What is the function of the masque in Act 4 of The Tempest?
Within the context of the plot, the masque in act 4 of The Tempest occurs because Prospero has Ariel summon spirits to put on a small play to celebrate Miranda and Ferdinand’s engagement. He tells Ariel, “I must / Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple / Some vanity of mine art.” Prospero wants to celebrate and impress his daughter and her fiancé.
During the play, Prospero says, in an aside, “I had forgot that foul conspiracy of the beast Caliban, and his confederates, against my life: the minute of their plot is almost come.” At this point, the masque changes from a celebration to a catalyst for Prospero’s reflections. He sees the end of the masque, when the spirits disappear, as the dissolution of everything, including “the great globe itself.” In Prospero’s mind, humans are composed of “such stuff as dreams are made on,” which will fade and dissolve as well; their lives are “little” and “rounded with a sleep.”
In the work as a whole, the masque functions to demonstrate the mutability of a life through both a microscopic and macroscopic view. Just as the spirits fade after the play, so will Prospero, the audience of the masque. Similarly, when The Tempest itself ends, the audience of the play will disperse. These concentric levels demonstrate the audience’s mortality. Therefore, the masque in act 4 of The Tempest functions as a reminder that human life is short and fades quickly.
What is the function of the masque in Act 4 of The Tempest?
In writing the masque, one could argue that Shakespeare was building a bridge from fantasy to reality, from the action on stage to the royal audience for whom the masque was performed. Shakespeare is breaking the fourth wall, inviting his audience to participate in the action on stage.
Prospero himself is ideally placed to straddle these two different worlds. He lives in the real world, the world of the remote desert island that has become his own little kingdom. Yet he also inhabits a parallel universe governed by the laws of magic. He must make a transition between these two worlds if he's to return to Milan, where he will be re-established as Duke. In that sense, Prospero's imminent fate parallels that of his creator, Shakespeare, whose last play this is and who will now give up his literary magic and retreat to the ordinary everyday world.
What is the function of the masque in Act 4 of The Tempest?
In Act IV, Scene I, Prospero decides to put on “a show,” using magic, for Ferdinand and Miranda. He summons the spirits of Juno, Ceres, and Iris. Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, calls Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. Juno arrives last, but she is the most important, as she is the goddess of marriage and childbirth.
The goddesses commence to bless the marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda. Juno promises: “Honour, riches, marriage-blessing, Long continuance, and increasing.. “ and Ceres promises: “Earth's increase, foison plenty, Barns and garners never empty, Vines and clustering bunches growing…” After the goddesses depart, Iris conjures up some nymphs and land reapers and there is music and dancing. “Answer your summons; Juno does command: Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate "A contract of true love; be not too late…” The nymphs appear; she then summons the reapers: “You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary, Come hither from the furrow and be merry…” The nymphs and reapers dance until Prospero realizes that he has forgotten the plot against his life, then they vanish.
The purpose of this scene and the masque is to show that Prospero is pleased by the marriage between Ferdinand and Miranda; so pleased, in fact, that he is using his magic, for once, to do something good. The goddesses he calls bless the marriage with fertility and happiness. It is Prospero’s wedding present to the two. It is also speculated that Shakespeare put this in to honor King James, whose daughter had just been married.
In The Tempest, what is the significance of the masque in Act 4, scene 1?
I think the significance of the masque that Prospero summons up with his magical powers lies in the way that he sends through it a very clear message to his future son-in-law about the kind of behaviour he expects from him with regards to his marriage to Miranda. Let us remember that Prospero only presents the masque after a frank discussion of sexuality where Ferdinand refers to Miranda's virginity in a rather vulgar fashion:
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 honour into lust, to take away
The edge of that day's celebration
When I shall think: or Phoebus' steeds are founder'd,
Or Night kept chain'd below.
Here Ferdinand refers to his sense of excitement at the first night of love he will share with Miranda, which shows him to be a rather lustful individual who is rather too focused on sex and the claiming of Miranda's virginity for Prospero's liking.
As a result it is particularly relevant that the characters of Juno, Ceres take a very harsh stance of lust and love. Together, these two deities symbolise family and prosperity, giving the couple a blessing that moves away from any suggestion of sex or love. Consider the way that there is no reference to love, feelings or sexuality. Instead, the role of marriage in society is emphasised. For example, when Ceres asks Iris where Venus and Cupid are, the deities representing the powers of love and sex, Iris responds that she hopes they will not appear, because it was their influence that was responsible for the kidnapping of Persephone by Pluto, the god of the underworld. We are told that Venus and Cupid had wanted to spoil the purity of this union, but they had been kept away thanks to the other deities. If we consider the context of Ferdinand's remarks to his future father-in-law, perhaps we can see such remarks as a very strong hint as to the kind of role Propsero wants sex and love to have in his daughter's marriage.
In The Tempest, what is the overall impact of the masque?
In The Tempest, Prospero has been confined to a remote island after being usurped as Duke of Milan by his brother Antonio and his henchmen. According to the standards of the time, Prospero's unceremonious overthrow represents an attack on the natural order of things, as that order dictates that a duke's title should only pass to someone else through natural death or abdication.
In the masque staged by Prospero, the natural order is restored to a considerable extent by the betrothal of Miranda and Ferdinand. Here we have a wedding that has Prospero's blessing, which is just what would've been expected at the time.
For a girl from a good family such as Miranda to have gone against her father's wishes in choosing a husband would've been, like Prospero's overthrow, an attack upon the natural order of things. But Miranda is marrying Ferdinand with her father's blessing, and so the natural order of things has reasserted itself, much to Prospero's delight.
A much less pleasant aspect of the masque comes in the form of Prospero's admonishment of his treacherous brother, Antonio, and his co-conspirators. And yet, like the wedding of Miranda and Ferdinand, it's also concerned with the restoration of the natural order of things.
As far as the natural order—and Prospero—is concerned, Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan. Among other things, this gives him the right to administer a royal tongue-lashing to the hapless Antonio and his confederates, who are “men of sin” being punished for their treachery by destiny.
In The Tempest, what is the overall impact of the masque?
The tradition of dressing up in costumes began—at least as far back in Western history as is recorded—with the Celts. The Celts believed that as one year ended and the next year began, the worlds of the dead and the living overlapped, and spirits and demons would roam the Earth. So, to dress up in the disguise of a demon was a way to trick the demons—who, if they saw you dressed up, would think you were a demon, too.
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church converted this ancient tradition into "All Saints Day" and "All Hallows Eve," adding saints and angels (along with demons) to the list of disguises people might employ.
This practice evolved as well, and on Hallowmas, children and poor people would walk about towns and villages in disguises, knocking on doors and begging for food or money in exchange for a song, a prayer, a jest, or a dance. This was called "guising," from "disguise."
All of these elements and practices are the foundation for the evolution of the "masque," more formalized and theatrical events that combined music, dance, performers in disguises as mythological or allegorical characters, and sometimes thin plots, though usually they were more likely to be processionals with lush descriptive narrations.
Some masques were performed in public at fairs and carnivals. By the time we reach the seventeenth century, when William Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, the masques were performed at court. Elizabeth I and her successor, James I, were fond of court masques, and there was a constant stream of masques done at the Tudor and Stuart courts. One of the most prolific writers of masques was the author Ben Jonson, whose masques were often staged on sets created by the renowned architect Inigo Jones.
Masques were often accompanied by "anti-masques," which were comic dance sequences of low and bawdy humor usually performed before the masque. They were then "transformed" into the orderly spectacle of the masque itself—the transformation is a statement of ethics, the chaotic disorder of the anti-masque turning to stability, bliss and concord as the masque itself. The anti-masque was invented by Ben Jonson and figures in many of his plays and masques.
William Shakespeare uses the masque to great effect in The Tempest. Much of act 4 of the play is an actual masque—in this case, a supernatural event that Prospero, the ruler of his magic isle, creates to present to his daughter, Miranda, and her suitor, Ferdinand. He tells his spirit Ariel to summon the spirits for the event:
PROSPERO: Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service
Did worthily perform; and I must use you
In such another trick. Go bring the rabble,
O'er whom I give thee power, here to this place:
Incite them to quick motion; for I must
Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple
Some vanity of mine art: it is my promise,
And they expect it from me.
Ariel returns and orders these "rabble" spirits to perform the masque, which is a rather stately promenade of various female mythological characters including Iris, Ceres, and Juno (respectively, the goddess of the rainbow, the goddess of the harvest, and the queen of the gods). The goddesses gossip for a while about who of the other gods may or may not be attending the event, then they bestow blessings upon Miranda and Ferdinand for their imminent wedding. Their language is regal, lush with images of nature, and as stately as one might find in any court masque performed for royalty:
CERES: Earth's increase, foison plenty,
Barns and garners never empty,
Vines and clustering bunches growing,
Plants with goodly burthen bowing;
Spring come to you at the farthest
In the very end of harvest!
Scarcity and want shall shun you;
Ceres' blessing so is on you.
As this is Shakespeare, he is up to his usual trick of taking a well-established form of theater and shaping it for his own dramatic devices. Now, after the formal masque, the character Iris is employed to call out more spirits to do a merry dance:
IRIS: You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,
Come hither from the furrow and be merry:
Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on
And these fresh nymphs encounter every one
In country footing.Enter certain Reapers, properly habited: they join with the Nymphs in a graceful dance; towards the end whereof PROSPERO starts suddenly, and speaks; after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish.
All seems to be going well in the masque when suddenly, something about the performance—perhaps the merry country dance of the Reapers and Nymphs—reminds Prospero that he has important unfinished business: he needs to deal with his miscreant servant Caliban, who is plotting to kill his master. Prospero becomes distraught and angry, as both Ferdinand and Miranda notice, and he—and Shakespeare—ends this masque with a powerful and influential piece of poetry:
PROSPERO: Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Considering that this play was performed for the royal court, this is strong stuff. It is a reminder to everyone that the gorgeous revels of the masques themselves are insubstantial pageants, and these disguised spirits are only such stuff as dreams are made on.
What is the meaning of the masque and anti-masque in The Tempest?
A Renaissance masque was a spectacle performed at court or at the manor of a member of the aristocracy with the purpose of glorifying a particular member of court or a particular aristocrat. In Jacobean times, a masque was an interactive form of elaborate entertainment for the aristocrats. In his plays, Shakespeare often incorporates masques because they were something that everyone—noblemen and commoners alike—were familiar with. It is also worth noting that it was Ben Jonson, in the seventeenth century, who developed the masque and then the anti-masque into a literary form:
While many masques had tended to move in one of two directions, either "wholly literary and dramatic or wholly choreographic and theatrical," Jonson aimed to unify the poetic and spectacular elements into a cohesive whole. Jonson also developed the anti-masque, an addition which enabled him to achieve this cohesive whole. The anti-masque introduces comic or grotesque characters and plot material to act as foils to the main masque or to allow the main masque to provide a resolution (Cunningham 110; Orgel 76). Such a literary convention, the introduction of the evil or grotesque in the anti-masque, served to further enhance the primary purpose of the masque to glorify the court and, in particular, the monarch.
http://www.mith.umd.edu/comus/cegenre.htm
The main components of a literary masque were a poetic induction or prologue, antimasque(s), main masque, revels, and then an epilogue. Now that we know what masques and anti-masques are, we can see how Shakespeare uses them in The Tempest.
The most striking instance of the masque is the engagement of Ferdinand to Miranda in Act IV, Scene I. Prospero conjures a masque at this event and various goddesses perform. However, the masque in this scene has broader implications as it reminds Prospero of the bridge between magic and reality and paves the way for his return to power. The following anti-masque depicts Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban being chased by dogs because they stole garish costumes. There are also other examples of masques and anti-masques throughout the play.
Of course, the play as a whole can be viewed as a masque—given the elements of a literary masque (described above), perhaps you can see how this might be the case.
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