Term Paper on "Tempest: In Major and Minor Strains"

Term Paper 3 pages (1326 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Tempest: In Major and Minor Strains of Character -- From Prospero to Trinculo

There are no small parts -- there are only small actors. Even a child can see through the uncertain logic of this reasoning, when given the part of the 'first sheep' in the school nativity play, or the 'first spear carrier' in the high school production of Henry V." But Shakespeare's "The Tempest" depicts a world that seems to confirm the 'no small parts' idea, namely that it is not the size or even the plot significance of a character that matters in terms of that character's impact upon the audience. Rather, what matters is how significant that minor character is, in terms of underlining the themes of the play, and what that character represents in the world of the play. Moreover, by making all of his minor characters three dimensional and multifaceted in their complex psychologies, Shakespeare creates an island world that is fully populated with beings that have a sense of psychological verisimilitude, even if they are airy sprites and earthly devils.

At first, "The Tempest" depicts a world that is entirely dominated by the figure of Prospero. All of the other characters are dwarfed to his prominence as a figure of manipulation. He causes the tempest that propels the plot of the action on stage. But the emotional effect of the resolution of the play, that of Prospero's reinstatement to his former place in society that takes place after Act 5, is less intense that might be expected, given that Prospero only meets his usurper in front of the audience face-to-face at the end of the play, after his daughter Miranda has become betrothed. "The Tempest's" onstage conflicts are really more compelling in the way that minor characters are actively paired against one another as dual forces, more strikingly than the main plot of the play.

Thus, Shakespeare reinvents the notion of the minor character as a fully characterized psychology that can still function as an archetypal and thematic force. Unlike, for instance, static minor characters that merely show off the major characters in a good or a bad light, Shakespeare's minor characters have emotional depth. Ariel and Caliban pine for freedom, Trinculo plots his great and ambitious return to the civilized world with living relics of a primitive civilization. However, unlike conventional major characters, these minor characters can still starkly embody forces of nature that exist in opposition.

This duality is most strikingly evidenced in the pairing of Caliban and Ariel. These two creatures are spirits. They are not human, and they do not marry and fall in love like men and women. Yet they are capable of human urges and both cry out for freedom. Both symbolize Prospero's incarceration on the island -- Caliban is kept in a cave because he tried to rape Miranda. Ariel is kept under Prospero's control because Prospero freed him from the clutches of the evil sea hag. But even as these minor forces represent something beyond their own emotional needs and function in the plot, they are still rounded characters. With one breath, Caliban curses Prospero, "All the infections that the sun sucks up/From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him/By inch-meal a disease!" (Act 2.2) But at the same note, he is also capable of tremendous poetry, a poetry that paints a physical picture of the island for the audience that the spiritual Ariel's words lack, as he offers Trinculo, "I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts;/Show thee a jay's nest and instruct thee how/To snare the nimble marmoset; I'll bring thee/To clustering filberts and sometimes I'll get thee/Young scamels from the rock."(2.2)

And although is obedience and airiness marks him as different from the sea hag's "whelp," Ariel is really no less captive than Caliban, although Prospero sets Ariel free at the end of the play. Both of these dual forces that pine for freedom highlight the plays continued contrasts between… READ MORE

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