Term Paper on "Shakespeare Land of Enchantment"

Term Paper 7 pages (2360 words) Sources: 1 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Shakespeare

Land of enchantment

From the very beginning the play imposes a visual spectacle. The actual representation of the storm and of the shipwreck comes as a challenge.Even if it is possible on paper, its incarnation on the stage requires a lot of effort. For the time when it was written, it stands as remarkably experimental. Shakespeare forces the limits of the theatre and those of interpretation.

Fiction in general is an overlapping of mythical and fabulous, a quest to know the word and to regain identity by means of imagination, perception, understanding. In this case Shakespeare writes a play about fictionalization.

We are confronted with an atypical beginning, the plays starts at full speed, in medias res:

the image of a storm, tormented waters, a ship and its passengers struggling to survive the rage of nature. The reader is swept away, immediately made part of the catastrophe about to happen, when one has not even been properly familiarized with the characters. This already introduces a sense of otherness, of alterity: a sense that there is something strange, foreign, unknown because different to face and overcome.

The reader is soon left in awe again; one is told that the storm was not a natural manifestation, but that it has been fabricated, it is the result of magic. This brings forth another important issue of the play: the problem of truth and how illusion creates reality as an "AS if" construction. The lie oversteps the truth, or better said, they mingle to such extent that one can't distinguish one from the other, therefore reality becomes an open system. The initial image of the savage waters is not accidental; it is more than a mere background. Waters are meant to hypnotize the reader from the very beginning; their wild movements cause disruption in the normal course of reality. Water appears in various hypostases: as coming down from the skies, under the form of the storm and water under the form of the sea, as a huge and untamed surface. It is beyond human control. On the other hand, it is the same sea that brings reunion and purification: "Though the seas threaten, they are merciful; / I have curs'd them without cause," (Shakespeare) says Ferdinand when regaining his father.

One man solely has absolute power over nature and also over the characters involved in the play, and that is Prospero. Exiled on an island, the former Duke of Milan spends his time exercising his magical powers and reading books. He is the god of the island, nevertheless, his actions concentrate upon the well-being of his daughter Miranda: "I have done nothing but in care of thee, / of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter..." (Shakespeare). Despite his supernatural abilities, Prospero is guided by human affections; he builds the external world out of love. In this way, Shakespeare demonstrates how there are no boundaries between the inner and the outer realities, how they are interdependent and constantly (re)create one another. It is exactly why we have previously affirmed: that reality is an open system. "Now I will believe / That there are unicorns; that in Arabia / There is one tree,"(Shakespeare) these are Sebastian's words after seeing the banquet that Prospero prepared for Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Adrian and Francisco. They begin to realize that everything is possible.

Prospero is successful in all his magic-making with the help of a devoted airy spirit, Ariel, in search of its own freedom. Why is it that Prospero needs an assistant? He has absolute power, he could do without Ariel. Ariel is there for Prospero to set him free, to save him.

Shakespeare demonstrates that, although Prospero has not always behaved like a good man, he had a plan to fulfill; he had to be harsh in order to do well.

All comedies are hybrids, none are pure, but they generally move from confusion to order, from rules to liberty, from unhappiness to satisfaction, from singleness to marriage, from two to one. Although the play is not a mere comedy, it does incorporate important features of the genre, the most important being: a positive understanding of human experience. The ultimate proof that Prospero's most ardent desire is to set the world to right is that in the end he is willing to give up his magical powers.

A memorable scene is the wedding of Miranda and Ferdinand. Prospero outdoes himself in putting together such a wedding party as mortals have never seen before. Nymphs, goddesses, fairies, spirits, all are called to be present and witness true love emerging triumphant: "A contract of true love to celebrate, / and some donation freely to estate / on the bless'd lovers"

Shakespeare). The party is illusory, beautiful because fantastic, created out of a fathers desire to see his daughter have the best heaven and earth can offer.

The Tempest has a lot of spectacle and music; it has also a more general resemblance to the masque. Prospero is like a masque-presenter, and the castaways wander helpless in an enchanted scene under his spell, until he chooses to release them, drawing back a curtain to display a symbol of aristocratic concord, Ferdinand and Miranda at chess."(Frank Kermode, 43)

In Act IV, Scene I when the wedding celebration takes place, we are explicitly confronted with the masque and its role in the economy of the play: the masque begins with the Greek goddesses of Iris, Ceres and Juno, all gathered to bless the happy couple. The masque represents a courtly mythological entertainment. Thus, Shakespeare borrows elements from the court masque, but blends them and gives them treatment at once more philosophical, writing a play that has both features of the comedy and of the tragedy and that could most certainly be named romance. The main theme of romance is the problem of identity, man's vision of his own life as a quest (loss and regain of identity).

Revealing in this sense is the figure of Caliban, a deformed, grotesque savage, the offspring of a witch by a devil. He is the personification of natural force, the exact opposite of Ariel, the spiritual creature, as light as the thought. Some of his actions indicate his anti-intellectual position: he is planning to kill Prospero and burn his books. Nevertheless Caliban does not represent a real danger to the mighty Prospero. We can also think of Caliban as one of Prospero's creations, a means by which the latter puts his powers at work. He has to exercise his magic on all types of characters, to prove its universal validity. It becomes true if it functions no matter what the obstacle is.

One of the magic's functions is to recreate the past. Miranda has forgotten it, she doesn't know who she is and Prospero is the only one to recall upon the history. The problem of the truth is again brought to light. Did things happen as Prospero presents them? Is he hiding some of the facts, is he manipulating the reader? Is he simply telling his-story and not the objective history? Why is he repeatedly asking Miranda: "Dost thou attend me?," (Shakespeare) like he is trying to hypnotize and command her hearing.

Fortunately for us, there is no such thing as objective truth in what concerns this play, we have to put our trust in Prospero, because we have no choice. He enchants us in the very same way he enchants the characters. This is the first initiation rite of the play: living in an ambiguous present, ambiguous because part of it is true, part fictive. Prospero makes a selection of what had happened, he cannot mention every single thing that had happened, moreover he doesn't have the physical time to narrate all the happenings. When mentioning a fictive past, that was in the sense of incompletion, therefore subjective.

Throughout the whole play, Prospero has behaved like a Creator, constructing situations, interfering with people's lives, leading them in error, making them believe they were acting out of their free will, etc. We are confronted with the literary device of the play within a play, or as mentioned before, a play about fictionalization., a means by which the play turns on itself.

This is also in close connection to Prospero's love for art and reading in particular:"Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me, / From my own library with volumes that / I prize above my dukedom"(Shakespeare). This is a metatextual reference, a subtler way to convey his humanist message.

In the end Prospero asks for the participation of the audience; having lost his privileged position he transfers his magical powers on to the public. It is now the audience's turn to watch for the safety of the human values such as love, union, faith, creativity. The public can set Prospero free to travel back to Naples and be once more the rightful Duke of Milan.

The epilogue has great importance in the economy of the play: it comes to say that although… READ MORE

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