into any of the aforementioned designations. They err who make Prospero only a symbol or equate him with divinity. In The Tempest as in some of Shakespeare's other plays, characters exhibit aspects both of divinity and humanity, yet they should not be seen as gods.

Hassel's view of Prospero as a man is broader than that of Wagner or James: “He has tasted his finitude and his infinitude to the lees, and he has learned that he must be something of both to be a man.” Hassel points to the revels passage and the Epilogue as evidence of both Prospero's awareness of his mortality and his “human weakness with the paradoxical blessings of humility and forgiveness.” Hassel sees the last plays as a “return to the comic-Christian sense of human life as an insubstantial pageant with a benevolent, forgiving auditor,” urging “upon their Renaissance audience a comforting old response to the new scientific rationalism that may be threatening their composure.”⁹ Hassel's view of the last plays thus concords with this study in rejecting Wagner's rationalism and scientific purgation and in ascribing to the Christian sense of human life in The Tempest.

Bethell, too, finds Shakespeare inclusive in his outlook. He compares Shakespeare's mode of character presentation with a more limited mode:

The change from conventionalism to naturalism, from multiconsciousness to what we might call theatrical monism, reflects not only a change in technical resources but also a profound change in metaphysical outlook. Theatrical naturalism … is a product of philosophical materialism, which monistically denies reality to the supernatural. Scientific interest in individual case history, as displayed by Ibsen and the naturalists, is the only sort of interest in humanity possible when humanity has been ousted from its central position in the universe. But the Shakespearean presentation of character depends on a multiconsciousness related to that balance of opposites which constitutes the universe of Christianity: God and man; spirit and matter; time and eternity.¹⁰

Although Bethell, Hassel, Still, and Wagner acknowledge that the play is concerned with Christianity, Wagner's and Still's ideas of Shakespeare's purpose differ markedly from Bethell's and Hassel's. Neither Bethell nor Wagner nor Hassel associated the play with the Mystery Plays. Although in the title of his book Shakespeare's Mystery Play: A Study of “The Tempest” Still identified it correctly, he did not make a comparison of the play with one or more of the Mystery Plays; rather, he compared it with pagan rites of passage. If The Tempest is a Christian play, however, then Prospero, the principal character, must be associated in some way with Christianity.

Presenting Christianity posed a problem since Shakespeare could not use freely the name of God or of Christ in the theater.¹¹ If the name of the deity could not be mentioned, how could Shakespeare bring the idea of divinity into the play? In the Mystery Plays … Old Testament characters typified some aspect of Christ. The plays also used Christ's name anachronistically in the Old Testament. If Shakespeare's characters, in what has been identified herein as his Mystery Play, are intended to typify some aspect of divinity, they would have had to have traits and functions similar to scriptural characters since Shakespeare did not use biblical names. Similar behavioral characteristics, along with imagery and a vocabulary familiar to the audience, would convey the sense he intended. For an audience whose members were required to attend church and listen to homilies and to the reading of most of the Bible every year, and where, all about them they saw biblical scenes engraved in masonry, carved in wood, painted in frescoes and arranged in collages of stained glass, a word or phrase could bring to remembrance many biblical stories, interlocking themes and character figurings. Part of the compactness and inclusiveness of the vision that is The Tempest can be attributed to Shakespeare's use of words, which not only had dual or triple senses but also brought to mind particular dramas, art, or texts with which audiences were familiar.

Prospero is severally associated and should be severally identified. He functions in the play as a magician, and describes himself as the deposed duke of Milan, Miranda's father, and her “schoolmaster” (1.2.172). He confesses both his neglect of duty as duke and “being transported / And rapt in secret studies” (1.2.76-77). Awareness of the multiconsciousness operative in The Tempest should enable us to recognize Prospero's several identities and shuttle from one of his personalities to another. Shakespeare assists us by using changes of apparel for Prospero. (The dual or multiple identities of other characters must be comprehended without that kind of help.) Prospero alternately wears a mantle called a “magic garment” (1.2.23) or a “robe” (1.2.169), wears his magic robes (5.1, beginning of scene), carries a staff and a book (5.1.54, 57), wears a hat and carries a rapier (5.1.84), or appears disrobed as Miranda's father before he puts on his schoolmaster's robe.

After the “ship of souls” is “dash'd all to pieces” (1.2.8), Prospero assures Miranda

No harm:
I have done nothing, but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one; thee, my daughter, who
Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing
Of whence I am, nor that I am more better
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father.

[1.2.15-21]

Prospero's “what thou art,” “of whence I am,” and “more better than” forecast there will be a revelation of his and Miranda's identity. It will go beyond Milan. Prospero asks Miranda to help him remove his magician's attire: “Lend thy hand, / And pluck my magic garment from me. So. / [Lays down his mantle.] / Lie there my Art” (1.2.23-25). Disrobed, as her father, he relates his experiences as “once” duke of Milan and his care of Miranda under the adverse circumstances occasioned by his “neglect of duty” and his brother's treachery. Disrobed, he is simply—or not so simply, if we consider one of Miranda's identities—her father, once duke of Milan. After giving her a Milan family history lesson, he changes his attire: “[Puts on his robe]”¹² (1.2.169), which may differ from the mantle he laid aside earlier or be the same garment serving differently. Robed, he rises and announces another identity, that of “schoolmaster” (1.2.172). In that capacity he apprises Miranda that his “prescience” (1.2.180) is more far-reaching than Milan, for he is aware of “a most auspicious star” in his “zenith” (1.2.182, 181). In his heaven-oriented role, he is Miranda's “careful” tutor (1.2.173) as well as that of others in the play.

As a schoolmaster Prospero has a wide range of protégés. After Miranda falls asleep, he continues in the role of schoolmaster, checking on Ariel's performance, repeating his monthly lessons, and rebuking him for forgetting: “Hast thou, spirit, / Perform'd to point The Tempest that I bade thee?” (1.2.194) and “I must / Once in a month recount what thou hast been, / Which thou forget'st” (1.2.261-263). He teaches Caliban to distinguish the lesser and bigger lights by naming. He teaches Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban the consequences of foolish and gluttonous behavior by leading them through a bog. He teaches Ferdinand restraint, communal responsibility, and respect. With thunderous sounds and a banquet he teaches Sebastian and Antonio that everything they plan and see is not within their grasp. His prime pupil, whom he takes great care to instruct, is Miranda. Under his tutelage she has become a sensitive and caring person, who pleads with her father to show mercy on the “fraughting souls.” Not least among those instructed by Prospero are members of the audience, who along with Miranda are encouraged to remember what “lives in” their minds from the “dark backward and abysm of time” (1.2.49-50) and who are reminded throughout his lengthy recounting to “heed,” “hear,” and “listen.” Prospero's constant reminders to Miranda to pay attention and his suggestions that she is not listening are also directed at the audience. Schucking stated that Prospero “unintentionally appears in the light of a schoolmaster,” but at considerable length he gives examples of Prospero's pedagogy.¹³ The evidence he offers abrogates his claim that Shakespeare's portrayal was unintentional.

If Prospero's appearance as magician, dressed in a mantle and equipped with a staff, did not arouse suspicions, his designation as “schoolmaster” should have for a biblically literate society, as well as for those familiar with the Mystery Plays; for Prospero has still another identity, that of an historical character, which is subtly presented by Shakespeare. Recognition of that identity is important to a fuller understanding and appreciation of the play. That unnamed identity establishes The Tempest as a mystery play. It has escaped the attention of critics but may well have been obvious to seventeenth century audiences. The “haziness” Bethell found in Shakespeare's presentation of character is dissolved and the divine attributes critics have ascribed to Prospero are properly assigned when the mode Shakespeare uses for representation of historical characters is identified as figuration or typology. Throughout The Tempest, Shakespeare uses that biblical mode of representation, referred to earlier as a unifying factor in the Mystery Plays. With it he provides correspondences between his characters and historical personages without loss of contemporaneous individuality. In the Old Testament many characters figure some aspect of divinity, foreshadowing Christ. No doubt it is Shakespeare's use of this mode of representation that is partially responsible for critics' sense of the divine in Prospero, who is, in fact, in all of his representations a man.

In the use of figuration, correspondences and differences exist between characters, and although the person figures another, he is a person in his own right in an historical or dramatic context. Figuration is a far more distinctive and sophisticated approach than abstracting the quality of a person as in Everyman or attempting to impersonate another. Moreover, its use adds dimensions to the play, since it brings awareness of two or more personalities even though they are not visible on stage as separate actors. Along with the use of dual, triple, and obsolete word meanings, figuration provided a way for Shakespeare to tap into what lived in the minds of his audience, and it accounts for part of his success in conveying a great variety of ideas in a relatively brief script. It also imparts meaning. The compactness and inclusiveness of the vision that is The Tempest can in part be attributed to Shakespeare's ability to draw on the audience's familiarity with the modes of character representation used in the Mystery Plays and on the cultural concepts of time.

Shakespeare's mystery play covers the same human time period as the medieval plays. However, his typology differs from that of the medieval plays in that his cast of characters do not have biblical names or belong to biblical times. Some of them figure biblical persons who in turn are types or antitypes of Christ. Shakespeare's failure to use biblical names for his characters does not make them nontypical. In the Mystery Plays, contemporary characters portrayed biblical characters, who figured as types or antitypes of Christ. Ira Clark noted that some sixteenth and seventeenth poets, e.g. Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan, were using what he called “neotypology,” “devout personal lyrics based in types” which amounted to the insertion of personal experience into biblical settings.¹⁴ Clark pointed out that one of the ways allegory differs from typology is that in typology “both type and antitype have independent historical existence.”¹⁵ Shakespeare also used contemporized typological events in relating beliefs established by the church and promulgated in the medieval plays.

Shakespeare's use of nonbiblical names did not imply loss of the sacred meaning of the play. The comic aspects of both the Corpus Christi play and Shakespeare's play served a dual purpose. Kolve wrote, “The Corpus Christi drama is an institution of central importance to the English Middle Ages precisely because it triumphantly united man's need for festival and mirth with instruction in the story that most seriously concerned his immortal soul.”¹⁶ Miranda and Prospero identify those brought to the isle by Prospero as “poor souls” (1.2.9) and “fraughting souls” (1.2.13), not as men or fools as in Brant's Ship of Fools.

Shakespeare did not depend only upon costume and function for clues to Prospero's historical identity. He provided a nominal and a numerical clue. Biblical names were indicative of character or associated with events and their place in history. Name changes were indicative of changes in persons' lives, e.g. Abram and Sarai became Abraham and Sarah and Saul of Tarsus became Paul. Methuselah, who was the oldest man to have lived, died in the year of the flood. His long life suggests the mercy of God in delaying the destruction of humankind.

The name Prospero is suggestive. Prosper is a word associated in Scripture with one of the major themes of the play, that of hearing. Prospero's name and his emphasis on hearing and heeding can be associated with a biblical character. His name is as significant as Angelo in Measure for Measure. Angelo is not an angel unless he is a fallen one, and certainly in terms of banishment Prospero is not very prosperous. However, Prospero's words, like those of God's law, do not return void, but they “prosper in the thing whereto … [they were] sent” (Isaiah 55:11). Before Moses took leave of the Israelites and after he had repeated the Ten Commandments, he said, “Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily” (Deut. 6:3). King David of Israel instructed his son, Solomon, “Then shalt thou prosper, if thou takest heed to fulfill the statutes and judgments, which the Lord charged Moses with concerning Israel” (I Chron. 22:13). The Psalmist associated God's law and prosperity: “his delight is in the law of the Lord; … and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper” (1:2, 3). Job's struggle with his losses was in part due to the concept promulgated in the Old Testament that the righteous would prosper. Hence, “Prospero” suggests an Old Testament rather than a New Testament character. If The Tempest, like the Mystery Plays, is a Bible play, then in the expanded plot of The Tempest the most appropriate figuring for Prospero, who stands for the law in Milan and identifies himself as “schoolmaster,” would be Moses, who in biblical writ and the Mystery Plays was both lawgiver and teacher. In Chapter V of this study the comparison of Shakespeare's selectivity of biblical reference with specific plays in the Ludus Coventriae cycle helps to establish the correspondence between Prospero and Moses as lawgivers and teachers.

Moses is called a “figure” in the Bible: “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come” (Romans 5:14). Although this passage may present an ambiguity and raise the question of who is the figure of whom, both Adam and Moses figured, in one respect, the One who was to come. The antitype could be positive or negative; that is, the antitype of the failed son of God, Adam, could be the unfailing Son of God, Christ. But Adam's repentance made him a lately obedient son and he would then be a positive antitype, the first created human son of God. Moses, the lawgiver, was a teacher and a type of Christ, who taught his disciples a new law, the law of forgiveness—even of enemies. Therefore, when Clark wrote of Prospero, “In this spirit realm Prospero's word is law,” he came close to suggesting Prospero's historical identity.¹⁷ In pictorial and dramatic representations Moses carried a staff and book, the book of the law and a shepherd's staff that was used magically before Pharaoh and his court magicians.

One of the finer details of similarity involving numbers, which a seventeenth century audience might be more aware of than a twentieth century audience and which called forth “speculation” for Anne Barton Righter, intimates Shakespeare's figuring of Prospero as Moses. Righter claimed, “Within the play itself, [Shakespeare] has a perplexing habit of posing conundrums: ‘I / Have given you here a third of mine own life’ (4.1.2-3), or the declaration that once returned to Milan ‘Every third thought shall be my grave’ (5.1.311). Mathematical precision of this kind positively asks for speculation as to the nature of the other two-thirds. In neither case can an answer be supplied. The dramatist knows, but is not telling.”¹⁸ Righter's claim provides a challenge. This study proposes that with a knowledge of the facts to which Shakespeare alludes, one does find answers, and those answers make for a more nearly complete interpretation of the play and a widened vision of it. If the exact numerical proportion, “third,” does have significance, Shakespeare's use of it here may have been to identify with the number of years assigned to the divisions of years in Moses' life and to the proportion of his life devoted to the leadership of the children of Israel. The several corresponding biblical facts are recorded in Acts and Deuteronomy: “And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. … Then fled Moses at this saying, and was a stranger in the land of Madian, where he begat two sons. And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush” (Acts 7:23, 29-30). “And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated” (Deut. 34:7). Moses visited the children of Israel at age forty. Subsequently, he killed an Egyptian and fled to the wilderness where he remained for the next forty years. Taken together the two forty-year periods make up two-thirds of his life. He devoted the rest—one hundred and twenty minus eighty, i.e., one-third of his life (the proportion mentioned by Prospero)—to the deliverance and teaching of Israel.¹⁹

Although at first we may not relate Prospero's magic to the Bible, we may with a closer reading and biblical knowledge become aware of other similarities between Moses and Prospero. Prospero, who at times wears a magician's mantle and carries a staff, performs a function similar to that performed by Moses. Although we still have available to us the Book of the Law of Moses, we do not have his wonder-working rod, so we tend to forget that aspect of Moses' authority. In the miracle of the burning bush, recorded in Exodus 3 and 4, when Moses casts his shepherd's rod on the ground at divine command, it becomes a serpent, frightening Moses. When Moses picks the serpent up by the tail, again at divine command, it becomes a rod once more (Exodus 4:2-4). In Pharaoh's court with his rod Moses proved himself a greater magician than Egypt's magicians, and later with his staff he visited ten plagues upon the Egyptians. Prospero simulates Moses in using a magician's staff that controls factors in nature. Caliban acknowledges that Prospero's power is superior to that of Sycorax's god, Setebos: “His Art is of such pow'r / It would control my dam's god, Setebos, / And make a vassal of him” (1.2.374-376). Miranda refers to Caliban's “vile race” that “had that in't which good natures / Could not abide to be with” (1.2.360-362). These remarks may have been meant to help promote the association of Prospero with Moses and distinguish between the Egyptians, represented by Sycorax and Caliban, and the Israelites. In The Tempest Caliban recounts the plagues Prospero visits on him:

his spirits hear me,
And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' th' mire,
Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark
Out of my way, unless he bid 'em: but
For every trifle are they set upon me,
Sometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me,
And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount
Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I
All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness.

[2.2.3-14]

Although Frye glosses Caliban's curse, “The red plague rid you” (1.2.366), as the bubonic plague,²⁰ the red plague may well be a reference meant to remind Shakespeare's audience of the last plague inflicted by Moses, the death of the Egyptian firstborn and the attempt by Pharaoh to drive the Israelites into the Red Sea. The bubonic plague is usually referred to as the black plague. Prospero also plagues some of the recalcitrant in The Tempest by having Ariel lead them through a bog, their wilderness wandering. The humor and ridiculous behavior that occur when Stephano and Trinculo discover Caliban parallels scenes in the Mystery Plays where the follies of human nature are paraded. One example is found in the Noe play where Noah's wife rebels against going into the ark and sits among “gossips” who discuss the foolishness of Noah's endeavors, a scene which has no counterpart in the Bible.

The seventeenth century was exposed to and maintained an ambivalent attitude to white magic, and dramatists used it in various ways to impress their audiences. Woodman noted “the almost simultaneous appearance of The Alchemist and The Tempest. In one, the white magician, as charlatan, was used as an admirable tool for social satire; in the other, he was made genuine, and seen as a symbolic, mythic figure.”²¹

Woodman suggested that because the English body politic was vulnerable,

the possibilities of achieving order through the aids of white magic were strongly appealing to audiences. Just as healing through white magic was shown to bring health to the diseased individual, so it might also promote order in the diseased body politic. The traditional white magician might conduct his benevolent works … to reconcile rebels or usurpers and thus bring order to a foundering state. … Prospero's power over his spirit Ariel enables him to accomplish a series of triumphant maneuvers that culminate in a harmonious reunion as well as in his restoration to a usurped throne. Not only does he cure some of the diseased minds of the rebels but he also cures the diseased body politic of his kingdom.²²

In The Tempest both the body politic and the minds of men are diseased. Prospero uses his white magic to cure both.

Citing Moses as a prototype of the white magician, Woodman wrote, “Moses … demonstrated his skills to prove that the all-powerful God was on his side, and also to destroy the enemies of the Israelites. By miraculously producing water and food in the desert, he also revealed himself as the tribal medicine man.”²³

Prospero, a mythic figure, uses his magic as Moses did to achieve a release from bondage. In the play that release is from the bondage of the characters' hearts and minds, which are held captive to murderous intents or foolish, self-aggrandizing thoughts. Prospero not only prevents the evil forces from taking over the isle, but he prepares a banquet. Thus Woodman places Prospero in the same tradition as Moses, although he does not suggest that the former figures the latter.

Both Moses and Prospero could be described as “neglecting worldly ends” (1.2.89). Under somewhat different circumstances than Prospero, Moses turned from the responsibilities of Egyptian rule—which would have been his, since he was brought up in Pharaoh's house—to the shepherding of Jethro's sheep. Prospero, neglecting earthly governance, was “transported / And rapt in secret studies” (1.2.76-77). There appear to be more correspondences between Moses and Prospero than between any other Old Testament character and Christ in the Mystery Plays. Perhaps the number of correspondences was necessary to establish the relationship in the minds of the audience.

The association of Moses and Prospero does not curtail the uniqueness or humanity of either character, and Shakespeare makes this clear in The Tempest by having Prospero change garments each time he assumes a different role in the play. Thus Shakespeare uses the biblical mode of representation available to him, in which a human being can be both a figure of another and a living person in his own right. Shakespeare juggled human characteristics so that no one can be identified exactly with another person. Differences between Prospero and Moses allow the audience to perceive both characters at the same time, and to perceive meaning that is only available through typology.

Typology is suggestive, but there is never a one-to-one comparison between the figure and the one figured, type and antitype. In Prospero's reason for using magic and his reason for losing his rulership, Shakespeare used figuring as a means of representation rather than substitution. Moses used magic to persuade a king to release a people from physical bondage that denied them time for worship. Prospero used magic to bring the release of individuals from the perversion of their own wills and minds. Moses abandoned his opportunity as Pharaoh's adopted son to be ruler of Egypt, choosing instead to identify with his blood brothers; Prospero was banished from his dukedom by his brother after his absorption with art and books caused him to neglect his duty. As duke of Milan, Prospero was too careless about his duty and put too much trust in his brother, thereby putting temptation in his brother's way. Not so Moses, who chose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25). However, the similarities between Moses and Prospero are striking and much greater than the differences. Prospero brings each man, not just to enchantment, but to knowledge of the truth about the human condition and human relationships. With his magical staff, his book, his own knowledge and his airy servant he accomplishes this task with means similar to those of Moses, who used his rod to change natural phenomena and taught God's laws to the Israelites.

The figuring of Prospero as Moses allows us to evaluate him less harshly than did Wilson, who found him to be “a terrible old man, almost as tyrannical and irascible as Lear at the opening of the play.”²⁴ Prospero is dealing with would-be repeat murderers, not only with a would-be murderer of himself and his infant daughter, and with natural man, uninhibited by law, who would violate his daughter. His “neglect of duty,” which afforded his brother the occasion for evil, is hardly so serious a crime as willful plotting of murder or rape. The equality of retribution of the law expressed in “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” would not allow for the equating of neglect with murder. Even Tillyard's amelioration of Wilson's description, which limits the evaluation to “Prospero as he once was, not the character who meets us in the play, in whom these traits are mere survivals,” does not seem to be an appropriate evaluation of one who preferred art and magic to governance.²⁵ They better apply to Moses, who killed an Egyptian before fleeing to the desert. Only the figuring of one as the other allows us to infer a murderous intent in Prospero—unless, of course, we accept anger or “vexation” as equivalent to the deed, a New Testament concept. However, Moses' reluctance to deal with Pharaoh and lead Israel out of bondage might be compared to Prospero's distaste for governing. As Prospero had Ariel, Moses had a mouthpiece: Aaron, his brother, who unlike Prospero's brother did not usurp authority.

Prospero, as Lord of Misrule in the biblical tradition, masquerades as one of the highest authorities in the Judeo-Christian religion. He puts on vestments to represent Moses and carries a book and a staff as Moses did, so that in appearance he can be seen as a magician or as a leader and teacher of Israel. A distinction is necessary between the representations of a magic book and the book of the law when Prospero dismisses the elements of nature, breaks his staff and drowns his book. Prospero appears in the former performance to be acting as a magician only. The book of the law is not dispensed with, for it appears in another guise as Prospero heads back to Milan. On the typological level, as the figure of Moses, Prospero turns over his rule to another before the play ends. His abandonment of magic is recorded and his recognition of the true lord is implied in the “ye elves” speech in his reference to the “printless” characters.

The sixty scenes carved on the spandrels in the chapter house of Salisbury Cathedral end with five depicting Moses: Moses on Sinai, the miracle of the Red Sea, the destruction of the Egyptians, Moses striking the rock, and the law declared.²⁶ The emphasis on Moses as a figure in the Mystery Plays, the New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer (1559), and in medieval art account for Shakespeare's figuring of Prospero. The two episodes staged in the Mystery Plays—the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the laws—have associations in The Tempest. Vestiges of Egypt's bondage remain in Shakespeare's portrayal of Caliban and the mention of Sycorax. In accordance with scripture: “All in Moses were baptized, in the cloud, and in the sea” (I Cor. 10:2). The service for baptism in the Book of Common Prayer also refers to the Red Sea.²⁷ “The Red Sea becomes a figure for the waters of baptism, and Christ the leader of the new Exodus which frees men from the bondage of the devil.”²⁸ Prospero, like Moses, initiates the “ship of souls” in a comparable rite of baptism and proclaims the law through his spirit, Ariel. Thus Shakespeare's choice of Prospero as the principal character in his Mystery Play is appropriate. The identification made by comparing Moses and Prospero will be further substantiated in the following chapter where comparisons are made between the Ludus Coventriae cycle and The Tempest.

Gonzalo, who is called councillor and is a visionary as well as the instrument of Providence for the preservation of Prospero, his books, and Miranda, figures a prophet. Gonzalo confirms his penchant for prophesy in the play with “I prophesied, … / This fellow could not drown” (5.1.217-218) when Ariel returns with the boat's master and the boatswain. As a prophet Gonzalo is not always accurate about history, as when, equating Tunis and Carthage, he is ridiculed by Antonio and Sebastian. Rather than recounting past happenings, a prophet looks at the present, interpreting current happenings, and to the future, foretelling coming events. In the latter respects Gonzalo functions well. His outlook for the future is good, for he is a prophet of good news. He describes the condition of man on the isle where he would have his “commonwealth” as free from human control and human bondage.

Shakespeare probably expected his audience to recognize a specific Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, for Isaiah does not come into The Tempest by slight inference only. Isaiah could be called the prophet of the isles, for he addresses and references them often: “Listen, O isles, unto me” (49:1). “Keep silence before me, O islands” (41:1). “I will send those that escape of them … to the isles afar off … and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles” (66:19). “The isles shall wait for his law” (42:4). It appears from the outcome of The Tempest that the new law of forgiveness does come to the isle, for Prospero forgives his enemies and asks forgiveness. Isaiah also writes of a tempest, and in his tempest there is “great noise” and “the flame of devouring fire” (29:6). In the same chapter, Isaiah also writes of “a dream of a night vision,” “a book that is sealed,” “the spirit of deep sleep,” being “brought down,” “speech … low out of the dust, and a voice … as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground,” “an hungry man” dreaming of eating and awaking, “and his soul is empty,” “a marvellous work among this people” and “their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us?” all of which have correspondences in the play. The concluding verse of the twenty-ninth chapter of Isaiah describes the outcome of the play: “They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding” (Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio), “and they that murmured shall learn doctrine” (Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo). At the end of the play Alonso understands enough of what has happened to say, “Thy Dukedom I resign, and do entreat / Thou [Prospero] pardon me my wrongs” (5.1.118-119). These words beg to be put into the mouth of Antonio rather than Alonso, since he has held Prospero's office of duke. However, if it is Alonso who speaks, Antonio and Sebastian nevertheless hear the truth, and although their conversion is not complete (being only a transition from murderous thoughts to those of profit-making), they are subject to a changed King Alonso, who will have control of dukedoms. Caliban remains under Prospero's tutelage and Stephano and Trinculo are also put under the law, “line and level.”

One of Isaiah's prophecies of the coming of Christ uses the phrase “dyed garments” (Isaiah 63:1), and Gonzalo calls attention to the freshness of the clothes of those who have been immersed in the sea with “our garments, … being rather new dyed” (2.1.59, 61). He encourages Sebastian and Antonio to “weigh / Our sorrow with our comfort” (2.1.8-9) as the prophet Isaiah promulgates comfort to the people of Israel and declares the end of warfare (Isaiah 40:1, 2). The latter decree is in agreement with Shakespeare's “the means to peace.” Many passages in Isaiah describe the coming of a more benign society which compares in essence with Gonzalo's “commonwealth.”²⁹ “Aliens from the commonwealth of Israel” have “no hope” (Ephesians 2:12). Antonio and Sebastian, who ridicule Gonzalo for trying to persuade them “the King his son's alive,” have “no hope” (2.1.231, 233, 234). Through their evil intent and unbelief they alienate themselves from Gonzalo's prophesied commonwealth. As Gonzalo stands with the others within the magic circle which Prospero has drawn, Prospero calls him “holy” and his “true preserver, and a loyal sir / To him thou follow'st” (5.1.62, 69-70), which refers in the immediate situation to whoever may be the duke of Milan, but also may imply “the wills above” (1.1.66). Gonzalo as a councillor cannot use his kind of authority to control the storm, but as a prophet, he can foresee the means to peace, one of which is “the washing of ten tides” (1.1.57). Each being has its proper sphere of activity or influence.

The number of descriptions in Isaiah that are compatible with the behavior and experiences of the characters in The Tempest are indeed numerous, and Gonzalo is the one who sees what is happening in the present and foresees what is possible. Figuring Gonzalo as Isaiah enhances his image, whereas Wagner's symbolism, which makes him “a symbol of conscience,” is reductive of both his manhood and his vision.³⁰

Through his schooling Prospero has brought Miranda out of “her bondage to the elements of the world,” which Shakespeare uses in the sense of elements of nature, of human nature, and of earthly sovereignty or authority. Among those would be the elements of paganism that had crept into Christianity (a parallel with the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian sovereignty). Miranda's “schoolmaster made [her] more profit, / Than other princess' can, that have more time / For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful” (1.2.172-174). It may be noted here that Moses' nurse and “careful” tutor was his own mother, even though his adoptive parent was Pharaoh's daughter, a member of a pagan culture. When Miranda first appears, she is free to recognize the worth of and to love all humankind. Later hers is the universal acceptance of “Oh brave new world, / That has such people in't!” (5.1.183-184). This sounds naive, but invokes a possibility if not a probability. Her remark is consistent with Isaiah's prophesies that the Lord “will do a new thing” and “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare” (43:19; 42:9). She is characterized as a virgin, and a lady with “piteous heart,” who “suffered / With those that I saw suffer” (1.2.5-6). Such phrases, her innocence, and her pleas for mercy for the shipwrecked, along with Prospero's continued concern for her virginity, suggest the Virgin Mary. As a descendant of one who figures highly in Israel, she further qualifies to figure as Mary, although Mary's lineage is traced through the kings of Israel rather than through Moses in both the Bible and the Corpus Christi play. However, in the stained glass of the Fairford Church Mary is associated with Moses.³¹

Ferdinand's appraisal of Miranda as “admir'd, … so perfect and so peerless” and his request for her name “chiefly that I might set it in my prayers” (3.1.38, 47, 35) provide more associations with Mary. Medieval Christians and recusants prayed to the Virgin Mary. The word “screen,” which Prospero uses in describing his brother's playing the part of duke probably would have made his audience think of the Virgin Mary, for the screens that separated the statues of Mary from view had been removed and much discussion had centered about their use and removal.

The intricacy of Shakespeare's art and his use of it to bring awareness perhaps is nowhere more subtle than in the delicate scene where Ferdinand asks Miranda why she weeps. She answers:

At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give; and much less take
What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;
And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!
And prompt me plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not, I'll die your maid: To be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant,
Whether you will or no.

[3.1.77-86]

The language Miranda uses to express her desire to marry Ferdinand—“bigger bulk it shows” and “holy innocence”—are reminders of the Virgin Mary's “being great with child” and yet being a virgin. Although we have every reason to believe Miranda is not with child, Mary was. Only Shakespeare could incorporate so much suggestive imagery in what might otherwise merely be an expression of love between two characters in a play.

Ferdinand, who thinks his father, King Alonso, drowned in the storm, says to Miranda, “O, if a virgin, / And your affection not gone forth, I'll make you / The Queen of Naples” (1.2.450-451). The condition that Miranda be a virgin and the fact that in Renaissance times the Star of Naples was the Star of Bethlehem³² provide other links between Miranda and Mary. When Prospero tells Alonso, who believes his son is dead, that he lost a daughter in the last tempest, Alonso responds, “O heavens, that they were living both in Naples, / The King and Queen there!” (5.1.149-150). However, Miranda cannot be equated directly with Mary. In the figurative sense of the play, Miranda typifies Mary and Ferdinand shadows Christ. The relationship between the two in the figurative sense compares with the parallels Nosworthy drew between The Tempest and the Aeneid.³³ In the vision of provision which Prospero provides for Ferdinand and Miranda, Ceres requests, “Tell me, heavenly bow, / If Venus or her son, as thou dost know, / Do now attend the queen?” (4.1.87-89). Although in the description of the son and in the setting of Roman goddesses, one would infer Cupid, in the context of the play Shakespeare may have been thinking of the Aeneid as well. Although in the play Ferdinand and Miranda wed, typologically they figure mother and son, Ferdinand as a type of Christ and Miranda, Mary, Queen of Naples and star in the Bethlehem scene. The density of the play is enormous.

On the literal level in the Milan-Isle-Naples milieu Miranda and Ferdinand are human lovers. In any case Miranda should not be taken as Wagner suggested “as the symbol of the Christian ideal” and “as an ideal rather than a woman.”³⁴ As symbols Shakespeare's players would lose all the warm humanity with which he richly endows them and which endear them to his audiences.

Shakespeare's treatment of Ferdinand is also superb. Francisco's report that “he trod the water” (2.1.111) brings up the imagery of Christ walking on water (John 6:19). Alonso's anguish, which causes him to cry out, “O thou mine heir, / … what strange fish / Hath made his meal on thee?” (2.1.107-109), instills a vision of Jonah's engorgement by the whale, which in turn, for a biblically aware audience, could be a reminder of Matthew 12:39-40, where Jonah's experience is designated as a type of Christ's entombment in the earth. The question also calls attention to the symbol used by early Christians, the fish.

In his capacity as a wood-carrying and willing servant Ferdinand further figures Christ, who was willing to become a servant “that he might present it [the church] to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:27). Prospero's demands upon Ferdinand and his concern for the preservation of Miranda's virginity are consistent with such an interpretation, as well as with the importance given in Scripture and the Mystery Plays to the virginity of Mary, Mother of Jesus, as confirmation of Christ's divinity. Ferdinand also figures as the New Testament husband, who is the “saviour” of the body, and is thus a figure of Christ. Although work, represented in The Tempest by wood carrying, was part of the curse, it was also a means to life. Ferdinand must carry wood for Miranda. Both Ferdinand's wood carrying and his being “stain'd / With grief” (1.2.417-418) suggest Christ, who carried a wooden cross and was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3) in order to bring new life to humankind. In the Mystery Plays Christ's carrying a wooden cross was prefigured by the story of Isaac carrying the wood to the mount where Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son. No doubt at least some in a seventeenth century audience would make a triple link: Isaac to Christ and Ferdinand to Isaac to Christ.

Wagner's thesis that Ferdinand, who was the first to leave the ship of souls in The Tempest, was in the forefront of the movement of the Reformation should be given credence insofar as that movement represented a return to the simplicity of the early Christian believers.³⁵ Ariel's description of Ferdinand as “the first man that leapt; [and] cried, “Hell is empty, / And all the devils are here’” (1.2.213-214) exemplifies both the extremes and concerns of some Puritans in Shakespeare's England. As a Puritan, Ferdinand's concerns appear more weighty than those of Malvolio, whose attention is focused on apparel and “cakes and ale.” Whereas Malvolio is the subject of ridicule, Ferdinand is comforted and reassured. Wagner's description of Ferdinand is limited by the singularity of her thesis. Therefore, it precludes the several tones and overtones evoking the more important figurings of Ferdinand. Traversi saw in Miranda's “is't a spirit?” and “a thing divine” (1.2.412, 421) recognition of Ferdinand “as something supernatural, the representative of a humanity exalted above the normal condition of man.”³⁶ It is in the context of Miranda's remarks that Prospero uses a phrase associated with Christ's suffering, “stained / With grief” and that his “soul” (1.2.415-416, 423) is prompting the turn of events which will culminate in Ariel's freedom “Within two days” (1.2.424). Although as the son of a king, a prince, and a wood-carrying servant Ferdinand is a type of Christ, he is not the only representation of Christ in the play. Shakespeare depicts the Redeemer using imagery drawn from the Mystery Plays. That imagery will be discussed in the next chapter.

A minimal number of passages in The Tempest have been cited for their biblical counterparts. Throughout the play, however, key words and biblical typology or figuration allow us to see the shadow or outline of one person in another. There are similarities in the shadows cast because, while each is known in the flesh as a distinctive person, the real persons are illuminated by the same light. In biblical figuration different characters foreshadow Christ; no one is a full representation, but each shadows in some way the promised one who was described as light (John 1:7-8), the full figure or revelation. The Mystery Plays and The Tempest move through typology from shadow to reality. In Prospero as lawgiver and teacher, in Gonzalo as counselor and prophet, and in Ferdinand as burden-bearer and prince, then, it is possible to identify characteristics of the unnamed master of the play, which no one of these characters fully portrays, for no mere man could. Shakespeare varies the use of figuration somewhat, letting persons from Milan figure biblical characters, who in turn figure the master.

The use of typology permits multifiguring; therefore Ferdinand and Miranda figure Mary and Christ, Mary and Joseph, and Christ and the church as they do in the Mystery Plays. Joseph's obedience to the heavenly vision makes him a type. Together, in their innocence, Ferdinand and Miranda in their obedience to and reverence for their earthly fathers remind us of Joseph and Mary. Ferdinand claims that “by immortal Providence” Miranda is his (5.1.189), which implies a broader meaning than the immediate betrothal of the two in question. The plan for their lives exceeds mortal planning. Bethell's concept of Shakespeare's multiconsciousness is illustrated in these multifigurings.

Ariel has been variously identified as “a symbol of the imagination,” “the spirit of the sensible soul, … attribute of Prospero,” as Shakespeare's “art,” Prospero's “poetry in action,” as “one of those elves or spirits,” “the swiftness of thought personified,” “the agent and minister of an inscrutable Providence, [who] becomes … a symbol of the spirit of poetry found pegged in the cloven pine of the pre-Shakespearean drama, brought into the service of the creative imagination, and employed for his term in the fashioning of illusions to delight the eyes and move the hearts of men,” and “one who acts as the messenger for Prospero.” Ariel must be reconsidered, for he has more than one aspect.³⁷ He qualifies as a spirit since he flies from place to place in the play, is at times invisible, and has a name that suggests he is airborne. The description of Ariel's history as given in the play does seem, at first glance, to suggest a nonbiblical figure. Yet his name is found in Isaiah and described in that book as “the city where David dwelt” (29:1). The latter definition invokes another overtone, for Christ was born in Bethlehem, “the city of David” (Luke 2:4).

Ariel has been defined as meaning the “altar hearth.”³⁸ The latter definition, his chirping, and his darting from one place to another suggest a cricket, an association which would satisfy the imagination of an audience that was prepared to hear Prospero's “ye elves” speech (5.1.33-57). He can be taken, too, for the messenger of God, for his description is compatible with that of Psalm 104:4, which is quoted in Hebrews 1:7: “Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” His representation both as a “flaming one” and as a singer fit angelic descriptions. Indeed, his first song, like the song of the angels in Bethlehem, is a song of invitation.

If Prospero figures Moses, who in turn represents the law, then Ariel, as Prospero's messenger, figures the spirit of the law. Now “by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). The law reveals truth and brings conviction to the sinner. Ariel serves Prospero in this capacity, for after he has caused the banquet which appeared before Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian to disappear, he identifies them as “three men of sin” (3.3.53). Alonso, who is of the “lower world” whose “instrument” is “destiny” (3.3.53-54) and hence of the elements, hears the winds singing and “that deep and dreadful organ-pipe,” of “thunder” “bass” his “trespass” (3.3.97-99) But the law is also the messenger of hope to the obedient son, Ferdinand.

Jan Kott comes close to defining the dual nature of the law as exhibited in Ariel's behavior when he says, “Ariel is [the island's] angel and its executioner.”³⁹ However, although Ariel identifies sin, alarms, raises a tempest, and leads through a fen, he doesn't execute anyone, for we are told “not so much perdition as an hair / Betid to any creature in the vessel” (1.2.30-31) and again, lest we missed the first reference, “Not a hair perish'd” (1.2.217). He is, in fact, a “minister,” who although he says “of Fate” and appears as a harpy, is a minister of Prospero and the messenger of the law. The law served two purposes, direction and prevention, and provided for blessing and curse. In discovering the minds of the “three men of sin,” Ariel exemplifies the Word which reveals the “thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

Missing Shakespeare's many biblical references and his typology, Curry dismissed Christian myth in The Tempest, making Ariel nothing more than a “minister of Fate,” a Neo-Platonic spirit. Curry's interpretation of the play is limited by his failure to recognize its biblical elements:

in The Tempest, with its Neo-Platonic concepts serving as artistic pattern and with its unities of time and place, the artist is revealed as having passed definitely under the influence of Renaissance thought. He no longer employs Christian myth as the integrating principle of tragedy; here he creates an altogether different world, which is dominated by a purely pagan philosophy.⁴⁰

Kermode found Ariel had

the qualities allowed to Intelligences in medieval theology, which include simultaneous knowledge of all that happens; understanding of the cause of things; the power to alter his position in space in no time, and to manipulate the operations of nature, so as, for example, to create tempests; the power to work upon a human being's will and imagination for good or evil ends; and total invulnerability to assault by material instruments.⁴¹

Davidson cited Chambers' speaking of Ariel “as from one point of view, ‘the agent and minister of an inscrutable Providence’ … which providence operates to maintain order and justice in the world.”⁴² In his description of Ariel, Davidson thus affirms indirectly, but certainly, this author's assertion of both law and Providence in The Tempest. The law is providential since it distinguishes that which is beneficial from that which is harmful to the individual as well as to the whole human family. Coleridge wrote, “a state of bondage is almost unnatural to him [Ariel] yet we see that it is delightful for him to be so employed. … In air he lives, from air he derives his being, in air he acts; and all his colours and properties seem to have been obtained from the rainbow and the skies. … Hence all that belongs to Ariel belongs to the delight the mind is capable of receiving from the most lovely external appearances.”⁴³ There are several references in the Bible to “delight” in the law, (e.g. Psalms 1:2 and 119:77, 174; Jeremiah 6:10; Romans 7:22). Ariel's wish to be free from the duties required of him by the master of the law does not change the fact that he represents the spirit of the law, for the spirit of the law was emphasized by the new master who represented freedom from bondage. It is freedom from bondage to the Old Testament law-giver, the Prospero-Moses figure, that Ariel craves. When Prospero releases him, he chooses to live under a new master (who is described in the next chapter).

Caliban is variously described in The Tempest. Prospero calls him “thou earth,” “tortoise,” “poisonous slave,” “hag-seed,” “born devil,” and “a thing of darkness.” To Miranda he is an “abhorred slave.” Trinculo calls him “a most ridiculous monster” and a “deboshed fish.” Tillyard, stating that Caliban “in the end shows himself incapable of the human power of education,” found that Prospero's claim to him represents the bestial in man.⁴⁴

Chambers rejected the idea of Caliban's signifying “the spirit of prose” in contrast to his acceptance of Ariel's symbolizing “the spirit of poetry.” He found Shakespeare “adumbrat[ing] in Caliban such a general conception of primitive humanity as the expanding knowledge of his day had opened out to him. Caliban is an earthy creature. He has the maliciousness of a troglodyte, and must be taught the first elements of human knowledge … and even the first principles of articulate speech.”⁴⁵ But as Hirst points out “the situation is not so simple. Caliban stands firmly at the center of the play, the pointer to the different criteria of two worlds. He represents … the noble savage as well as the brute; and it is his unspoilt nature which throws into relief the viciousness of the civilization which both trains the political unscrupulousness of Antonio and corrupts the morals of Trinculo and Stephano.”⁴⁶ Shakespeare may have had in mind John 3:31: “he that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth” when he referred to Caliban as “earth,” when he describes the places on the isle where Caliban finds his food. Caliban, like “the first man, Adam,” of the first age of man, “is of the earth, earthy” (I Cor. 15:45, 47). But he can hear the music of the spheres, for “the heavens declare the glory of God; … Day unto day uttereth speech. … There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard” (Psalms 19:1-3).

Chambers identified Sycorax, Caliban's dam, as “controversial theology.”⁴⁷ Sycorax hardly seems to represent theology, but probably, as suggested in the discussion of the Prospero-Moses connection, she represents Egypt's black magic, and Egypt, the oppressor of the Israelites.

Traversi wrote, “The ‘state of nature’ is less an idyllic simplicity, of the kind already evoked by Gonzalo, than a void waiting to be filled in accordance with a purpose stronger, more potent for either good or evil, than itself. The rule of Prospero is an alternative, not to natural spontaneity, but to the power of Sycorax.”⁴⁸ Caliban's descriptions of nature come closer to “idyllic simplicity” than Gonzalo's commonwealth where people live together in peace as equals. Prospero's rule differs from Sycorax's in its submission to a heavenly authority. Sycorax-Egypt enslaves, Prospero-Moses frees from bondage both the spirit of the law (Ariel) and the minds of wayward men.

As in the Mystery Plays and the Bible, characters with both holy and diabolical intent can be found in The Tempest. Traversi identifies Antonio and Sebastian as “courtly cynics” whose “intelligence [is] applied exclusively to purposes of destruction,” and as “the natural successors to Iago.”⁴⁹ The means of grace are available to the pair in the prophet's description of a more desirable, if unattainable, visionary commonwealth, in the saints' (Adrian's and Francisco's) benign sense of the isle, in Prospero's forgiveness and in the resurrection of Ferdinand, recognized by Sebastian as “a most high miracle!” (5.1.178).

Throughout, however, Sebastian is inclined to the physical aspects of life. When the banquet appears, both Antonio and Sebastian, being exposed to the unusual phenomenon, express belief: “Now I will believe / That there are unicorns; that in Arabia / There is one tree, the phoenix' throne; one phoenix / At this hour reigning there.” Antonio adds, “I'll believe both” (3.3.21-24). Alonso receives a message from their “excellent dumb discourse” which expresses “sound.” However, whereas Francisco notes that the providers of the banquet “vanish'd strangely,” Sebastian's basic interest is “They have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs” (3.3.37-39, 41).

The murderous activities of the apparently unrepentant Antonio will be curtailed under the jurisdiction of the confessed, defumed Alonso. Resigned by Alonso as usurping duke, his interests, along with Sebastian's, when Caliban appears, are now those of merchant, trading in men:

SEBASTIAN:
Ha, ha!
What things are these, my Lord Antonio?
Will money buy 'em?
ANTONIO:
Very like; one of them
Is a plain fish, and, no doubt, marketable

[5.1.263-266]

The pair's designs on Caliban in their new occupation are frustrated by Prospero, who claims, “This thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine” (5.1.275-276).

In the end Caliban owns the Prospero-Moses figure as his rightful master, showing he has learned something about masters. Under the schoolmaster, he will learn to distinguish right from wrong and thus be made ready for the “grace” which he promises to seek, for “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ” (Galatians 3:24). As a newly apt pupil, Caliban represents the three ages of man: natural man, man under the law (where he now belongs), and man in the age of grace, where he should seek to be.

Adrian and Francisco are not bent upon “usurpation” of power. They both have hope of the good. Adrian knows that appearances can be deceiving, and his senses are attuned to delicacy, tenderness and the temperate (the mean rather than the extreme). He has a knowledge of historical facts and appreciates perfection. Adrian recognizes that the island is not a place to be lived in: It is “unhabitable” (2.1.38). Men experience truth on the enchanted isle, but they must go back, as they do in the end, to take their place in a world of responsibility. Adrian recognizes that it only seems to be a desert, for nothing is absolutely impossible for him. He senses the meaning. He does not depend upon one sense alone. Although it looks like a desert, he feels the air breathing sweetly. He leaves open the possibility that one may have a false impression, and he is open to truth. Moreover, for him, the wonders that the isle “fortends” are “almost inaccessible” (2.1.38). It has taken more than the plans of men, “immortal Providence,” to make the isle available.

Schucking, who claimed “we can take interpretations in which the action of The Tempest is explained as a symbol of the moral order of the world in the Christian sense” “still less seriously,” thinks Adrian and Franciso “speak only just enough to prevent a clever expositor from supposing that they have lost their speech in consequence of the excitements of the shipwreck; for the rest, they are nothing more than ‘supers.’”⁵⁰ Yet they do represent a distinction in attitude and present another response to the isle. It is never safe to assume anything in Shakespeare is superfluous. That is especially true in this very compact, complex play.

History records three popes named Adrian (I, IV, and VI). Adrian I supported Empress Irene in her struggle against iconoclasm and sent legates to the Second Council of Nicaea. The association of Adrian I with the Adrian of the play would give credence, but not centrality, to Wagner's thesis. Adrian IV was an Englishman named Breakspear. Adrian VI was an ascetic and pious man who tried to curb the abuses he found. Shakespeare and some in his audiences may have been aware of some of the foregoing facts. Certainly Adrian shows his awareness of history in the dialogue.

Francisco does “not doubt” that the King son is alive (2.1.117-118). Francisco is a man of faith. His one speech might be taken as a statement of belief. It may have been that Shakespeare expected his audience to associate him with Saint Francis of Assisi. Francisco's single speech could be taken as a mini-sermon.

Shakespeare's inclusion of two historical types in a biblical setting is consistent with the neotypology practiced by some of his contemporaries.⁵¹ Failure to recognize Shakespeare's use of typology detracts from the complexity and meaning of the play and has led to mortal conclusions about the denouement. Responding to the resonances enhances appreciation of Shakespeare's artistry and the play's sense and its immortal as well as its mortal emphases.

In his “ye elves” speech Prospero dismisses all forms of the creaturely supernatural and dispenses forever with his magic paraphernalia. By inference at this juncture and later with his reference to prayer in the Epilogue, he does acknowledge divinity, the only form of the supernatural that is left.

The shadowing and multi-character representation ascribed to here is compatible with some of Bethell's findings in King Lear. Bethell quotes two passages from that play:

… Thou hast one daughter
Who redeems Nature from the general curse

[4.6.201-202]

and

Fairest Cordelia, that are most loved despised,
Most choice forsaken, and most loved despised

[1.1.250-251]

“where … Cordelia seems to be compared with Our Lord” and another “which directly echoes a saying of Our Lord from St. Luke's Gospel” (Luke 2:49):

… O dear father,
It is thy business that I go about

[4.4.23-24]

Bethell finds a similar shadowing that does not involve a biblical character. He writes, “it seems more than likely that, in this constant association of Cordelia with Christian doctrine, Shakespeare wished to suggest the foreshadowing of Christ in pure natures before His coming; as medieval thought looked back to Virgil, and as the Church has always regarded Moses and the prophets.”⁵² He averred, “Characters may also be symbolic of some aspects of Deity.” However, he found “only two examples of this” in Shakespeare: the duke in Measure for Measure, and Prospero. He found both represented “divine providence.” He did not recognize the shadowing of other biblical characters in The Tempest cited in this interpretation. Although he did not recognize the four specific identities here assigned to Prospero, he did see the necessity for more than one apprehension of a character: “The audience needs to attend simultaneously to two diverse aspects of the same character: the representational and the symbolic.” He acknowledges that “the Duke in Measure for Measure, and Prospero, are endowed with characteristics which make it impossible for us to regard them as direct representations of the Deity, such as we find in the Miracle Plays. They are human beings, however they may signify the Divine; and Prospero, at least, has human imperfections.”⁵³

Notes

1. S. L. Bethell, Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1944), 69.

2. Peter Brook, The Shifting Point … 1946-1987 (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 85.

3. Bethell, Popular Dramatic Tradition, 95.

4. Cumberland Clark, Shakespeare and the Supernatural (London: Williams and Norgate, 1931; reprint, Folcroft Library Editions, 1972), 109.

5. D. G. James, Scepticism and Poetry: An Essay on the Poetic Imagination (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937) 239.

6. E. M. W. Tillyard, “The Tragic Pattern” (1938), in Shakespeare: The Tempest: A Casebook, ed. by D. J. Palmer (London: Macmillan, 1968), 122-129, esp. 122-123; G. Wilson Knight, “The Shakespearean Superman” (1947), in Palmer, 130; Edward Dowden, “The Serenity of The Tempest” (1875), in Palmer, 73; Rose Abdelnour Zimbardo, “Form and Disorder in The Tempest” (1963), in Palmer, 234; Frank Kermode, “Introduction to The Tempest” (1954), in Palmer, 187; Derek Traversi, Shakespeare: The Last Phase (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956), 194; Clark, Shakespeare and the Supernatural, 233; Colin Still, Shakespeare's Mystery Play: A Study of “The Tempest” (London: Cecil Palmer, 1921), 202; Emma Brockway Wagner, Shakespeare's “The Tempest”: An Allegorical Interpretation, ed. from mss and notes by Hugh Robert Orr (Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch, 1933), 23, 27.

7. Wagner, 28-33.

8. Richard C. Dales, The Scientific Achievement of the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 34. Gottschalk, considering available astronomical fragments from Simplicius and Aetius, found “complete agreement” about Heraclides' view of the earth, and “the only thing he [Simplicius] positively attributes to Heraclides is belief in the axial rotation of the earth.” H. B. Gottschalk, Heraclides of Pontus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 61.

9. R. Chris Hassel, Jr., Faith and Folly in Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), 220-222.

10. Bethell, Popular Dramatic Tradition, 95.

11. Roland Mushat Frye, Shakespeare's Life and Times, A Pictorial Record (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967), 90.

12. Frank Kermode, ed., note to The Tempest by William Shakespeare, Arden Shakespeare Series (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 20. Kermode describes different interpretations of what is meant when Prospero says “Now I arise.” “Some take him to mean simply that he is getting up, in order to resume his robe, which he needs to put Miranda to sleep, and they usually add the Stage Direction Resumes his mantle.”

13. Levin L. Schucking, Character Problems in Shakespeare's Plays: A Guide to the Better Understanding of the Dramatist (Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1959), 243.

14. Ira Clark, Christ Revealed, The History of the Neotypological Lyric in the English Renaissance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1982), ix, x.

15. Ira Clark, 7.

16. Kolve, 134.

17. Cumberland Clark, 109.

18. Anne Barton Righter, “Introduction,” to William Shakespeare: “The Tempest” (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1968), 15.

19. Numerology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was considered one means of understanding the nature of man, the universe and God. In writing about creation in The City of God, xi xxx, Augustine quoted Wisdom 11: 20: “Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight.” Anyone familiar with Scripture can observe the recurrence of certain numbers and their association with times, characters, and events. In this chapter numerics were used to confirm the Prospero-Moses figuring.

    Forty represents periods of threat and endurance (the Flood, Israel's wanderings in the wilderness and Christ's temptation). Twelve tribes were called to “bless” the world, and twelve disciples were chosen to “go into all the world to preach the Gospel.” The number three was associated with divinity. God is described as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a Trinity. Christ rose from the dead on the third day. In the Bible the number seven was associated with time periods. Seven days, seven weeks, seven months, seven years and seven times seven, 49, with the following year Jubilee, a time of restoration of land which had been lost and of celebration. It is not surprising, then, that biblically based dramatists should discern and assign seven ages in the duration of human existence.

    Woolf noted that “the measurements and structure of the ark [a type of salvation and as a wooden vessel of the Cross] were replete with symbolical meaning. … A chapter from the De arca Noe morali of Hugh of St. Victor may be taken as typical of the method: the length of three hundred cubits denotes the three periods of history, those of the natural law, the written law and of grace.” Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (Berkeley: University Press of California, 1972), 136, with reference to Hugh of Saint-Victor, Selected Spiritual Writings (London, 1962), 64-65.

20. Northrop Frye, ed., The Tempest by William Shakespeare (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1983), 46.

21. David Woodman, White Magic and English Renaissance Drama (Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973), 124.

22. Woodman, 64-65.

23. Woodman, 35, 39.

24. J. Dover Wilson, The Meaning of “The Tempest.” (The Literary & Philosophical Society of Newcastle Upon the Tyne, 1936; reprint, Folcroft Library Editions, 1972), 14.

25. E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Last Plays (London: Chatto and Windus, 1964), 54.

26. Jeffrey Truby, The Glories of Salisbury Cathedral (London: Winchester, 1948), 31.

27. John E. Booty, ed., The Book of Common Prayer, 1559, The Elizabeth Prayer Book (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, for the Folger Shakespeare Library, 1976), 270.

28. V. A. Kolve, “Principles of Selection,” The Play Called Corpus Christi. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1966), 76.

29. Isaiah 27:3, 6; 29:19-24; 35:5-9; 40:4, 11; 41:5, 18-20; 42:3, 16; 60:5; 66:11.

30. Wagner, 38.

31. “In the stained glass of Fairford Church, made in the fifteenth century in the heyday of these plays [Mystery Plays], there are many of the same dramatic episodes that portray the redemption of Man. … But there is a great deal else in addition which never occurs in the plays, and, moreover, the four Old Testament scenes differ from those with which the plays begin. They are chosen because they are ‘antitypes’ of various aspects of the Incarnation: Eve (who is represented alone with the serpent) is the antitype of Mary, who is the second Eve; the burning bush of Moses and the fleece of Gideon represent Mary who bore Jesus but remained a virgin.” R. T. Davies, ed., The Corpus Christi Play of the English Middle Ages (New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972), 30.

32. Oxford English Dictionary Vol X: 213 Col. 3:1d.

33. J. M. Nosworthy, “The Narrative Sources of The Tempest,” Review of English Studies XXIV (1948): 281-294, esp. 287.

34. Wagner, 34, 36.

35. Wagner, 46.

36. Traversi, 207.

37. Wagner, 55; Frank Davidson, “The Tempest”: An Interpretation” (1963), in Shakespeare: The Tempest, A Casebook, ed. by D. J. Palmer (London: MacMillan, 1968), 219; G. Wilson Knight, “The Shakespearean Superman” (1947), in Palmer, 151; Joseph Warton, “Amazing Wildness of Fancy” (1753), in Palmer, 38; William Hazlitt, “Unity and Variety in Shakespeare's Design” (1817), in Palmer, 70; Jan Kott, “Prospero's Staff” (1964), in Palmer, 248, 253-254; E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare: A Survey (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1925, reprinted 1963), 310.

38. George Arthur Buttrick, ed., The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (New York: Abingdon, 1962), Vol V: 218, Col. 1.

39. Kott, 252.

40. Walter Clyde Curry, Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns (Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1968), 198-199.

41. Frank Kermode, ed., note to The Tempest by William Shakespeare, Arden Shakespeare Series (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), 143.

42. Frank Davidson, 217.

43. S. T. Coleridge, “An Analysis of Act I” (1811), Palmer, 56.

44. E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, n.d.), 34-35.

45. Chambers, 313, 314.

46. David L. Hirst, The Tempest: Text and Performance (London: Macmillan, 1984), 17.

47. Chambers, 313.

48. Traversi, 231.

49. Traversi, 212-213.

50. Schucking, 264, 242.

51. See Ira Clark.

52. Bethell, Popular Dramatic Tradition, 67-68.

53. Bethell, Popular Dramatic Tradition, 131, 130.

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