Themes

Revenge and Forgiveness

Relinquishing revenge in favour of forgiveness would have been an appropriately moral story at the time The Tempest was first performed. Themes of reconciliation and forgiveness do appear more frequently in Shakespeare’s later romances, and they seem to present a faith in future generations. Scholars suggest this sentiment comes from a more knowing and more reflective Shakespeare as he approached retirement.

Yet many have questioned whether Prospero actually learns anything from his journey, or whether Shakespeare effectively realises this forgiveness. The change in Prospero from planning everything to serve his revenge, to deciding not to punish any of his enemies, is the key emotional journey of the play, the calming of his own ‘tempest’. However, for a lot of the action Prospero is wholly focused on tormenting his enemies. It is only the non-human Ariel who acknowledges that Gonzalo, who helped Prospero and Miranda, is suffering and so begs Prospero to relent: "The good old lord, Gonzalo his tears run down his beard… if you now beheld them your affections would become tender" (Act 5, Scene 1).

Prospero’s epiphany only comes in the final act when he concludes: “The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.” (Act 5, Scene 1) And yet, Shakespeare never makes a resolution too simple: Antonio and Sebastian, for example, show no contrition. It is uncertain what is now going to happen to Caliban, and whether the provinces of Milan and Naples will be joined as one kingdom under Ferdinand and Miranda’s rule. This is an idea that seems abhorrent to Prospero when he speaks of how Antonio would “bend / The dukedom yet unbow’d – alas, poor Milan! / To most ignoble stooping” (Act 1, Scene 2).

So, is the ending happy and reconciled, or bitter and divided? A close look at Act 5, Scene 1 reveals many moments of joy, forgiveness and reconciliation, but other moments suggest recrimination, bitterness or problems still to come. The play’s final moments set up a fine opportunity to debate where the balance lies.

Nature versus Civilisation

The Tempest continually engages in the Renaissance debate over whether man is nobler in his natural state or in the confines of civilisation. Shakespeare throws men that have only known the realms of the court onto an unpredictable and unruly island in which they are faced with creatures that contradict their very notion of what man should be. Prospero and Miranda contend that they attempted to civilise Caliban, but the strength of his evil nature could not be suppressed. However, Caliban’s speeches in which he describes the wonders of the island are not clumsy or rough, but beautiful poetry. Do we assume that he was capable of learning, or that civilisation fails to see the more inherent natural virtues he has, that may not fit with its preconceptions? As soon as any human, from Prospero to Gonzalo to Stephano, arrives in this natural place, they immediately try to replicate the hierarchical power structures from which they came.

However, some of these men, including Prospero, who were corrupt and flawed in civilisation, seem to find humanity in nature. As the academic Northrop Frye states, this island “is a place where people find themselves and lose some of their flaws”. Gonzalo debates with the other nobles about the utopian qualities of the island, which he deems superior to corrupt civilisation. He lays out a vision of what it would be like to live in such a paradise:

I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty;--
All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.

Act 2, Scene 1

Much like Duke Senior in As You Like It, Gonzalo longs for the natural life, away from the intrigues and envy of the court. However, in The Tempest, the word ‘natural’ itself is ambiguous. Miranda uses it to distinguish the “divine” and “noble” Ferdinand from the “natural” creatures she is used to (Act 1, Scene 2). Trinculo exclaims (of Caliban) “That a monster should be such a natural” (Act 3, Scene 2), using ‘natural’ in its early-modern sense of ‘idiot’. Later Prospero calls his brother “unnatural” because of his treacherous nature (Act 5, Scene 1).

The play seems to question whether or not man can be at one with nature: does man make everything he touches unnatural or will nature always dominate him? When Ariel surrounds and torments the weary nobles in Act 3, Scene 3 he reveals how the island has disempowered them and made them “mad”:

On this island
Where man doth not inhabit, you ’mongst men
Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad,
And even with suchlike valor men hang and drown
Their proper selves.

Act 3, Scene 3

Their status and formalities have no currency here and, as Ariel states, they may as well stab their swords into the “loud winds” (Act 3, Scene 3). The island has exposed them as “Three men of sin” (Act 3, Scene 3): no henchmen, or no courtly rank or finery can help them now. They must, from this time forward, live innocent lives. Yet in The Tempest, as in many of Shakespeare’s comedies, humans learn in nature, but then return to the city, thus restoring all social structures.

Women in the Tempest

Women in The Tempest are quite clearly under-represented, and over time many productions have re-cast Ariel as a woman to give the play a stronger female voice. Many theorists view Miranda’s experiences and subservience to her father as representative of the disempowerment of women in the new world. She is either desired or revered or both by her two potential mates on the island, and she is in no way independent. Miranda is extremely innocent, is often shielded from the truth and often exists in a state of wonderment. She has only recently met any men other than her father and Caliban, and her response is a notable moment: “O brave new world” (Act 5, Scene 2). However, her father does say he has educated her unlike other children of royalty:

Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit
Than other princesses can that have more time
For vainer hours and tutors not so careful.

Act 1, Scene 2

Miranda is grateful for her education, but doesn’t realise that her father has kept her naïve in many ways and now artfully organises and controls her romantic relationships and future.

As for the absent women in the play, Miranda’s mother is revered in memory as a virtuous woman and Caliban’s mother, Sycorax, isn’t present to defend herself against several horrid accusations. In his essay ‘Prospero’s Wife’, Stephan Orgel claims that we can make assumptions about these women, but Shakespeare doesn’t provide us with enough evidence to draw any realistic conclusions.

Academics have proposed the notion that Sycorax is Prospero’s female opposite. She is everything that Prospero is not: female, anti-patriarchal and possibly a woman of colour. She was also powerful; more powerful than the women of Prospero’s world. She ruled the island and in promising to pass on land to her son Caliban “This island’s mine by Sycorax my mother” (Act 1, Scene 2), she introduces female succession, a concept foreign and challenging in early modern England. Many theorists believe Prospero must present Sycorax as a hag or “foul witch” (Act 1, Scene 2), to preserve his own patriarchal status. Stephan Orgel follows this theory and explains that for Prospero, Sycorax “embodies to an extreme degree all the negative assumptions about women”. Sycorax apparently died several years ago, “imprison'd thou didst painfully remain a dozen years; within which space she died and left thee there” (Act 1, Scene 2) and Caliban and Ariel seem to recall very little of her. She exists only in Prospero’s negative reconstructions of her. However, the text implies that they never met and all his knowledge would have originally come from Ariel’s report. Thus, Sycorax exists only in male characters’ accounts as both the racial and the gendered ‘other.’