How Does Shakespeare Build Self-Loss In The Tempest
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Tempest:
T h e Mastered Self
N
E A R T H E E N D of Shakespeare's career stands a simple play not of self-loss but of self-gain. Shakespeare m a y well have intended it to have been his final one; it is difficult to think of Henry VIII as anything but an afterthought. A comedy or a tragicomedy, of course, was expected to present an action that moved toward self-gain; and the romances Shakespeare wrote dur ing his last phase, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and
The Tempest, all conclude happily with their heroes' self-recoveries.
But The Tempest differs from the other romances in notable ways: the hero's self-loss has taken place before the beginning of the play, as w e are told by him in the …show more content…
But the fine w e b of fantasy
Shakespeare spun in the play lessens the problem; w e give our hearts to The Tempest m u c h as w e do to fairy tales. A n d perhaps for this reason critics become fanciful and imaginative when they analyze it; its outlines become vast, wavering, and infinite, and w e are told that "any interpretation, even the wildest, is more or less plausible." 1
Actually, no play of Shakespeare's has a clearer dramatic struc ture, one more closely tied up with the nature of its hero and the major strands of its thought than this, and few have as simple a thematic content. That The Tempest observes the unities of time, place, and action—the only play of Shakespeare after the early
Comedy of Errors to do so—is well known. T h e action is fitly di gested intofiveacts—they are accurately marked in the Folio text— according to the formula derived from the comedies of Terence, modified in the epitasis by a movement that comes from revenge tragedy. In its act structure, composite but yet composite on a simple plan, The Tempest could be compared with Love's …show more content…
Prospero's self-recovery from this evil of omission is the main plot of The Tempest.
However, evil is a less serious threat in The Tempest than in the other romances, which veer toward tragedy. In The Winter's Tale, for instance, Leontes's unfounded accusation and condemnation of
Hermione brings about the death of his son Mamilius. If these heroes do not suffer permanent self-losses, the reasons lie in the extraordinary efforts of recovery through penitence and faith they make or in the powerful help, h u m a n and divine, they receive. T h e romances, with their stories of shipwreck, of broken and reunited
3^2
ACHIEVEMENT AND SYNTHESIS
families, of deep self-losses and strong, sometimes miraculous, recov eries, make the losing-finding formula even more prominent than do the early comedies, but the formula is n o w pregnant with moral and spiritual associations.
However, none of the romances or any other play of
The Tempest:
T h e Mastered Self
N
E A R T H E E N D of Shakespeare's career stands a simple play not of self-loss but of self-gain. Shakespeare m a y well have intended it to have been his final one; it is difficult to think of Henry VIII as anything but an afterthought. A comedy or a tragicomedy, of course, was expected to present an action that moved toward self-gain; and the romances Shakespeare wrote dur ing his last phase, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and
The Tempest, all conclude happily with their heroes' self-recoveries.
But The Tempest differs from the other romances in notable ways: the hero's self-loss has taken place before the beginning of the play, as w e are told by him in the …show more content…
But the fine w e b of fantasy
Shakespeare spun in the play lessens the problem; w e give our hearts to The Tempest m u c h as w e do to fairy tales. A n d perhaps for this reason critics become fanciful and imaginative when they analyze it; its outlines become vast, wavering, and infinite, and w e are told that "any interpretation, even the wildest, is more or less plausible." 1
Actually, no play of Shakespeare's has a clearer dramatic struc ture, one more closely tied up with the nature of its hero and the major strands of its thought than this, and few have as simple a thematic content. That The Tempest observes the unities of time, place, and action—the only play of Shakespeare after the early
Comedy of Errors to do so—is well known. T h e action is fitly di gested intofiveacts—they are accurately marked in the Folio text— according to the formula derived from the comedies of Terence, modified in the epitasis by a movement that comes from revenge tragedy. In its act structure, composite but yet composite on a simple plan, The Tempest could be compared with Love's …show more content…
Prospero's self-recovery from this evil of omission is the main plot of The Tempest.
However, evil is a less serious threat in The Tempest than in the other romances, which veer toward tragedy. In The Winter's Tale, for instance, Leontes's unfounded accusation and condemnation of
Hermione brings about the death of his son Mamilius. If these heroes do not suffer permanent self-losses, the reasons lie in the extraordinary efforts of recovery through penitence and faith they make or in the powerful help, h u m a n and divine, they receive. T h e romances, with their stories of shipwreck, of broken and reunited
3^2
ACHIEVEMENT AND SYNTHESIS
families, of deep self-losses and strong, sometimes miraculous, recov eries, make the losing-finding formula even more prominent than do the early comedies, but the formula is n o w pregnant with moral and spiritual associations.
However, none of the romances or any other play of