Hi everyone, it's Lauren and welcome back
to my series on Shakespeare. As always
there is a link in the description box
to the rest of the Shakespeare series
and on that playlist you can see videos
on Macbeth, on Romeo and Juliet, on Much
Ado About Nothing, on Othello. I've also
got some more general videos on how to
read Shakespeare. In this video we're
going to be looking at The Tempest so
I'm going to give a brief overview of
the plots and the characters and then
we're going to talk about some of the
more prevailing themes within the play.
The Tempest is the story of Prospero who
has been marooned on a magical Island
with his young daughter Miranda. He used
to be the Duke of Milan but was
usurped by his brother Antonio and sent
out to sea in a leaky boat with just a
few provisions and some books and
happily has managed to find himself
marooned on an island. Once on the island
we learn that Prospero has managed to
enlist the help of / enslave two of
the island's original inhabitants, so we
have Caliban who is the son of the witch
Sycorax who used to live on the island
and he's half human half beast half fish
he's described in lots of different ways
we don't really know what he is and
Ariel who is a spirit who had been
imprisoned in a tree by the witch
Sycorax and Prospero on landing on the
island released him from the tree and
then because Ariel was so thankful, he
then agreed to serve Prospero. The play
opens with a great tempest which has
been conjured by Prospero with the help
of Ariel with the aim of sinking a ship
which is just off the coast of the
island and marooning all of the
passengers. We learn that these
passengers are actually the people that
Prospero used to know in Italy and were
instrumental in his downfall so we have
his brother Antonio and the King of
Naples Alonso, the King's brother
Sebastian, the King's son Ferdinand and
Gonzalo who is a kindly Lord who we know
helped Prospero and Miranda escape with
Prospero's magical books which is very
important. The survivors are scattered
across the island and this really sets
the scene for Prospero just to enact his
revenge on the people that usurped him
so he has most of the survivors in one
camp and then the King's son Ferdinand he
maroons and another side of the island
so that the King thinks that he's dead
Prospero then orchestrates a meeting
between his daughter Miranda and
Ferdinand and since Miranda has not seen
another man apart from her father she
instantly falls in love with Ferdinand.
Prospero makes him
go through a series of tests in order to
prove his character. On the other side of
the island Caliban runs into a drunken
butler and jester Stefano and Trinculo
who have been washed up from the
shipwreck as well, and after they give
him some wine he decides to worship
Stefano as a God and enlist his help to
try an overthrow Prospero and murder him.
Prospero uses his magic and his spirits
to torment the King of Naples and
his brother Antonio, make them see all
the awful things that they have done and
they also go through pain and hurt as
well because Alonso for example thinks
that Ferdinand has drowned. He then
reveals himself to everybody at the end,
brings all of the other characters
together and crucially forgives Alonso
and Antonio for usurping him all of
those years ago, and then very happily
everyone gets back on a ship back to
Italy to celebrate the marriage of
Miranda and Ferdinand but not before
Prospero releases Ariel from his service
and decides to throw his book and his
staff into the sea and he gives up magic.
There are a few obvious and clear motifs
within The Tempest but Shakespeare being
Shakespeare, there are quite a lot of
layers and some other things that we can
unpick, so some of the key themes are the
difference between revenge and
forgiveness and then also the
relationship between freedom and service
or being trapped or controlled and then
going further down that line we also get
into discussions of post colonialism as
well. On the surface this play is all
about Prospero; he has created an arena
where he can fulfill his wildest
dreams of finally giving the people that
wronged him their comeuppance and
putting everything in their faces that
they did wrong to him and being
reinstated as Duke of Milan, but really
it's a little bit more complicated than
it first appears because two people have
had something taken away from them -
Prospero has had his dukedom taken away
from him and he's been banished to this
island but also Caliban who was the
original inhabit of the island has had
his agency and his land taken away from
him by Prospero, so Prospero is in the
role of the victim but also the role of
invader. At the beginning of the play
they're both harboring resentment and
both want to exact revenge on the person
that wronged them however they end up
going about it
in quite a different way. Eventually
Prospero reaches forgiveness of the
people that wronged him although he
doesn't get there very obviously and
very quickly in fact near the end of the
play Ariel does say to Prospero 'if you
were to behold these men now after I've
been tormenting them you would feel
sorry for them, because if I were human I
would feel sorry for them' and it's
almost as though Ariel is taking
Prospero down this journey and leading
him towards empathy and forgiveness.
Caliban on the other hand never gets to the
point where he could forgive Prospero
he's all about revenge and all about
murdering him right from the get-go. It's
interesting to compare the characters of
Prospero and Caliban because Caliban is
depicted in the play or can be depicted
in the play as subhuman in many ways or
look as somebody who isn't intelligent
enough to carry that kind of emotional
intelligence and empathy. At the
beginning of the play we do find out
that although Prospero and Caliban were
friendly when they first arrived
Caliban then tried to rape Miranda and
that is the reason for this soured
relationship, quite understandably on
Prospero's part, and that's why he
banished him from his house. However that
does then seem to be the excuse for
absolute like enslavement of Caliban
essentially, he's not a very willing
servant and Prospero and Miranda are
very unkind to him and call him names
and we can take this idea of servitude
and look at it in the wider context of
what freedom is and what it means to be
free.
Obviously the island as a metaphor is a
trap for everybody, everyone is trapped
there for some reason against their will
but everybody else in the island is
actually trapped within
Prospero's art, Prospero's magic, he even
uses it on Miranda at certain points. We
know that Ariel was trapped in a tree
when Prospero arrived and then as a
thanks to Prospero decided to go into
his service, so he kind of switched one
kind of prison for another. Caliban very
similarly when he wants to exact revenge
on Prospero he doesn't think about
killing Prospero and then becoming the
king of the island himself ,he latches on
to Stefano, worships him for giving him
wine and thinks you could kill Prospero
for me and then I will worship you so he
again is replacing one master with
another. You could look at the rest of
the Naples party
being trapped by their deeds, they
certainly are trapped by Ariel and
they're made to move they're actually
kind of frozen in time and made to
confront the things that they did in the
past and actually even the last line of
the play Prospero says 'set me free'. What
he does is ask the audience to clap
which in turn will set him free from the
play that he's within, so there's some
really interesting themes there, and
another way that we can examine the
freedom of these characters is through a
post-colonial lens, so you can cast
Prospero as the invader and Caliban and
Ariel as the native people to that
island.
Now Caliban and Ariel react to Prospero
in a very different way Ariel is very
much the 'good native' the 'good slave' he's
grateful for Prospero for everything
that he has done and he's seemingly
willingly is helping Prospero in his
aims now, although it is with the promise
that once Prospero has got his revenge
he will then provide Ariel's freedom.
Because Ariel isn't a human character
there's a lots of scope for how he's
interpreted in plays - sometimes he is
portrayed as very ambiguous and almost
not really having any feelings towards
Prospero at all, in other versions when
Prospero has released Ariel from his
service Ariel has then spat in Prospero's
face, there's lots of different ways
that this can be portrayed on stage.
Ariel can also be seen as a metaphor for
the people of an invaded nation who want
to work with the invaders so somebody
who is happy to serve them wants to work
with them to try and change the system
from within, very grateful to the
invaders for what they have done. Caliban
on the other hand is the 'bad servant' or
'bad slave'. Caliban is a very difficult or
interesting, there's another way of
saying it, character because the you can
interpret him in a very patronizing way
you can look at him as someone who is
subhuman and someone who doesn't really
understand
Prospero's intelligence and his magic
but at the same time he is portrayed as 
being very one with nature and
understanding his Island. Hhe's also very
angry that Prospero has invaded, he
doesn't willingly help Prospero in any
kind of way and his answer to his
situation is to murder Prospero, to
overthrow him, so he's shown as being
very violent and kind of conniving.
However I think
generally this view of Caliban is almost
Prospero's view of Caliban it doesn't
necessarily mean that that is who that
character is and just because he is
lashing out at Prospero doesn't mean
that he is an inherently unintelligent
and violent person, it could just be that
that's how he is reacting to Prospero.
There is a lot of scope then for how
much pathos a director might give to
Caliban or indeed Ariel and how much
agency you want to give them as their
own characters. So I really hope that
that was interesting I would love to
keep discussing your interpretations of
The Tempest in the comments section
below and I will see you in my next
video, bye!
