[In the following essay, Cantor probes Shakespeare's depiction of Prospero as the contemplative hero of The Tempest, a figure who displaces the drama's conspiratorial, comic, and romantic subplots in favor of his philosophical return to power.]

‘Go to the Poets, they will speak to thee
More perfectly of purer creatures;—yet
If reason be nobility in man,
Can aught be more ignoble than the man
Whom they delight in, blinded as he is
By prejudice, the miserable slave
Of low ambition or distempered love?’

(Wordsworth, The Prelude, XII, 68-74)

Anyone who has seen a good production of The Tempest knows how effective the play can be on the stage. But if one were merely to recount the plot to someone otherwise unfamiliar with it, he might begin to wonder how such material could hold an audience's interest. Consider what happens in The Tempest, or rather what does not happen. A pair of would-be murderers are just about to strike their helpless victim in his sleep, when he awakens to prevent the crime. A handsome youth and a beautiful maiden fall in love, but on the advice of her father decide to keep their passion in check until they are married. A group of low-born conspirators set out to overthrow the island's ruler, but on the way notice a display of gaudy clothing and forget about their rebellion. Stated abstractly, the plot of The Tempest seems lacking in sustained dramatic tension. Whenever a decisive event is about to take place, something happens to forestall it. Action seems to evaporate into inaction, and the passions portrayed in the play seem more notable for the ease with which they are eventually restrained than for the force with which they are originally set loose.

We have, of course, been discussing only the subplots of The Tempest, and one might object that they become dramatically exciting solely in the context of the play's main plot, the story of Prospero's return to power in Milan. Every frustration of the schemes or desires of the subordinate characters in The Tempest marks an advance in the overarching plan of the play's protagonist. But grounding the dramatic quality of The Tempest in the story of Prospero merely shifts the problem of the play's peculiarity to a new level. Prospero is not a dramatic character in the ordinary sense of the word dramatic. He is a wise man, distinguished by his knowledge of the world, not by the force of his passions—the sort of character one would expect to find in a subordinate role counseling the hero of the play, not a character who is the focus of the action himself.

Looking down the cast of characters in The Tempest, one has no trouble finding likelier candidates for the role of protagonist than Prospero. One can readily conceive of Shakespeare creating a tragedy out of ambitious conspirators like Antonio and Sebastian, or a comedy out of pretentious fools like Stephano and Trinculo. A passionate and spirited young man like Ferdinand would be a natural hero for either a tragedy or a comedy. Ordinarily we expect the heroes of plays to be moved by the basic human passions, such as sexual desire, greed, or ambition. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, when Nick Bottom learns that he is going to play the part of Pyramus, he naturally assumes that Pyramus must be the leading role and thus can think of only two possibilities for the character: “What is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant?”¹ It never even occurs to Bottom that Pyramus might be a wise man.

I

One realizes how unusual a hero Prospero is by considering how small a role his passions play in involving him in the action, how many of his deeds are the result of reasoned judgment. Prospero is not wholly without passions, to be sure, for he is a human being, not a god or a philosophical abstraction. But as human beings go, he is relatively free of passions to begin with, and remarkably in control of those passions he is subject to. Characteristically, his first words in the play are “Be collected” (I. ii. 13), and from the very beginning his emphasis is on allaying storms of passion, not arousing them (I. ii. 1-2). He participates in the love interest in the play only vicariously, with a father's moderate concern for seeing his daughter well married. Throughout the play Prospero is seeking to re-establish himself in power in Milan, and in that sense he might be called ambitious. But one hardly thinks of Prospero as power hungry: in fact his problems in the past arose precisely because he was not sufficiently interested in power, and one senses that he now has to force himself to be concerned about political things. It is still all too easy for him to become absorbed in the world of his own imagination and forget about a threat to his rule, as happens, for example, when he is displaying the masque for the benefit of Ferdinand and Miranda and momentarily neglects Caliban's conspiracy (IV. i). If Prospero wants to return to rule in Milan, then, it is not out of a lust for power, but out of a sense of duty or fitness.

The one passion that seems to have a strong effect on Prospero is anger, and yet even in this case one often gets the feeling that he yields to the emotion because of a conscious decision that anger is called for in the circumstances. At times he even seems to be consciously playing the part of an angry man. In order to test the strength of the love between Ferdinand and Miranda, for example, he says that he must act the role of the senex iratus and supply some obstacles for the young lovers to overcome:

They are both in either's pow'rs; but this swift business
I must uneasy make, lest too light winning
Make the prize light.

(I. ii. 451-53)

The one time anger seems to well up spontaneously in Prospero (when he remembers Caliban's conspiracy), his audience is genuinely surprised:

FER.
This is strange. Your father's in some passion
That works him strongly.
MIR.
                                                                                                    Never till this day
Saw I him touch'd with anger, so distemper'd.

(IV. i. 143-45)

If this occasion is the greatest outburst of emotion in Prospero's life, then he truly is a temperate man. Instead of giving way to Lear-like curses, he replies with a speech designed to calm Ferdinard and Miranda by means of a vision of the transitoriness of all things earthly, including, presumably, passion itself. And, unlike Lear, Prospero requires only a minimum of effort to calm his awakened passions: “A turn or two I'll walk / To still my beating mind” (IV. i. 162-63).

Prospero's temperament is evidently so equable that in Act V he actually thinks it necessary to remind Ariel that he is after all a human being and subject to passions:

Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply
Passion as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art?

(V. i. 21-24)

But even as he claims to “relish all as sharply / Passion as” other humans, Prospero reveals his difference from them. His passions are firmly in the control of his reason, which he regards as the true source of nobility:

Though with their high wrongs I am strook to th' quick,
Yet, with my nobler reason, 'gainst my fury
I do take part. The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance.

(V. i. 25-28)

However angry Prospero may get, he chooses not to let his passions govern his actions. Prospero's statement, “the rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance,” is no doubt sound philosophy, but it is an inversion of the normal principle of drama. Ordinarily, audiences prefer to see a character who is swept away by the passion of a vendetta, rather than one who deals rationally with the injustice he has suffered. Even Hamlet, who of all of Shakespeare's tragic heroes has the most philosophical nature, is incapable of Prospero's calm renunciation of vengeance. Hamlet has a high regard for reason and admires the man who “is not passion's slave” (III. ii. 72), but he cannot help responding to images of heroic action, irrational but impassioned, such as Fortinbras' marching off to Poland to “find quarrel in a straw” (IV. iv. 55). A Hamlet who could coolly prefer “virtue” to “vengeance” might avoid his tragic fate, but he would be a less exciting character.²

One reason why Hamlet reacts differently from Prospero is, of course, that he is a considerably younger man; his passions still have their youthful strength. Prospero, by contrast, is a man whose age has put him beyond the grip of most passions. Most of his life is behind him. In the end, he declares that “every third thought” will be his “grave” (V. i. 312); looking ahead to his death, he has already begun to detach himself from ordinary human concerns. His knowledge of the world—the fact that he has experienced everything at least once—makes it difficult for Prospero to get excited about whatever happens to him, and he maintains a philosophical calm even in the face of what would normally seem to be dramatic developments. He reveals the wise man's detachment when he contrasts the way Ferdinand and Miranda are wrapped up in their love with the way he temperately takes pleasure in contemplating the results:

So glad of this as they I cannot be
Who are surpris'd with all; but my rejoicing
At nothing can be more.

(III. i. 92-94)³

With his sober and clear-headed view of reality, Prospero would normally be found standing in the background of a play, futilely counseling the other characters against their foolish but dramatically exciting passions. But Shakespeare has brought Prospero into the foreground of The Tempest. The wise counselor steps forward to dominate the action, while the normal hero-types must content themselves with subordinate roles. It is as if the noble philosopher Lear meets on the heath (III. iv) were to occupy center stage for the rest of the action, turning the story of the passionate king's fall from power into something incidental to the drama.

The heart of what distinguishes Prospero as a dramatic hero, then, is his inclination to the contemplative rather than the active life. With the true scholar's spirit, he says at one point “my library / Was dukedom large enough” (I. ii. 109-10). A dramatist has no trouble portraying action on the stage; indeed that is his main aim. But portraying contemplation is difficult, because it must of necessity appear passive, static, and dull, if not simply ridiculous, when brought out before the footlights. One thinks of Socrates' comic entrance in Aristophanes' The Clouds, staring off into space and proclaiming: “I walk on air, and contemplate the Sun.”⁴ “Actions speak louder than words” is a basic principle of drama, and surely actions speak louder than thoughts.⁵ And yet the contemplative Prospero holds on to center stage in The Tempest. Somehow The Tempest inverts our normal standards of drama: we are less impressed by the activity of the characters in pursuing their ends than by the wisdom or foolishness of the ends they pursue.

This dramatic transformation is accomplished by means of the subplot structure of the play. Shakespeare mutes the normally exciting dramatic material in The Tempest by subordinating the stories of the lovers and the tyrants to the story of Prospero's return to power. The main action of The Tempest becomes Prospero's managing things so that the other characters fail to act out their desires. As a result, we are more interested in Prospero's wisdom in ordering events than in the way the other characters pursue their ends, especially since Prospero's overarching perspective allows us to see the limited and distorted nature of those ends. The special relation of the mainplot to the subplots in The Tempest is the source of the peculiar tragicomic effect of the play. The Tempest absorbs potentially tragic material by confirming it to the subplots, in effect neutralizing it and transforming it for an overall comic purpose. In the process, The Tempest subordinates the usual heroic types to a new kind of hero, or at least one who rarely appears in drama—a hero whose distinguishing characteristic is his wisdom, rather than his force of passion or greatness of soul.

II

We can explore the relation of The Tempest to Shakespeare's tragedies by focusing on one of Nick Bottom's archetypically dramatic figures: the tyrant, or rather the would-be tyrant. Usurpation is a theme Shakespeare treats both tragically and tragicomically, as is evident if one compares the conspiracy of Antonio and Sebastian against Alonso in The Tempest with the conspiracy of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth against King Duncan. The basic situations in the two plays are remarkably similar—kinsmen plotting against the life of a sleeping king in an effort to gain his crown—and several verbal parallels suggest that Shakespeare had Macbeth in his mind when he composed this portion of The Tempest.⁶

When Macbeth learns of the death of the Thane of Cawdor, he says:

                                                                      Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.

(I. iii. 127-29)

Similarly, Antonio, thinking ahead to the ‘fated’ death of Alonso, wants

                                                            to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.

(II. i. 252-54)

The theatrical imagery of prologues and acts points to the element common to the real usurpers of Macbeth and the would-be usurpers of The Tempest: the way they plot out their crimes with the imagination of a playwright. It is in their imaginations that Antonio and Sebastian resemble Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Antonio tempts Sebastian in just the way the Witches and later Lady Macbeth tempt Macbeth, by making him imagine himself already a king:⁷

                                                                                                                        What might,
Worthy Sebastion, O, what might—? No more—
And yet methinks I see it in thy face,
What thou shouldst be. Th' occasion speaks thee, and
My strong imagination sees a crown
Dropping upon thy head.

(II. i. 204-9)

Lady Macbeth has the same ability to foresee a “golden round” crowning her husband's head (I. v. 28-30). A “strong imagination” seems characteristic of Shakespeare's usurpers: they can leap ahead in their minds to picture themselves already possessed of what they most desire. As Lady Macbeth tells her husband:

Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.

(I. v. 56-58)

The usurper's strong imagination is what makes him potentially forceful as a character. Believing that what his imagination shows him is real, the usurper can proceed with strength and conviction to achieve his goals. But to impress us, the usurper must in fact act. The most conventional man can idly dream about becoming king, as Gonzalo proves just before Sebastian and Antonio begin conspiring, when he wonders what would happen if he had “plantation” of the isle (II. i. 144-58). The mere desire to rule proves nothing: to distinguish oneself, one must show the force of one's desires by acting upon them. As the term is ordinarily understood, one can be heroic only in deed, not in thought. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth undergo the heroic test of translating their thoughts into deeds. Though they both bend under the strain of trying to realize their dreams, and Lady Macbeth eventually cracks, they do have a chance to establish their heroic stature. They are not run-of-the-mill human beings; they are great-souled figures, if only in the single-minded determination with which they pursue their ambitions. The difference in the situation in The Tempest is obvious: Antonio and Sebastian are denied a chance to show whether they have greatness of soul because they are denied a chance to act out their schemes. They can never impress us as heroic in their villainy. We are aware of the evil in what they want to do, but we never see whether they have the strength to accomplish their purposes, to live with the consequences of their crime. The usurper who acts complicates our response because we can be impressed by the strength with which he acts, even as we are repelled by the goals of his actions. Because the designs of Antonio and Sebastian are frustrated by Prospero, however, our attention is focused on how their imaginations deceive them, rather than on how their imaginative force lifts them above ordinary men.

The problem with the usurper's imagination is that while it can give him the force to realize his desires, it also blinds him to the reality of his desires. The usurper's view of reality is colored by the way he wants to see it, and hence distorted. We can observe how desire infects perception in Antonio's description of the situation of Claribel of Tunis, Alonso's daughter, who would presumably succeed him if he were killed:

                                                            … she that dwells
Ten leagues beyond man's life; she that from Naples
Can have no note, unless the sun were post—
The Man i' th' Moon's too slow—till new-born chins
Be rough and razorable. …

(II. i. 246-50)

Antonio waxes poetical here, and his inflated language contrasts sharply with the prosaic view of Sebastian:

                                                            What stuff is this? How say you?
'Tis true, my brother's daughter's Queen of Tunis;
So is she heir of Naples; 'twixt which regions
There is some space.

(II. i. 254-57)

Antonio's desire that Sebastian, rather than Claribel, succeed Alonso, has led Antonio to exaggerate the distance across the Mediterranean. This hyperbole is only one example of how the force of desire can distort perception.

The essential blindness of the usurper's imagination is also evident in Macbeth. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth think that they are embarking upon their course of crime with open eyes, knowing what it will involve. Yet characteristically they both want to commit their crimes in darkness, so that they will not have to see what they are doing:

MACBETH:
                                                                                Stars, hide your fires,
Let not light see my black and deep desires;
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

(I. iv. 50-53)

LADY Macbeth:
                                                                                Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes.

(I. v. 50-52)

Ironically, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth do act with their eyes closed when they kill Duncan. They do not foresee the consequences of their action, or how they themselves will react to it.⁸ The ultimate metaphor for their life of crime is sleepwalking. Lady Macbeth ends up literally acting without seeing: “A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching!” (V. i. 9-11). The idea that the usurper is sleepwalking is repeated in The Tempest:

SEB.
                                                                                          What? art thou waking?
ANT.
Do you not hear me speak?
SEB.
                                                                                                                        I do, and surely
It is a sleepy language, and thou speak'st
Out of thy sleep. What is it thou didst say?
This is a strange repose, to be asleep
With eyes wide open—standing, speaking, moving—
And yet so fast asleep.

(II. i. 209-15)

By portraying his potential and actual usurpers as sleepwalkers, Shakespeare suggests that they live in a world of their dreams, but not in the sense in which they desire to do so. Too easily tempted to take their dreams for reality, they build up a world of flattering illusions, forgetting how quickly a dream can turn into a nightmare.⁹

III

The treatment of usurpation in Macbeth and The Tempest reveals the limitations in the usurper's imagination, the way the force of his desires deceives him about reality. He thinks he knows what his crime will entail, but in his eagerness he underestimates the obstacles that stand in his way and overestimates his ability to live with the consequences of his deed. But the usurper is also blind in a deeper sense: he does not even see clearly what he is striving for. Shakespeare's usurpers are obsessed with the crown in a way that shows that they think of kingship as something external, something that can simply be taken off one man and put on another. When Sebastian questions Antonio about his usurping Prospero's power, Antonio replies: “And look how well my garments sit upon me, / Much feater than before” (II. i. 272-73). These lines ought to remind us of the garment imagery in Macbeth, particularly Macbeth's tendency to think of honor as something one puts on like a fancy robe:

                                                                                I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.

(I. vii. 32-35)

The usurpers are obviously concerned with acquiring the trappings of kingship, not in becoming true kings themselves. Totally unconcerned with the common good, Antonio, Sebastian, and Macbeth display little interest in the actual business of ruling. Hence they do not think that becoming a king involves any internal process of development. One need only get possession of the crown; in the deluded eyes of the usurper, all the other benefits of kingship will automatically follow.

This occupational delusion of the usurper is parodied in the Caliban-Stephano-Trinculo subplot of The Tempest. Although this conspiracy ripens in late afternoon, Caliban invokes the dark world of Macbeth: “All's hush'd as midnight yet” (IV. i. 207). Caliban supports Stephano's faltering spirits the way Lady Macbeth gives strength to her husband. Stephano must live up to Caliban's opinion of his great manhood:

This is the mouth o' th' cell. No noise, and enter.
Do that good mischief which may make this island
Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,
For aye thy foot-licker.

(IV. i. 216-19)

Stephano responds in the mode of Macbeth: “Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody thoughts” (IV. i. 320-21). But he is diverted from the assassination attempt when Trinculo notices the gaudy clothing Prospero ordered Ariel to hang out for the fools. What appears metaphorically in Macbeth and in the Antonio-Sebastian conspiracy happens on the literal plane in the Caliban-Stephano-Trinculo subplot. The comic conspirators end up reaching for actual clothing, and this materialization of their aspiration points up the hollowness of their desires.¹⁰ In Act III, scene iii, Prospero provides Antonio and Sebastian with a parallel emblem of their way of life: they have been reaching for a banquet that disappears when they grasp at it. In similar fashion, Macbeth discovers that the kingship disappears when he reaches out for it. He becomes a king in name only, and “that which should accompany” it, such “as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,” he “must not look to have” (V. iii. 24-26).

To sum up the view of the usurper in Macbeth and The Tempest: if one looks at the force of his desires, one is impressed with his strength of soul, but if one looks at the object of his desires, one sees that he is deluded. That is why the usurper must act out his desires in order to impress us. As Macbeth proceeds, we become increasingly aware of how blind Macbeth's striving is. Nevertheless, we cannot help being struck by the power of ambition in his soul. His desires are very real, and they have very real consequences in the world of the play. As a result, Macbeth remains the focus of our dramatic attention. But in the world of The Tempest, the would-be usurpers lose their heroic stature because they lose their chance to act. In order to focus on how Antonio and Sebastian are deluded in their desires, Shakespeare never allows them beyond the stage of desire. And on the level of pure desire, conventional distinctions among men are hard to maintain; the aristocratic usurper can be just as mistaken in his goals as a base-born conspirator, even though he would be better able to achieve his goals in action. The Caliban-Stephano-Trinculo subplot in The Tempest has a kind of mock-heroic function within the play. The parallels between the two conspiracies suggest that the distance between Stephano and Trinculo, on the one hand, and Antonio and Sebastian, on the other, is less than that between Antonio and Sebastian, and Prospero.¹¹ Compared to the truly wise man, all other men are as fools: differences in mere cunning become trivial in the face of Prospero's profound understanding of human nature. The sphere of the heroic, as ordinarily conceived, is deflated in The Tempest. Instead of stressing the differences among men in strength of soul, their ability to translate their desires into action, the play stresses the differences among men in wisdom, whether they aim at higher or lower ends. Only in this way is Shakespeare able to make a wise man his hero.

IV

One would come to similar conclusions if one compared in similar detail the romantic subplot in The Tempest with Shakespeare's love tragedies. What impresses us about the love of Ferdinand and Miranda is not the depth of their passion but the wisdom of the match. To be sure, from the point of view of the lovers themselves they are acting out a highly romantic drama: shipwrecked young prince meets beautiful goddess on enchanted isle. And to add excitement to their story, Prospero, as we have seen, deliberately plays old man Capulet to their Romeo and Juliet (I. ii. 451-53). In reality, the union of Ferdinand and Miranda is the cornerstone of Prospero's plan for returning to power in Milan. The exotic beauty with whom Ferdinand falls in love is in plain fact the girl next door, and what strikes him as a romantic affair will actually culminate in a dynastic marriage. One might well wonder whether Ferdinand and Miranda would fall as deeply in love if they knew that Prospero intended them for each other. Prospero wisely lets them play at being Romeo and Juliet, or Antony and Cleopatra, building a bond between them by letting them think that the whole world opposes their love. But Ferdinand and Miranda are only playing. When they echo the heroic accents of Antony and Cleopatra, they are talking about a game of chess:

MIR.
Sweet lord, you play me false.
FER.
                                                                                No, my dearest love,
I would not for the world.
MIR.
Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle,
And I would call it fair play.

(V. i. 172-75)

Whereas Antony and Cleopatra wrangle over kingdoms in their deeds, Ferdinand and Miranda do so only in their thoughts. Unlike the tragic lovers in Shakespeare, Ferdinand and Miranda never get the chance to prove the depth of their passion by literally sacrificing the world for each other.¹² With the obvious suitability of their getting married, and the long happy life promised for them, their love story cannot by itself generate much dramatic tension.

Prospero helps the romance along by appearing to oppose it at first, but as the marriage approaches he works to keep the lovers' desires in check. With warnings of the evil consequence of yielding to passion, and promises of wedded harmony, Prospero does everything he can to prevent any carpe diem thoughts from cropping up in the young lovers' heads (IV. i. 14-23, 51-54). Precisely because they are assured “honor, riches, marriage-blessing / Long continuance, and increasing” (IV. i. 106-7), their love does not develop the tragic intensity experienced by Romeo and Juliet, who are granted only a brief time to share their passion. Protected by Prospero from the pressure of time, Ferdinand and Miranda can afford to wait to consummate their love:

                                                                                          As I hope
For quiet days, fair issue, and long life,
With such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den,
The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion
Our worser genius can, shall never melt
Mine honor into lust.

(IV. i. 23-28)

Ferdinand's reasonable concern for “quiet days, fair issue, and long life” shows what a good husband he will make for Miranda, but it inevitably makes him a less interesting character dramatically than a Mark Antony, who is always capable of throwing security to the winds and living dangerously. One cannot imagine Antony sincerely saying as Ferdinand does: “The white cold virgin snow upon my heart / Abates the ardor of my liver” (IV. i. 55-56). But Shakespeare does not want a Mark Antony in The Tempest. Such a heroic figure would inevitably compete with Prospero for the center of the stage (and successfully, one might speculate, given theatre audiences' usual preference for soldier-lovers over scholars). By muting the intensity of the love story in The Tempest, Shakespeare assures that Prospero remains the focus of dramatic interest. Ferdinand and Miranda are a very attractive and charming couple, but their love is so uncomplicated, so lacking in problems, that their story in itself would be rather boring. Prospero must intervene to spice up their romance and give their love a larger dramatic meaning; as a result, their love story remains subordinate to the story of his return to power.¹³

V

Noticing the way Shakespeare echoes his tragedies in his final play, the way he recreates their fundamental situations, we can appreciate his remarkable technical achievement in The Tempest. The tragedies depend on desires being translated into action for their dramatic excitement. In The Tempest desires are held in check. One cannot imagine Shakespeare creating a whole drama out of an assassination that fails to take place; Act II, scene i of The Tempest would make a rather lame play if it had to stand on its own. But of course Shakespeare incorporates the Antonio-Sebastian conspiracy into the larger dramatic framework. The subplots of The Tempest are in effect plays within the play created by Prospero, who can wield the power of illusion and thus becomes a surrogate for the playwright himself.¹⁴ The subplots are dramatic precisely because of the disparity between Prospero's knowledge and that of the characters directly involved in the action he sets up. From the second scene on, The Tempest develops a consistent double perspective for the audience. We see events as the characters think they are unfolding, and we see events as Prospero is ordering them. If most of the characters could share Prospero's perspective, they would not continue to act as they do. The very dramatic structure of The Tempest therefore stresses the difference between knowledge and lack of it.

By elevating Prospero above the lovers and tyrants of conventional drama, Shakespeare provides an important counter-statement to his own tragedies, reminding us that there are forms of heroism besides the heroism of the passions. Heroism of the mind is difficult to represent on the stage, but Shakespeare has made it come to life in The Tempest. The secret of his achievement lies in his assigning to his philosophical hero something analogous to the role of the playwright within the play. Perhaps, then, Prospero's heroism is ultimately an image of Shakespeare's.

Notes

1. A Midsummer Night's Dream, I. ii. 22. All quotations from Shakespeare are taken from The Riverside Shakespeare, gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).

2. Cf. Shelley's comments on his tragic heroine, Beatrice Cenci, in his Preface to The Cenci (ed. Alfred Forman and H. Buxton Forman [1886; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1975], p. 4): “… the fit return to make to the most enormous injuries is kindness and forbearance, and a resolution to convert the injurer from his dark passions by peace and love. Revenge, retaliation, atonement, are pernicious mistakes. If Beatrice had thought in this manner she would have been wiser and better; but she would never have been a tragic character: the few whom such an exhibition would have interested, could never have been sufficiently interested for a dramatic purpose, from the want of finding sympathy in their interest among the mass who surround them.”

3. In line 93 I have restored the Folio reading “with all,” instead of Theobald's conjectured “withal.” The Folio reading makes perfect sense, and in fact sharpens the contrast between ignorant youth, which is surprised and delighted with everything it sees (consider Miranda's “O brave new world,” V. i. 183) and wise old age, which has seen everything already and hence is moderate in its reactions.

4. The Clouds, 225. Quoted in Aristophanes with the English Translation of Benjamin Bickley Rogers, 3 vols., The Loeb Classical Library (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1930), I, 285.

5. The natural preference of dramatists for action over contemplation may go a long way toward explaining the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, and in particular why Plato has Socrates express a wish to see certain poets, presumably among them the tragedians, barred from the just city in The Republic (398a-b, 605b). On this subject, see Allan Bloom, trans., The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 359-60, 426-34. In showing how the wise man can be made the hero of a play, The Tempest may be regarded as an answer to Socrates' objections to dramatic poetry.

6. Compare Lady Macbeth's “The sleeping and the dead / Are but as pictures” (II. ii. 50-51) with Antonio's “Here lies your brother, / No better than the earth he lies upon, / If he were that which now he's like—that's dead” (II. i. 280-82). Compare also Lady Macbeth's “What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow'r to accompt?” (V. i. 37-39) with Antonio's “They'll tell the clock to any business that / We say befits the hour” (II. i. 289-90).

7. Derek Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare (New York: Doubleday, 1969), p. 617.

8. See Traversi, p. 437, for a discussion of “the divorce between ‘eye’ and ‘hand’ (I. iv), consciousness and act” in Macbeth. Consider in this context especially III. iv. 138-39 and IV. i. 145-49.

9. Northrop Frye, “Introduction to The Tempest,” in The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, gen. ed. Alfred Harbage (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 1370: “When Antonio and Sebastian remain awake plotting murder, they show that they are the real dreamers, sunk in the hallucinations of greed.”

10. On the materialization of aspiration as the principle of comedy, see José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), p. 158.

11. One might express the difference between Macbeth and The Tempest by saying that in the tragedy we are made aware of the gap between a tyrant and a drunken porter (II. iii), while in the tragicomedy we see instead the ways in which they are similar, if not equivalent. The porter in Macbeth reveals his comic status by stressing his inability to act out his desires. In speaking of the effects of drinking, he says: “it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance” (II. iii. 29-36). On the parallels between the court party and the fools in The Tempest, see Coleridge's Writings on Shakespeare, ed. Terence Hawkes (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959), pp. 206-7.

12. For a discussion of the importance of proofs of love in Antony and Cleopatra and the difference between tragic and comic treatments of love, see Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 160-63.

13. Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 224: “His primacy unchallenged by the lovers, Prospero is unmistakably the central figure throughout The Tempest.” The deprecation of passionate love in The Tempest is symbolized by the exclusion of Venus from the world of the play (IV. i. 86-101).

14. Cf. Rabkin, p. 224.