

### Tales of the Mythic World

### Volume II

### The Eternal Return:

Oedipus, The Tempest, Forbidden Planet

by

David Sheppard

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY:

David Sheppard (Tragedy's Workshop) on Smashwords

The Eternal Return:

_Oedipus_ , _The Tempest_ , _Forbidden Planet_

Copyright 2012 by David Sheppard

ISBN 13: 978-1-4762-8366-1

ISBN 10: 1-4762-8366-4

Cover photo: Temple of Apollo at Delphi

taken by the author, Fall of 1993

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### The Eternal Return:

Oedipus, The Tempest, Forbidden Planet

by

David Sheppard

Table of Contents

Author's Note

Chapter 1: Oedipus at Colonus

Chapter 2: The Tempest

Chapter 3: Oedipus Tyrannus

Chapter 4: Forbidden Planet

Epilogue

Endnotes

Bibliography
Author's Note

Sometimes those of us who spend our lives searching for some bit of knowledge that will help make sense of life here on planet Earth come to the end of the road. We then have a choice: to turn back and end our intellectual journey or proceed, to wade a ways out into the weeds and scrub brush. We stand a chance of becoming lost in a chaotic philosophical wilderness and even risk losing, if not our minds, at least our sense of purpose, which can result in sickness of the soul. But it's worth the chance because, if our intuition has served us well, we will stumble out of the bushes to find ourselves at an intellectual height where we can overlook the vase reaches of the human endeavor and gain a fresh perspective. This present work, whereupon you are about to embark, is the result of such a journey. It's not an imaginative work, nor is it even one of great creativity, but is only a portion of an observation of where mankind has come so far.

The idea for this work originated in a science fiction film series, which I hosted at New Mexico State University – Carlsbad in 1998. One of the films was the 1931 version of Frankenstein, which was loosely based on the Mary Shelly novel. While researching the origins of Mary's story, I became interested, not only in her life, but also the message apparent in the subtitle, Or, The Modern Prometheus. Then in the fall of 2001, the American Library Association advertised a traveling exhibit titled, Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature. The stated objective of the display was to encourage "audiences to examine the intent of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, and to discuss Shelley's and their own views about personal and societal responsibility as it relates to science and other areas of life." Since I am an author/engineer/scientist, I am interested in the social implications of all technological and scientific discoveries, particularly when they concern what might be considered "forbidden knowledge." We were unable to get the exhibit for our university branch, but it started me thinking about writing an essay on the subject. Gradually, the concept evolved into the current work, of which the first volume,  Introduction to Frankenstein: Origins and Aftermath, has been previously published. In that first volume, I started with Genesis and established the nature and origin of forbidden knowledge, which is at the heart of the continuing narrative. Although not absolutely necessary, a reading of that volume will be of benefit in understanding the material in this.

I've provided an overarching title for the series, Tales of the Mythic World. All of these essays do have forbidden knowledge as a unifying theme. I am currently working on a third volume that will take a mythological look at scientific milestones such as Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion and Einstein's Theory of Relativity that eventually led to the creation of the atomic bomb. That volume will end with an essay on J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which I believe is one of the few serious fictional works to explore the question of how to put the genie back in the bottle.

A ways into the writing of these essays, I had a dream. I stood on a dark mountain at night overlooking a brilliant sea of city lights, a magnificent future world. A man in a gray cloak stood in front of me, a little to the right. He turned and looked back at me, as if to say, "See? All this is possible." Then the scene was interrupted by a line of mushroom clouds, similar to the line of bombs dropped on Baghdad during "Shock and Awe" at the start of the war with Saddam Hussein, but these were atomic bombs and not those of conventional warfare. I realized that my dream was directed, not at me, but at our times.

I woke, slowly, and as the mists of sleep faded, the name of one man came to mind, Teiresias. Teiresias was a seer in ancient Greece, a priest of Apollo, and though blind, could see the future and knew the will of the gods. He'd advised the kings of Thebes: Kadmos, Oedipus, Creon and many others. Years after he died, famous Odysseus came to see him in the Underworld to learn his way home from Troy. Teiresias was the only man to retain an unclouded mind in the Afterlife.

Some years ago, I traveled Greece for ten weeks, a pilgrimage of sorts, visiting many archeological and religious sites: Delphi, Ithaca, Troy. I also visited Thebes, and while there had some unsettling experiences, epiphanies really, concerning my own life. (See Oedipus on a Pale Horse.) Upon my return home, when analyzing my voyage and writing about it, I realized that, while traveling that ancient land, I had been in the hands of the gods in the literal sense. (See Encountering Hermes.) Because of this and other strange occurrences, I've learned to take heed of dreams and experiences that seem meaningful, even though to do so I might appear to be chasing specters. This dream I'd just had concerning Teiresias seemed to cast a new light on the writing of this book.

I write in voices. I can exhaustively research, but I can't really start writing a book until I find the right voice to tell the story. Some call it channeling, but I'm a little suspicious of that. I will say this: Teiresias, with his unclouded mind and residence in the world of the divine, could possibly have visibility of all things past and future. This book could be a warning from Teiresias, and these tales I've written here could all be, not only mine, but also his tales of the mythic world.

CHAPTER 1: Oedipus at Colonus

... _the primitive foundations of the human soul are... profound time-sources where the myth has its home and shapes the primeval norms and forms of life. For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula to which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious_. Thomas Mann, "Freud and the Future."

_And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow_. Ecclesiastes 1:17-18

In 406 BC, four years before the final defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, a funeral procession slowly negotiated the foothills along the slope of Mt. Parnassus northeast of Athens into enemy territory to the burial grounds at Decelea. Sparta, who'd laid siege to Athens, allowed the passage out of respect for the holy corpse. None other than Dionysus himself, patron god of theatre, guarded the funeral train. So the story goes. [1]

The man who'd died had been seven when the Athenians defeated the Persians in the land battle at Marathon and seventeen when he danced naked at the Isthmus of Corinth during the celebration following the victory over the Persians in the sea battle at Salamis. At the tender age of twenty-seven, on his initial attempt as a dramatic poet, he'd won his first victory as in the City Dionysia over the seasoned Aeschylus. He was a close friend of Pericles, Athens' first citizen, but also friends with Pericles' political enemy Cimon. He'd housed the healing god Asclepius, in serpent form, in his own home until a temple for the god could be built and had been elected to the Board of Generals during the war with Samos. He'd served as treasurer of the Delian League.

The acclaimed corpse was that of ninety-year-old Sophocles. Sophocles was the quintessential Athenian, intelligent, good looking and mild mannered, and in the years following his death, he would be worshiped as Dexion, the "Receiver." 2] Burial rites of the time [3] included the washing of the deceased with seawater by women, and dressing the corpse in an ankle-length robe. An obol coin was inserted between the lips as payment to the mythical ferryman Charon for passage across the Styx to the Underworld. They closed the eyes and kept the lips shut with a chinstrap. The body was generally cremated on a pyre, as Trelawny would Shelley's body millennia later. [See [ Introduction to Frankenstein: Origins and Aftermath.] The remaining bones were then put in a vase and buried in the family plot.

The death of Sophocles signaled the end of an era. Not only was it the end of the greatest creative period for ancient Greece, but it also signaled the coming end of democracy in Athens. Sparta had already won the war and all that was left was for the final battles to play out.

The much-loved tragic poet had just finished his final play, Oedipus at Colonus, which described the death of the mythic king, and is set in the Athenian suburb where Sophocles himself had been born and raised. This was Sophocles' farewell to theatre and also a farewell to his hometown. He lived only a short time after completing it, and it was left to his grandson to produce five years later.

Oedipus was a mythic character whose story had been passed down through generations of ancient rhapsodes. Though myth, the stories concerning the ancient man-of-grief may have some basis in fact. Oedipus died at Colonus, so the story went, but he had ruled as king in Thebes, some sixty miles north of Athens. Archeologists have uncovered the ruins of ancient Thebes, and their scientific findings seemingly verify some elements of the story. Once Oedipus was exiled, his sons had at first agreed to share the throne, but then fought over it, Eteocles, the younger son, gaining the upper hand. The older son, Polyneices, went to Argos, assembled his own army and formed alliances with six generals from other townships, and returned to retake the throne. The attack was repulsed, but a generation later, the sons of the defeated generals returned and burned Thebes to the ground. The archaeological excavation reveals a layer of ash and rubble that corresponds to the time period, 1225 BC, during which, according to myth, the burning of Thebes had occurred. Archaeologists uncovered an ivory leg to what is called the "Throne of Oedipus," which now resides in the Thebes museum.

As for the myth of Oedipus himself, actually the backstory to Oedipus at Colonus, the story goes that a child was born to the king and queen of Thebes, one forbidden by the gods. To escape divine wrath, they drove a spike through the ankles of the child, so he couldn't walk even in the Afterlife, and gave him to a goatherd to be exposed in the wilds of Mt. Kithaeron. However, the goatherd took pity on the child and gave him to another goatherd who took the child back to Corinth with him. There he gave the child to the king and queen of Corinth who raised him as their own son and named him Oedipus, "swell-foot."

Years later, Oedipus was living a life of luxury as the prince of Corinth when one evening a wine-drunk belligerent at a festival told him he wasn't his father's son. Young Oedipus tried to put aside the accusation but rumors continued to circulate. He went to his father, the king, who assured Oedipus that he was his son. The accusation kept gnawing at Oedipus, so he went to the Oracle at Delphi to put the question to Apollo and settle the issue once and for all.

Delphi is an actual place and the home of the temple of Apollo, the god of prophecy and enlightenment. The temple stood on the side of Mt. Parnassus, up the slope from the deep-blue waters of the Gulf of Corinth. In antiquity, dignitaries from all over the known world came to Delphi seeking enlightenment, including Alexander the Great. Even today the ruins of the temple are visited by tens of thousands every year.

Consider again, Oedipus before the Pythia at the Delphic oracle putting his question of parentage to Apollo, but this time let's stop the action of Oedipus' life right there, as if we have a magical remote and can pause it real time so that we might examine the situation.

We can well imagine Oedipus having his future all planned out before him: ascending the throne of Corinth once his father died, marriage to a woman who would thus be queen, kids who would be princes and princesses. He would have command of all his realm. This was as certain a future as anyone could have imagined, and let's even assume that it was one written by the Fates into the Book of Life. We'd like for him, before he received his answer from the Pythia, to say, "Never mind," turn around and walk back to Corinth, put up with the accusation, and live a relatively untroubled life. But in that instant, that pause in time between Oedipus asking the question to uncover the truth of his life and receiving his answer from the Pythia, Oedipus' life reordered itself. The Fates rewrote his life Book of Life, so that instantly he had a new fate, a second fate filled with woe.

Oedipus before the Pythia waiting for his answer is like Eve, having picked the apple, brought it to her mouth, and then pauses to contemplate the act, the transgression she is about to commit. Here at the beginning of mankind, we can see most clearly the two paths before her. What would have happened if she'd dropped the apple to the ground untasted? Would she and Adam have stayed in the Garden? Would we really have stayed ignorant and been content? If Eve hadn't done it first, would no one have ever done it? Somehow this seems like a setup that would be instructive throughout mankind's existence. The temptation was just too great for mankind's nature.

Now we can press the remote again and see Oedipus' new life unfold in all its terrible glory. The Pythia gives Oedipus his answer: "You will kill your father and defile your mother's bed." It isn't the answer to the question he'd asked, for his life has been rewritten in that split second between the asking and the answering, and he is no longer the man he had been. He is no longer the son of the king of Corinth. His life is now unalterably changed back into that before he'd been exposed on Kithaeron. So he leaves Delphi and, fearing the oracle, instead of returning to Corinth proceeds through the farm fields of Focis Nome to a crossroads, a place where three roads come together. And here we can hit the remote button one more time, stop the flow of events in Oedipus' life and examine the next turn it will take. For here he'll have a dispute with a man in a carriage.

The great social anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once said, "Each of us is a kind of crossroads where things happen. The crossroads is purely passive; something happens there." [77] It's as if lives are lived through us, perhaps even that our lives do not belong to us. Oedipus certainly must have felt that way. This concept is very much in tune with Jung's contention that at times our lives parallel a myth, and that at such times, the myth actually lives us. It seems that we get no warning when it's about to happen.

The crossroads was called the Cleft Way, 78] a sort of external manifestation of Levi-Strauss' crossroads within. [ Even today, it's a rather dramatic setting with grass-covered rolling hills and Mt. Parnassus looming to the northwest. You can hear the dull clank of goat bells in the distance, the whistle of a goatherd and the yap, yap, yap of a dog. [79] Coming from Delphi, the right branch of the path leads to Thebes and for Oedipus would mean glory and tragedy. The left path leads to the small town of Daulia, a nondescript little place that even today attracts little attention. If Oedipus chooses the path to Daulia, we can well imagine him having a wife and kids, a few goats and pigs, a sheep or two, and living an obscure country life, but a good life and one no one would remember. Undoubtedly this did happen, so to speak, to millions of men who passed up their chance to live a myth and thus disappeared unknown into the mists of time.

But for Oedipus, an older man in a carriage comes charging along the roadway from Thebes, perhaps while Oedipus contemplates which path to take, and a dispute over the right of way ensues. This again is Oedipus' point of decision, whether to step off the path and let the vehicle pass or claim the right-of-way and force the driver of the carriage to give ground. In this split second, Oedipus reveals so much about his true nature, his hotheaded cruelty.

And now we press the remote button again and let his life unfold. This is how Sophocles had Oedipus describe the incident many years later:

When I was walking near this meeting of three roads, I was met by a herald and a man riding in a wagon... and the leader and the old man himself tried to drive me from the road by force. In anger I struck the driver, the man who was trying to turn me back; and when the old man saw it, he waiting till I was passing his chariot, and struck me right on the head with his double-pointed goad. Yet he paid the penalty with interest; in a word, this hand struck him with a stick, and he rolled backwards right out of the wagon, and I killed them all. [80]

Little does Oedipus realize that he has just killed Laius, his biological father, as Apollo had foretold. After committing this murderous act, Oedipus travels from the crossroads to Thebes where the Sphinx, a creature with the head and bosom of a woman and the winged body of a lion, holds the city under siege. Oedipus cleanses himself in a spring at the edge of town and meets the Sphinx. She has positioned herself on a mountain to the west and when someone approaches, she swoops down, asks her riddle, and if they don't answer correctly, she kills and eats them. She had been sent by the gods when Laius, the previous king and Oedipus' biological father, was killed to screen people to ensure the rightful descendent got the throne. Of course, Oedipus was the rightful heir.

Here we have the opposite of the situation Oedipus experienced at Delphi. There he questioned a god. In Thebes he is questioned by a subhuman. The ancient Greeks believed that human beings occupied the space between the divine and animal worlds, and were thought to have a foot in each. Oedipus could not solve the riddle from the god, but can solve the one from the Sphinx because it comes from the animal-human half of humanity rather than the human-divine half. Her question was: "What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening but speaks with one voice?" Since Oedipus spent time on Kithaeron and symbolically became half animal, he answers, "Man. He crawls on all fours as a child, walks upright as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age." Oedipus understands this animal-man connection.

This of course is the correct answer, and the Sphinx kills herself by plummeting from the city wall. Her mission is over. As his reward for saving the city, Oedipus is given the hand of the queen in marriage and thus becomes king. Oedipus, through his peculiar knowledge, is seen by Athenians as "...the first of men, both in the incidents of life and in dealing with the higher powers." [81] However, as it turns out, he doesn't understand the gods because he lost contact with the divine. Thus Oedipus, with this bit of "animal" knowledge that others do not know, acquires that which he should not have, the queen. It would seem that his knowledge could fall under the category of "forbidden."

All was then well with King Oedipus, and he and Queen Jocasta have four children, two sons (Polyneices and Eteocles) and two daughters (Antigone and Ismene). When the truth of his parentage comes to light, Oedipus becomes known as the "man of sorrows." He blinds himself, is exiled from civilization to roam the wilds of the Greek countryside with his eldest daughter Antigone as his guide.

Oedipus is the perpetual exile. First he was exiled when his parents sent him to be exposed on Mt. Kithaeron. Then he self-exiled from his home in Corinth when told he was to kill his father and marry his mother. Then he was exiled from Thebes again when he learned that he had killed his father and married his mother.

This then is the backstory for Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, which is about the repatriation of Oedipus following a long period of suffering in exile. Sophocles, who was only months from death himself while writing the tragedy, opened the play fifteen or so years after Oedipus was exiled and just as Oedipus and Antigone enter a small village, Colonus, on the outskirts of Athens. Oedipus is old and on the very threshold of death. Sophocles presents Colonus as a magical world, as it must have seemed when he remembered his own childhood. Oedipus and Antigone settle down in a grove to rest their weary souls. Antigone herself describes it to her blind father:

...the walls that surround the city [Athens in the distance] look to be far off; and this place is sacred, one can easily guess, with the bay, the olive, and the vine growing everywhere; and inside it many feathered nightingales make their music. [L 14-20] [4]

It is in fact a sacred grove forbidden to mortals because it is a haunt of the dread Furies, daughters of Earth and Darkness who punish those who've done harm to their parents. They protect the entrance to the Underworld, [5] and this is where Oedipus takes a seat on a stone.

Immediately a stranger arrives to tell him that this is sacred ground and trespassing upon it is forbidden. The sacred place near the stone where Oedipus sits is called the "Brazen-footed Threshold." [6] When Oedipus hears this, he realizes that this oasis of spirits at the edge of the city is where he will meet his end of days. Oedipus refuses to move saying of the stone, "It is the watchword of my fate." [7] Apollo had foretold Oedipus of this event:

...[Apollo] told me, when he predicted all that evil, that this should be my respite after long years, when I came to the land that was my final bourne, where I should find a seat of the dread goddesses and a shelter, I should there reach the goal of my long-suffering life, bringing advantage by my settlement to those who had received me.... [8]

To gain permission to stay there, Oedipus requests council with the king of Athens, Theseus who had at one time been an exile himself. The stranger then sends for the king while other citizens gather to learn the identity of this stranger who has come into their midst, and when they hear that it is infamous Oedipus, word spreads quickly.

Meanwhile Oedipus' other daughter, Ismene, arrives with news of another oracle from Delphi, saying that his tomb will provide protection to the sacred soil wherein his deceased body rests. Any invaders will be destroyed by Oedipus' wrath. She also tells him that trouble is brewing between his two sons over the throne of Thebes and that war is imminent. Remember that Eteocles, his younger son, is currently king, and Polyneices, Oedipus' elder son, wants the throne. Polyneices has returned from his own exile in Argos where he has raised the even armies to regain the throne. Oedipus is a vengeful, hate-filled man smarting over his expulsion and years of exile, and as a daemon of the Underworld, his vengeance will outlive him.

When Theseus arrives, Oedipus tells him that he, Oedipus, can provide protection for Athens if he grants him sanctuary, and Theseus accepts Oedipus' offer, saying:

I have not forgotten that I myself was brought up in exile, as you were, and that in my exile I struggled against such dangers to my life as no other man has met with; so that I would never turn aside from helping to rescue any exile such as you, since I know that I am a man, and that I have no greater share in tomorrow than you have. [9]

Theseus then makes Oedipus a citizen of Athens and vows protection for him. This then is Oedipus' reentrance into civil society, his repatriation.

Theseus, a rather ethereal soul in Sophocles' play, then becomes a grantor of wishes, coming and going as Oedipus needs him. But Theseus is more than just a protector, for he has in times past been to the Underworld himself. Theseus was the illegitimate son of Aegeus, the previous king of Athens. As a young man Theseus came to Athens, approached his father and declared his birthright. Shortly thereafter, he had also gone to Crete to kill the Minotaur, and save a tribute of fourteen young men and women who were to be sacrificed every nine years to the half-man, half-animal beast. After he became king, Theseus and a friend of his, Perithus, descended to Hades in an attempt to kidnap Persephone, mistress of the Underworld. But none other than Hades himself, who offered them seats in stone chairs into which their flesh grew, foiled them. They could not get up to leave, and Theseus would have stayed there for eternity had not Heracles, another Theban hero, released him.

Oedipus soon needs Theseus' help, for his (Oedipus') sons Eteocles and Polyneices, who are also Oedipus' brothers, have heard the benefits of having Oedipus buried nearby. They each separately visit Oedipus to gain his post-death support. They want him buried at Thebes' border but not within its boundaries for fear of pollution. Oedipus is outraged at this and prophesies their doom. Even when Creon, the emissary of Eteocles the current king of Thebes, kidnaps Oedipus' daughters to force him to go to Thebes, Theseus comes to their rescue and risks war with Thebes to retrieve them.

Oedipus also allows Theseus, him having been to the Underworld before, to witness his death. For Zeus soon calls Oedipus to his fate, signaled by a crash of thunder:

OEDIPUS: This is the winged thunder of Zeus, that will soon carry me to Hades; come, bring him [Theseus] at once!

CHORUS: Look now! Hear, a great crash, unspeakable, sent by Zeus, resounds, and terror spreads to the very ends of the hairs of my head! My spirit cowers, for again lightning blazes in the sky. What can this be? Will he cast his bolt? I dread this; for it never shoots forth for nothing, nor without catastrophe. O vast sky! O Zeus!

OEDIPUS: Children [Antigone and Ismene], the end of life that was prophesied has come upon this man, and there is no way of putting it off. [10]

Oedipus then demonstrates the true "magical" quality of his being by, though blind, leading the way to his tomb and allowing Theseus to view whatever it is one might call what is about to happen to Oedipus.

Come, and do not touch me, but let me myself find out the sacred tomb where it is fated for this man to be hidden in this earth! This way, thus, this way! For it is this way that I am led by the escorting Hermes and by the goddess below...For now I am setting off to conceal in Hades the finish of my life. [11]

Though blind to this world, Oedipus now has sight in the divine world, and he sees Hermes, guide of souls, and Persephone, the "goddess below [Underworld]," showing him the way. Oedipus, his daughters and Theseus then exit the stage, and a messenger appears to tell us what happened:

...But when he [Oedipus] came to the threshold that plunges down, rooted in the earth with brazen steps, he stopped in one of many branching paths, near to the hollow basin, where lies the covenant of Perithus and Theseus, ever to be trusted. Between this and the Thorician rock he took his stand, and sat down by the hollow pear tree and the tomb of stone; then he undid his filthy garments. Next he called upon his daughters, telling them to bring water for washing and libation from a running stream somewhere. And they went to the hill of verdant Demeter that was in view and discharged these duties swiftly for their father, and gave him the bath and the raiment that is customary. [12]

The messenger then tells us that father and daughters got caught up in their grieving and farewells, so that "suddenly the voice of someone hailed him, so that the hair of all stood upright suddenly in terror." The booming voice thoroughly terrorized them. "You there, Oedipus, why do we wait to go? You have delayed too long!"

At this point in the action, we must stop and ponder what has happened and what is about to happen. What has happened so far in Oedipus at Colonus, in broad perspective, is that Oedipus has wandered in the wilderness as a blind man, come to a place sacred to the gods, cleansed himself, and provided a libation. All this, and also what is about to happen to Oedipus, is in accordance with the ancient mystery religions and specifically indicative of the Mysteries of Eleusis.

Eleusis was a small town fifteen miles northwest of Athens that each fall held an initiation ceremony called the Mysteries. The ceremony started with the initiates purifying themselves in the sea at Piraeus, followed by a procession of as many as 1,500 from Athens to Eleusis. Upon arrival in Eleusis, the initiates wandered blindfolded through a myrtle grove, a wilderness of sorts, and the ceremony culminated in an epiphany that included thunder and a great flash of light exposing a divine epiphany that resulted in enlightenment of the initiate. Sophocles, Socrates and Plato were all initiated.

Although details of the epiphany have remained secret over the millennia, some believe the initiate looked into the face of god and attained eternal bliss from experiencing divine love. Then, when the initiate came to the end of his life, he passed to the Elysian Fields where he lived eternally in the presence of the gods, [13] as Oedipus is about to do.

Oedipus then bids his daughters farewell, and they leave with the messenger, only Theseus remaining. A little ways away, the messenger turns to look back. This is what he saw:

...the man [Oedipus] was no longer there, and the king was holding his hand before his face to shade his eyes, as though some terrifying sight, which he could not bear to look on, had been presented. But then after a moment, with no word spoken, we saw him salute the earth and the sky, home of the gods, at the same moment. But by what death that man perished none among mortals could tell but Theseus. For no fiery thunderbolt of the god made away with him, nor any whirlwind rising up from the sea at that time; but either some escort come from the gods or the unlighted foundation of the earth that belongs to those below, opening in kindness. For the man was taken away with no lamentations, and by no painful disease, but, if any among mortals, by a miracle. [14]

So it was that the first among men, who became the least, was then granted a glorious death and a prominent place in the Afterlife. This then, some 440 years before Christ, is what might in today's terminology be described as an ascension. Sophocles wrapped his telling of the Oedipus myth within the religious experience known as the Mysteries of Eleusis.

But more of the Oedipus family tragedy soon unfolded.

Following their father's death, Antigone and Ismene returned to Thebes where Antigone fell in love with Haemon, son of their uncle, Creon. The cousins were to be married. While this romance was forming, the sisters' two brothers continued their struggle over the throne, and rather than fight an all-out war with their armies, decided on one-on-one combat. Both died in their dual, the result of a single, two-fold blow. Creon, the new king of Thebes, decided that Eteocles who defended Thebes would be buried according to custom, but that Polyneices who had tried to burn Thebes would be refused funeral rites and left to vultures and wild animals. However, Antigone performed burial rites for her outcast brother against Creon's edict, for which she received a death sentence. Haemon went against his father, defended Antigone, and when she killed herself, so did he.

As stated above, the ancient Greeks, ever aware of and concerned with mankind's precarious position in the universe, saw us as occupying a middle ground between the world of animals and that of the divine. [15] To not bury the dead was to revert to animal behavior. Burial of the dead is one of Vico's three requirements of civilization. This requirement manifested in the ancient Greek culture as a demand made by none other than Gaia, the Earth goddess herself. In doing so, they maintained a connection to the divine world. In primitive cultures, myths were sacred tales that define culture and bind the society's population.

Myth...expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man. Myth is thus a vital ingredient of human civilization. [16]

Thus the full story of Oedipus and his children is one of civilization on the brink. When Oedipus as a child was sent to the wilds of Mt. Kithaeron to die, he absorbed some of that wildness and was in a psychic sense half-animal and half-human. As Charles Segal puts it:

[Oedipus] lacks the basic information about his origins that gives man his human identity and sets him apart from the undifferentiated realm of nature and the anonymous, unindividuated realm of the beasts. [17]

Years later his animal nature enabled Oedipus to answer the riddle posed by the half-animal, half-human Sphinx, but this forbidden knowledge then caused him to commit an animal act, incest with his own mother. It was a myth for the times. In modern society, shared mythologies bind a culture into a singular civilization. When different factions within the culture come into conflict, it can tear a country apart. In America today, we see many such cultural clashes. The conflict over gay marriage is one: whether to bring marriage of same-sex partners within a new mythology of sacred marriage or to keep it secular and thus outside the defining mythology. Also, immigrants in large numbers from Mexico bring with them their cultural mythologies many of which conflict with those currently in place, e.g., perception of the Battle of the Alamo and Cinco de Mayo as a national holiday have put considerable social pressure on the political process and has its origin in European culture's invasion into the New World. Whether our social conflicts can be resolved amicably or will tear us apart is something no one can predict. But the story of Oedipus and his family, and why it was so important to the ancient Greeks, provides insight into the nature of the ongoing processes of civilization and how basic and critical it is to our existence. In the coming chapters, we'll uncover more concerning the Oedipus myth and how its reincarnation has unfolded in our modern mythologies.

*

Time is a smooth-flowing river that originates somewhere in dark country and flows into the enlightenment of the future. The myths of man work as some gigantic sea serpent of the deep, its undulating body breaking the river's surface at strategic settings, revealing narratives as it slithers through time, allowing them to play out again and again in mortal strife. As Eliade says it:

The myths preserve and transmit the paradigms, the exemplary models, for all the responsible activities in which men engage. By virtue of the paradigmatic models revealed to men in mythical times, the Cosmos and society are periodically regenerated. [18]

Sophocles wrote Oedipus at Colonus at the end of Athens' experiment with democracy, and Shakespeare would be influenced by the reincarnation of that civilization in America when a refugee from Europe on his way to Jamestown became marooned on one of the islands in the Bahamas. It's as if a giant leviathan had sounded for 2200 years before returning to time's surface. According to Eliade, "Settlement in a new, unknown, uncultivated country is equivalent to an act of Creation," [19] and the colonization of the New World would in many ways reenact Genesis.

CHAPTER 2: The Tempest

The 6th day of September 1492 when Columbus set sail to find a westward route to the Indies, his last port of call before plunging into the Atlantic was Gomera in the Canary Islands. In the distance he and his crew "saw a great fire issue from the mountain on the island of Tenerife." [20] Witnessing the volcano belching flames from the bowels of the earth was an ominous beginning to their voyage, a testament to the violence of Mother Nature to whom they were to entrust their safety during the long voyage into the alien world. Columbus conspired from the beginning to hide the true daily distance they had traveled into the unknown by shortening his accounting, hoping that his crew "would not be so terrified and disheartened." [21] This was because, as Columbus himself said about their voyage upon the Ocean Sea, "whither up to this day, we do not know for certain that anyone has gone." [22]

The elements kept the sailors' emotions on edge, and it seemed they couldn't get worse. Mutiny was in the wind. Then on Friday the 15th of September, "...in the early part of the night there fell from heaven into the sea a marvellous flame of fire, at a distance of about 4 or 5 leagues from them." [23] Two days before and again on the 17th, "The pilots observed the north point, and found that the needles turned a full point to the west of north. So the mariners were alarmed and dejected...." [24] Columbus deduced correctly that this was because the North Star was not precisely at the Earth's pole. This seemingly satisfied the crew, but an uneasiness had settled within them, especially when a windless high sea rose up unaccountably.

The next seventeen days of sailing into uncharted waters included many false sightings of land. When the winds calmed, the "...crew began to murmur, saying that... the wind would never blow so that they could return to Spain." [25] Under the influence of the promise of a silk doublet from the Admiral and 10,000 maravedis from the Sovereigns [26] to the first to sight land, the sailors were on the verge of hallucinating a coastline. The continued appearance of grass in the water, coastal birds overhead, and even flying fish landing onboard further increased their anticipation of landfall.

On Thursday the 11th of October at 10:00 in the evening, Columbus himself saw a light in the distance. He wrote in his journal that, "it was like a wax candle rising and falling." [27] However, he could not confirm land. The first sighting came two hours after midnight on the 12th of October. The Admiral "shortened sail, and lay by under the mainsail without the bonnets. The vessels [the Niña, Pinta, and the Santa Maria] hove to, waiting for daylight."

The next morning they arrived at an island Columbus named San Salvador, meaning "Holy Savior," which is now known as a part of the Bahamas. The mood of the crew changed from one of concerned anticipation to jubilation. Columbus went ashore with several others in an armed boat carrying "the royal standard, and... two banners of the green cross..." The Admiral then executed the ceremony that was to be repeated many times in the coming years of exploration in the New World. He "...in the presence of all, had taken, as he now took, possession of the said island for the King and for the Queen, his Lords making the declarations that are required, as is more largely set forth in the testimonies of which were then made in writing. [28]

Columbus was reenacting a myth. As Eliade observes:

...neither the objects of the external world nor human acts, properly speaking, have any autonomous intrinsic value. Objects or acts acquire a value, and in so doing become real, because they participate, after one fashion or another, in a reality that transcends them. [29]

...

...for archaic man, reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype. [30]

...

Settlement in a new, unknown, uncultivated country is equivalent to an act of Creation....a territorial conquest does not become real until after—more precisely, through—the ritual of taking possession, which is only a copy of the primordial act of the Creation of the World. [31]

To view what Columbus was doing as a repetition of the Creation is more true than most could imagine. For the newly discovered world seemed to step straight out of genesis. Columbus describes a virtual paradise, a metaphorical Garden of Eden. As to the land: "...they saw trees very green, and much water, and fruits of diverse kinds." [32] As for the people:

They go as naked as when their mothers bore them, and so do the women... They are very well made, with very handsome bodies, and very good countenances... They neither carry nor know anything of arms, for I showed them swords, and they took them by the blade and cut themselves though ignorance. [33]

The Native Americans were living in that Garden of Eden when Europeans brought the knowledge of civilization, their forbidden knowledge, into this wonderful dream-like world, which would destroy it. Of course, all the Native American societies were not so idealic.

But Columbus had not landed in the Indies at all, but had in fact found, through a curious bit of serendipity, [34] what would come to be known as the New World. San Salvador lies inside the southwestern edge of what's called the "Bermuda Triangle" or "Devil's Triangle." The magnetic needle anomalies and the ball of fire from the sky were the first recorded instances of the popular lore referencing this area of the North Atlantic, which is roughly a triangle formed by Puerto Rico, Miami and Bermuda.

*

In 1503, eleven years after Columbus' first voyage, the Spaniard Juan de Bermudez visited an unknown island a thousand miles off the coast of Florida. Three years later he returned in an attempt to introduce hogs, but had to abort because of bad winds. He was the first to describe the islands and their birds. He witnessed "...a strife and combat between... flying fishes and the fishes called gilthead, and the fowls called sea mews, and cormorants...." He put it on a map and provided dimensions. [35] The small group of islands was claimed by Spain because of his visits and named "the Bermudas" in his honor.

The Bermudas soon became a well-known navigational aid. Those sailing to the New World from Europe would first sail southwest along the coast of North Africa, pickup the trade winds and then turn west and set a direct course to the Caribbean. On the return voyage, they'd sail north along the coast of the Americas until they reached the Bermudas, rejoin the circulating trade winds and then turn east for the journey home. The problem was that Bermuda was frequently besieged by pirates and contained some of the most dangerous reefs in the Atlantic.

By 1527 Bermuda was known as the "Isle of Devils," but in fact it is a group of coral islands, heavily wooded and without a freshwater source except for sixty inches of rain per year. The islands cap a submerged volcanic cone. Both Spain and Portugal claimed the islands, and though both wanted to colonize them, none of their plans came to fruition.

In December 1603, four of five galleons loaded with treasure disappeared in the North Atlantic, and the fifth, under command of a Captain Diego Ramirez, ran aground in Bermuda. The crew spent several months on the island repairing their ship before returning to Spain. Captain Ramirez described what they found on the island:

All the islands and keys were covered with cedar forests, tufted palmetto palms and underbrush of various kinds. There is good timber for vessels and lumber of all sorts in abundance.... There are great droves of hogs, very well grown and large which have overrun the island and trodden wide paths like well traveled roads to the watering places.

There are very large herons and many handsome sparrow hawks so stupid we even clubbed them. There are also great numbers of medium sized crows.... When we landed they came to us and perched on our heads uttering a multitudinous chorus of cries.

The headlands are undermined at water level with the haunts of certain nocturnal birds [cahow] which during the day remain in their caves but at night come out to feed on fish especially on squid of which there are great numbers. At nightfall these birds come out from their caves with such an outcry and varying clamor that one cannot help being afraid...

...

...We cooked them with hot water and they were so fat and good that every night the men went hunting and we dried and salted more than a thousand for the voyage besides what the men ate.... They are so plentiful that four thousand could be killed at the same spot in a single night. [36]

The name "Isle of Devils" seems to have come from the nocturnal cave birds that alarmed them and other stranded sailors.

After several aborted attempts to establish a mainland English colony in the New World, in December 1606, the Virginia Company of London sent 105 settlers aboard three ships that then established a colony, named Jamestown for King James I, on Jamestown Island on the James River thirty-five miles inland from the Atlantic ocean. Although the island offered strategic protection from the frequently hostile Algonquin Indians populating the surrounding countryside, it provided poor living conditions with brackish water, mosquitoes, and little in the way of food. Disease and hunger decimated the colony, the homes of which accidentally burned the following year.

June 2, 1609, with the colony in danger of extension, a fleet of eight merchant ships from the Virginia Company set sail for Jamestown from Plymouth Harbor in southeast England. They brought supplies and more settlers. All was well on the voyage until June 23rd when they encountered a hurricane. The other ships limped into Jamestown, but the Sea Venture, flagship of the fleet, ran aground on Bermuda. The ship wedged between two rocks and though badly damaged didn't go down. The crew and all passengers were saved, even the ship's dog.

The next morning, they started the arduous task of salvaging the stores onboard and dismantling the ship, so that they might build another boat and proceed to Jamestown. The island and surrounding sea offered bountiful resources. They captured and penned some of the many hogs that now populated the island and boiled seawater for salt. On a trip to an adjoining island, the Admiral returned with thirty-two hogs. The Admiral constructed a rowboat from which he planned to fish.

On his first venture he brought home over five hundred fish; the seas teemed with them. The men had but to venture into the water when the fish would gather around them waiting to be taken. Some were so large that the men feared being bitten.... There were the large groupers, rock fish mullets—so many that a thousand could be taken at a time. [37]

After fashioning a larger flat-bottom boat, they increased their haul:

...great store of many kinds of angel fish, salmon, peale, bonitas, stingray, cabally, snappers, hogfish, sharks, dogfish, pilchards, mullets and rock fish of which there be many kinds. [38]

They sent a master's mate and crew of six aboard a pinnacle in an attempt to reach Jamestown. When no one from that crew returned, they decided to build two small ships, Deliverance and Patience, to rescue themselves from the island. However, not all settlers wanted to be "rescued" and resented spending time working on the ships. They mounted two mutinies, both of which were put down.

The new Lieutenant Governor of Jamestown, Sir Thomas Gates, had been onboard the Sea Venture and was stranded on Bermuda along with his secretary, William Strachy. On May 10, 1610, they finally "escaped" the island paradise. As they left, two of the mutineers hid themselves in the jungle and stayed on to form the first permanent presence on the islands.

Seven days after departing Bermuda, Gates, Strachy and the rest of their crew reached Jamestown. The sorry state of the colony made them realize how lucky they'd been to be stranded on Bermuda. In addition to all the hardships that befell the colony, they'd brought the plague with them aboard ship. They had relied on Native Americans for their own survival, the famous friendship between Pocahontas, twelve-year-old daughter of Chief Powhatan, and Captain John Smith being a deciding factor.

Strachy, among others, soon started sending letters home to England describing their adventures and telling of the horrible storm that had marooned them on Bermuda. The following excerpts are from Strachy's account.

A dreadful storm and hideous began to blow from out the northeast, which swelling and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence than other, at length did beat all light from the heaven, which so like a hell of darkness turned black upon us, and over-mastered the senses so that the terrible cries and murmurs of the winds shook even those of our company who were best prepared to face them.

...The fear amongst women and passengers not used to such hurly and discomforts made us look one upon the other with troubled hearts and panting bosoms; our clamours drowned in the winds, and the winds in thunder.... the sea swelled above the clouds and gave battle into Heaven. It could not be said to rain, the waters like whole rivers did flood in the air.... What shall I say? Winds and seas were as mad as fury and rage could make them....

...

[Hoped-for salvation] kept their eyes waking and their thoughts and hands working with tired bodies and wasted spirits three days and four nights destitute of outward comfort, and despairing of any deliverance, testifying how mutually willing they were, by labour to keep each other from drowning.

...

During all this time the Heavens looked so black upon us that it was not possible for the elevation of the Pole to be observed, nor a star by night, nor sunbeam by day was to be seen. Only upon the apparition of a little round light like a fair star, trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half the height upon the main mast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, tempting to settle as it were upon any of the four shrouds: and for three or four hours together, or rather more, half the night it kept with us running sometimes along the mainyard to the very end and then returning. [They] observed it with much wonder and carefulness, but upon a sudden toward the morning watch they lost the sight of it and knew not what way it made...We much unrigged our ship, threw overboard much luggage, many a trunk and chest—in which I suffered no mean loss—and staved many a butt of beer, hogsheads of oil, cider, wine and vinegar and heaved away all our ordnance on the starboard side and had now purposed to cut down the mainmast, the more to lighten her for we were much spent and our men so weary.

...

...When the morning was three quarters spent and when no one dreamed of salvation, Sir George Somers peering through the curtain of fine rain described land. [39]

Strachy was friends with Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton and a member of the Council of the Virginia Company. Although Wriothesley never visited the islands, one of Bermuda's nine parishes would be named for him. [40] The young Earl was patron, and some would say lover, of none other than William Shakespeare. The scandalous speculation is that Shakespeare's sonnets were dedicated to Wriothesley.

Some of these letters home were either sent or relayed to Wriothesley and by he or other means fell into the hands of Shakespeare. Tantalizing details from Stratchy's description of this tempest, particularly the "little round light like a fair star, trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze" would end up on the Elizabethan stage the following year, the fall of 1611.

*

On April 25, 1616 a small procession of family and close friends followed behind the casket containing the body of William Shakespeare. Unlike Sophocles, his death went unnoticed by the public. He was embalmed, and "wrapped in flowers and herbs in a process known as 'winding' the corpse." [41] The greatest playwright of all time was laid to rest in a grave seventeen-feet deep, as if to protect the world from what was buried there. Perhaps he'd contracted some dreadful disease, typhus has been speculated, but no hard facts have surfaced to support such a claim and put the matter to rest. He had died on his own birthday, having lived exactly fifty-two years.

Although life expectancy during his time was not great, the men of Shakespeare's family seemed to go quite early. He had three younger brothers, all of whom died before him. His youngest, Gilbert, died in the spring of 1612. This was just after the first performance of The Tempest, and Shakespeare returned to Stratford for the funeral. He would collaborate on a few more plays before fully extricating himself from the theatre, but The Tempest was his last work entirely his own. He'd not die for another five years, and he'd return to London several times, but his commitment seems Stratford and not the city wherein he'd garnered so much fame. Apparently, his health slowly deteriorated following the presentation of The Tempest. But a mystery surrounds Shakespeare's retirement, and scholars have frequently turned to his last play with its seminal scenes of closure as evidence he was in poor health.

Shakespeare opens The Tempest with, well, a tempest. A ship at sea encounters a brutal storm that threatens to sink the ship. Among the precious cargo are the King of Naples and the Duke of Milan. Even before the ship starts to break apart, the crew and passengers abandoned it. The first to go overboard is the king's son, Fernando, who shouts, "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."

The opening storm dumps all the ship's occupants into the drink. This is what would be a baptism of sorts in the Christianity of Shakespeare's time or a cleansing that could have made them "born again." The ancient Greeks would have said that, in being saved, they had been given a second fate and called deuteropotmoi, second-fated ones. This type of event carried with it the supposition that the sufferer had something seriously wrong with them, had been rejected by the Underworld, and therefore had to be born again. [42] All those aboard ship wash ashore on a wilderness island that is then the setting for The Tempest.

The island's principal inhabitants are a father and daughter, Prospero and Miranda, in exile. His own brother assisted by the King of Naples had forcibly removed Prospero, the Duke of Milan, from power, and he and his small daughter Miranda had been set adrift on a raft that ran aground on the unnamed island in the Mediterranean. Twelve years have lapsed since their forced exile, but now fate has dealt the usurpers an karmic blow, for they are passengers on the ship that has wrecked on the island where Prospero and Miranda have eked out their existence.

As the ship's crew struggles ashore, one might well notice that this father-daughter story seems to parallel the much earlier one, that myth of Oedipus and his daughter Antigone. Only now Oedipus' myth has suffered, as Ariel would have put it, "a sea change / Into something rich and strange." [1.2 L 404/5] Oedipus' two sons, both of whom are his half-brothers and kings of Thebes, also have metamorphosed into Prospero's brother and the King of Naples. The backstory of both plays, therefore, concern a history of betrayal by family members that resulted in exile.

But other parallels also exist in just this first look at the storyline. The first time Oedipus went to the Delphic Oracle, she told him not only of his fate, but also about a special gift that would come at the end of his life. Oedipus used that gift against his two sons, his enemies, who come to him in succession requesting help from destruction. And here now, in our current story, Prospero has been handed his two enemies, who without his help could well perish on the island:

By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune

(Now my dear lady) hath mine enemies

Brought to this shore; and by my prescience

I find my zenith doth depend upon

A most auspicious star, whose influence

If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes

Will ever after droop. [1.2 L 179-184]

To top this off, Prospero became a powerful magician, and able to work his will upon these castaways as he sees fit, much as Oedipus after his impending death would have the ability to aid those who would accept his grave.

During his early days on the island, Prospero, a man of superb intellectual gifts, had freed Ariel, a spirit who had been imprisoned in the cleft of a "cloven pine" by an agent of Satan, the malignant witch Sycorax. Prospero released and kept Ariel as a magical slave, who could accomplish his every wish, but Prospero made the promise of one day granting him absolute freedom. Sycorax had died some years before Prospero and his daughter came to the island, but before she passed away, she gave birth to a half-human, half-animal offspring, Caliban.

Sycorax is thematically important even though she's only mentioned a couple of times. Her name undoubtedly comes from the Greek (sy-korax, sy = thou, korax = raven or carrion-crow), which taken at face value would mean "thou raven." And this would seem to fit, because Prospero who says that Sycorax "with age and envy / Was grown into a hoop." [1.2 L 258-9] The word "hoop" is a shortening of "hoopoe," and possibly a reference to Tereus, who in Greek myth was changed into a hoopoe. The hoopoe was associated with prophecy and raising the dead. Also, Caliban says, "As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed / With raven's feather from unwholesome fen..." [1.2 L 323-4] This "raven's feather" raises the interesting possibility that she herself was at least partly a winged animal, which would make more than a little sense since her offspring is described as a "monster of the isle with four legs." [2.2 L 64-5]

Sycorax came from Algiers in North African some twelve years before our story begins, where she'd copulated with the devil and would have been killed by the locals, but since she was pregnant, she was spared and instead exiled to the Mediterranean isle where she gave birth to Caliban. We don't know how she died, although it was sometime after she imprisoned Ariel in the "cloven pine" and presumably before the arrival of Prospero.

If Sycorax is in any way related to the myth of Oedipus, it wouldn't take a great leap of the imagination to associate her with Oedipus' Sphinx, even though the only similarity between the names is the first and last letters. The Sphinx killed herself after Oedipus answered her riddle and is dead at the beginning of Sophocles' plays concerning Oedipus, which is also true in the case of Sycorax in The Tempest, although apparently her death was not connected to any act by Prospero. It seems that the Sphinx's riddle might have been personified by Shakespeare and brought on stage in the form of Caliban, a pessimistic commentary on humanity. Prospero tries in vain to educate, and civilize him, but in the process learns that Caliban is a "thing of darkness," a corollary, it might seem, to the Sphinx's riddle of man.

Caliban, the only "human" native of the island, proves a mindless savage, only appreciating language so he can curse and if allowed would have raped Miranda and peopled the island with Calibans. Caliban is, as Prospero himself describes:

A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,

Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost! [4.1 L 189-90]

Prospero enslaved him to accomplish menial tasks and controls him through physical punishment. Despite, or perhaps because of, his quarrelsome, antagonistic nature, and his abhorrence of authority, Caliban is irresistibly sympathetic. Ultimately he is correct in his condemnations of Prospero on all counts. The island is his by birthright, and Prospero had no right to try to make him over when he was perfectly happy with himself the way he was. Caliban is everyman's underbelly, and quite possibly that hidden nature of Oedipus that killed his father and committed incest with his mother. But Caliban is also hauntingly similar to Oedipus' sons. Though Oedipus had raised them, Oedipus saw them as unworthy of his sympathy, calling Polyneices, his eldest, "villain of villains." [L 1384]

It's difficult, just coming from Oedipus at Colonus, to restrain one's self from linking more characters from The Tempest with those of the Oedipus myth. Ariel seems a rather Theseus-like character, coming and going to satisfy Prospero's every whim. Plus, Theseus had at one time descended into the Underworld and been locked to a chair until Heracles, another Theban hero, released him, similar to Ariel being trapped in a cloven pine by an agent of the devil until Prospero released him.

But it's more than just characters. The storylines are similar: both Oedipus and Prospero have been exiles in a foreign land for twelve or so years, both deposed from their positions of power by a brother (Oedipus' sons were also his brothers) and accompanied by a daughter, both with a powerful person to carry out their commands, and both about to be repatriated into civil society.

Both Oedipus and Prospero control the action, ordering their "subjects" about as does the director of a play. And then there's the notable absence of women [43] other than Miranda and except as spirits, although in Oedipus at Colonus Antigone's sister does make an appearance. Perhaps Prospero's lofty opinion of Miranda, abundantly referenced but never demonstrated, is a remnant of Antigone's strength of character, which plays out in Sophocles' Antigone. Prospero's island is possibly an entrance to the Underworld, just as Colonus has its Brazen-footed Threshold. Shakespeare mentions Naples. It is close to Cumae, which was the home of the Sibyl and supposed to have had an entrance to the Underworld. [44] Cumae is where, according to Virgil, Aeneas and his comrades entered the Elysian Fields, underwent a mysteries-like adventure and returned redeemed.

As Shakespeare's story develops, even more similarities become apparent. In both instances, those who were responsible for the hero's forced exile will need his help to survive. Martha Hale Shackford noticed that Ariel's "lyrics have something of the character of a Greek Chorus..." [45] As many critics have noticed about the plays individually, they both satisfy, although not perfectly, the three classical unities (time, place and action) attributed to Aristotle. [46] Both plays do proceed without a break in the timeline, are set at centralized locations, and have continuous action. Rather strangely, Prospero mostly stays in one place throughout the play and the other characters come to him. [47] This lack of movement is much like blind Oedipus keeping his seat on the rock as Theseus, Creon, Polynices, and the citizens of Colonus come to him. Only at the end when death is near does Oedipus leave his rock.

Shakespeare had pulled from Greek literature, often using secondary or Latin sources, for several plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1594/5) from the story of Theseus, Coriolanus (1608) from Plutarch, Cymbeline (1611) with its descending Jupiter [Zeus], and The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613-14) a return to Theseus. The cluster of Greek influence toward the end of Shakespeare's life and particularly a preoccupation with Theseus seems to point to a possible influence on The Tempest.

Shakespeare scholars tell us they have found no source for the plot of The Tempest, [48] and that he didn't know enough Greek to have read Sophocles in the original. Shakespeare came to playwriting through on-the-job-training rather than university; however, he did have a working knowledge of Latin, and all Sophocles' plays had been available in Latin since 1543. [49] David Grene noticed "how curious are the connections between them [the two plays]" and that the poets' "last plays formed a kind of series, with certain common features of plot and treatment, and a similar theme." [50] Perhaps the greatest similarity is that each was the playwright's farewell to theatre and came toward the end of their lives. [51]

However, it's actually more interesting if Shakespeare didn't consciously use Oedipus at Colonus as a template. The story, as a myth experiencing Mireca Eliade's "eternal return," would then rise from Jung's collective unconscious, and as predicted, it would be activated, brought into the conscious world, because society had deviated from the "middle way" or had "adopted a false attitude." [52] Which then begs the question: What had caused this societal imbalance? The answer seems to lie in the fact that a new religion had come upon the spiritual scene, one that had caused an evolution in the moral landscape. Christ had gone to the cross, and Shakespeare would write a much different ending to this millennium-spanning story. It seems that this immortal myth had been lying beneath the surface since the time of Sophocles, begging a retelling and poised for a steep return.

In Shakespeare's play, those aboard ship had been spooked into abandoning it by a visitation from Ariel, who proudly tells Prospero of his impersonation of what we know today as St. Elmo's Fire:

I boarded the King's ship. Now on the beak,

Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,

I flamed amazement. Sometime I'd divide

And burn in many places; on the topmast,

The yards, and boresprit would I flame distinctly,

Then meet and join. Jove's lightning, the precursors

O' th' dreadful thunderclaps, more momentary

And Sight-outrunning were not. The fire and cracks

Of sulfurous roaring the most mighty Neptune

Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble;

Yea, his dread trident shake. [I.2 L 196-206]

Ariel's flaming would seem to be straight out of Starkey's description of the hurricane that enveloped the Sea Venture and ran it aground in Bermuda, reshaped by Shakespeare's potent craft. But just as Ariel's effort mimics a natural phenomenon, Prospero's powerful magic has supplied the storm.

A most concerned, on-shore observer of these events and one who thought that the sky "would pour down stinking pitch," is Prospero's daughter, Miranda, who complains loudly to her father that, "I have suffered / With those that I saw suffer!" He assures her things are not as they appear and that all, ship, crew and passengers, are safe. During his years on the island, Prospero has become a powerful magician, and he can now command the elements. He then removes his magic robe, putting aside the magician to become the father, and tells his daughter how they came to the island, of his previous life and how he lost his dukedom through his own negligence and the evil acts of his own brother.

Prospero had valued his books above that of managing his dukedom, and turned his affairs over to his brother. He tells Miranda of the result:

I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated

To closeness [seclusion] and the bettering of my mind—

With that which, but by being so retired,

O'erprized all popular rate, in my false brother

Awaked an evil nature, and my trust,

Like a good parent, did beget of him

A falsehood in his contrary as great

As my trust was, which had indeed no limit... [I.2 L 89-96]

Prospero blinded himself to the affairs of state, and it caused his exile. His brother decided he wanted the job permanently and conspired, along with the King of Naples to get rid of Prospero and his daughter. This is similar to what Oedipus' sons (brothers) had done to him.

The brother, Antonio, set Prospero adrift on the Mediterranean, but friends provided Prospero with a few necessities and furnished him, as he put it himself, "From mine own library with volumes that / I prize above my dukedom." Thus with his years of study in exile, Prospero had became more and more powerful. Fate then brought Antonio and King Alonso within range of his magic.

When Oedipus first came to Thebes, the King had recently been murdered. When Oedipus took over the throne, the search for the murderer stopped, and it wasn't until many years later, on Oedipus' really bad day, that the search was resumed. Thus the affairs of state at Thebes, as they would later at Milan, had been put on a backburner. Oedipus was deposed by his sons (his brothers). It was they who forced his exile. Prospero's rather incestuous statement, speaking of his brother, that "[I] Like a good parent, did beget of him..." could also allude to the Oedipus situation.

Ariel is impatient to gain his freedom and questions Prospero as to when he might be released. Prospero calls Ariel a "malignant thing" [I.2 L 257] and threatens him:

If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak

And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till

Thou hast howled away twelve winters. [I.2 L 294-6]

Ariel is a "delicate" spirit and Prospero's harsh language seems out of character. His short temper has been a subject of much conjecture by critics, [53] and doesn't really seem motivated unless Prospero might have absorbed some of Oedipus' harsh nature.

Prospero now has his enemies on his island, within his grasp, and can do with them as he chooses. From this point on, Prospero is in control of his characters as is a playwright, with quill in hand, and in control of his plot. No opposing will contends for dominance; no conflict locks, escalates and rushes toward resolution. Prospero's enemies don't even control their own mental processes. Prospero, with Ariel at his side, is lord over all, just as Oedipus, with Theseus at his side, is in control of all the action up to and including his own death.

Prospero has more at his command than just mortal characters. He has mastery over the panoply of Greek gods. He can make the earth shake, the sea surge, or Jupiter's lightning strike even the god's own prophetic oak. Later he will bring onstage naiads and goddesses as he sees fit. This mastery of the elements, the divine, and fate itself is more power than even that claimed by God; for God himself couldn't, or didn't, control the actions of Adam and Eve. This is the mastery of the dramatist, who controls even the thoughts of his characters, and the only possible answer to this dilemma is that Prospero has stepped into the shoes of the playwright himself. Prospero, through the power of his books and his research has become Shakespeare. He can evoke any character previously in print, mortal or immortal. This is what Shakespeare has done for decades, and his work is an elaborate, indeed exquisite, hodgepodge of others' works.

We started out [Introduction to Frankenstein] with Mary Shelley's story, which was, as it turned out, a father-daughter story. Mary's father raised her and educated her as had undoubtedly Oedipus with Antigone, and we know specifically that Prospero raised and educated Miranda while exiled on the island. In all three cases, this was done without a mother. This is reminiscent of Jamestown being saved by Pocahontas, daughter of the great chief Powhatan of the Algonquian Native Americans, another father-daughter story without much mention of a mother. [54]

Prospero first has Ariel locate and bring the king's son, Ferdinand, to him. When Miranda and Ferdinand see each other, sparks fly. First Miranda speaks:

I might call him

A thing divine; for nothing natural

I ever saw so noble. [I.2 L 420-2]

Ferdinand believes he beholds a goddess, and a few lines later:

O, if a virgin,

And your affection not gone forth, I'll make you

The Queen of Naples. [I.2 L 450-2]

It's not only love at first sight, but also a marriage proposal at second glance. All is in accordance with what Prospero has either suspected, divined or devised, although he praises Ariel for his assistance in the matter. Ferdinand and Miranda are the most honorable and beautiful of individuals, and their instant love for each other sets the unexpectedly favorable tone for what follows. Furthermore, it sets the theme of redemption through children. This certainly doesn't parallel Oedipus at Colonus, although the relationship and impending marriage does parallel that of Antigone and Haemon.

Prospero has sent the rest of the King's fleet back to Naples allowing them to believe that the King and those aboard with him are dead. He has split those marooned on the island into two groups, the first with Prospero's brother Antonio, King Alonso, and the King's brother, Sebastian. They hardly hit dry land when, under Ariel's spell, all fall asleep but Antonio and Sebastian. Antonio then encourages Sebastian to kill his brother while he sleeps and assume the throne.

Sebastian: Why

Doth it not then our eyelids sink? I find not

Myself disposed to sleep.

Antonio: Nor I: my spirits are nimble.

They fell together all, as by consent.

They dropped as by a thunderstroke. What might,

Worthy Sebastian—O, what might?—No more!

And yet me thinks I see it in thy face,

What thou shouldst be. Th' occasion speaks these, and

My strong imagination see a crown

Dropping upon thy head. [II.1 L 201-10]

The King's brother is trying to overthrow the king just as Oedipus' son Polyneices was trying to overthrow his brother Eteocles.

Meanwhile on another part of the island, the other group, with the jester, Trinculo, and the butler, Stephano, conspire at Caliban's instigation, thinking the two are gods fallen from the moon, to assassinate Prospero and take over the island.

Thus we have three subplots unfolding at once: (1) Ferdinand and Miranda's love story, (2) the plot against the King, and (3) the plot against Prospero. Prospero and Ariel will now manipulate the action of the three subplots to achieve Prospero's planned outcome.

That is the state of affairs, and as Michael Wood put it, "Thus far, it could have almost been a revenge play," [55] as is most certainly Oedipus at Colonus. But here Shakespeare makes a turn Sophocles could not because of the Oedipus traditional storyline that was already known by all. Shakespeare works off the post-pagan Christian tradition, which dictates that he also can have but one path: that which leads to forgiveness.

After the King and his men wander in the wilderness for a while, Ariel along with several spirits bring a banquet laid out on a table, but before they can eat, it vanishes. Ariel then informs them that the reason for the harassment, their shipwreck and being stranded on the island, is because of what they'd done to Prospero years before. For this foul deed:

The pow'rs, delaying, not forgetting, have

Incens'd the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,

Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,

They have bereft... [3.3 L 73-6]

Although he doesn't know from where the voice came, the King then expresses his great remorse:

O, it is monstrous, monstrous!

Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;

The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,

That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd

The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass.

Therefor my son i'th' ooze is bedded; and

I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummest sounded

And with him there lie mudded. [3.3 L 95-102]

In the beginning, Prospero told Miranda of his brother's betrayal and little about the King's betrayal. At the end we get this great remorse from the King but Antonio's attitude will be a much different story.

Prospero attends again to Ferdinand and Miranda. He has given Ferdinand, he says, "a third of mine own life," and now he declares that "here, afore Heaven, / I ratify this my rich gift." But he warns Ferdinand not to bed her before the nuptials. Then Prospero orders Ariel to bring an excess of spirits, and suddenly out of thin air appears Iris, messenger of the goddess Juno. But Iris doesn't call Juno (Hera to the Greeks) immediately. Instead she calls Ceres, who is the Latin equivalent of Demeter.

And this is where the play has quite suddenly and without warning taken a marvelous turn and perhaps shown its true colors. Demeter is the goddess of grain, all things that grow really, but more importantly, she is the goddess of the great Mysteries of Eleusis. Demeter is the mother of Persephone (Proserpine to the Romans), the divine mistress of the Underworld, who Oedipus saw with Hermes just before he died. Demeter and Persephone were actually one goddess, and the connection between the two, one in this world, the other in the next, was in some way the secret at the heart of the ancient Mysteries. [56] But marriage itself in the ancient world was a reenactment of the marriage between Persephone and Hades. Marriage was the realm of Juno (Hera), and here Prospero is demonstrating its blissfulness.

Initiation into the Mysteries included a time wandering blindfolded in the wilderness and then viewing sacred objects during a blinding flash of light accompanied by thunder, during which the initiate had an epiphany. What the sacred objects were has remained a secret, and so has the nature of the epiphany. Presumably the initiate looked into the face of God and encounter divine love firsthand. Some believe the sacred objects were nothing more than an ear of grain, and that the epiphany was a forecast of the divine rebirth of the initiate in the Afterlife. From all of this, of course, Sophocles borrowed for his Oedipus at Colonus.

Juno, the true goddess of marriage, arrives, and she and Ceres sing of marriage blessings and a bountiful harvest. They call nymphs and sicklemen to celebrate these riches, but Prospero abruptly interrupts the vision with the words, "Well done! Avoid! No more!" He has realized that he must act quickly to foil Caliban's plot against his life. Still, this Shakespearian masque is something of a plotline anomaly. It seems to have no purpose and leads to nothing. Prospero does, however, have something to say about it. First he quells Ferdinand's concern that he (Prospero) is lost in some passionate delusion, and delivers one of the most powerful speeches ever written:

These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep. [4.1 L 148-158]

This seems more inclusive than "All the world's a stage" from As You Like It, which is an existential statement of the human condition, one reminiscent of Levi-Strauss's statement that we are a crossroads where things happen; however, this speech by Prospero is cosmic in scope. Prospero has used the ephemeral nature of this conjured vision as a metaphor for the human condition seen as a dream of some god, to which he shall return in the last lines of the play. This also seems to relate to Oedipus and his status as an exile, a man who through no fault of his own lived an unimaginable, fate-driven life, as if some one had dreamed his existence.

Prospero's interruption of the masque had been so sudden and with such force that Ferdinand and Mirada both remark upon it:

FERDINAND: This is strange. You father's in some passion

That works strongly in him.

MIRANDA: Never till this day

Saw I him touched with anger so distempered.

Sophocles also has a scene wherein the characters get lost in a ritual and forget what they are doing and are in fact interrupted by an outburst of anger. It occurs toward the end of Oedipus at Colonus.[~ L 1600] Oedipus has his daughters go to the "hill of verdant Demeter [Ceres]" where they obtain water to wash and prepare Oedipus for enter the Afterlife. Once they have satisfied all of Oedipus' commands, Zeus thunders again and the maidens shudder. Then Oedipus says, "My children, on this day your father is no more! For everything is at an end for me..." Prospero's words following the masque would seem an elegant elaboration of Oedipus' statement.

Oedipus and his girls once again get caught up in their farewells, and this is when Zeus trumpets, "You there, Oedipus, Why do you wait to go? You have delayed too long." Following this exchange, Oedipus enters the "Brazen-footed Threshold." The outbursts by Prospero seem a reflection of those by Zeus, particularly when realizing that Prospero has himself become godlike.

Ariel then brings Caliban and his henchmen, all drunk, to Prospero's cell where they are to execute their plan to kill him. Caliban urges his comrades to commit the murder:

Prithee, my king, be quiet. Seest thou here?

This is the mouth o' th' cell. No noise, and enter.

Do that good mischief which may make this island

Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,

For aye thy footlicker. [4.1 L 215-19]

Just as they are about to enter, Stephano and Trinculo become distracted by "glistering apparel" left out front by Ariel as a lure. Prospero and Ariel then send divers spirits shaped as dogs and hounds to drive the three from the front of Prospero's cell. Prospero and Ariel then return to the King and Antonio along with their entourage. If a reversal in the plot exists anywhere in the text, this is it. Prospero and Ariel discuss the situation:

Prospero: Say, my spirit,

How fares the King and 's followers?

...

Ariel: Your charm so strongly works 'em,

That if you now beheld them, your affections

Would become tender.

Prospero: Dost thou think so, spirit?

Ariel: Mine would, sir, were I human. [5.1 L 6-20]

Prospero responds with what probably are the most important lines in the play:

And mine shall.

Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling

Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,

One of their kind, that relish all as sharply

Passion as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art?

Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick,

Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury

Do I take part: the rarer action is

In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,

The sole drift of my purpose doth extend

Not a frown further, Go release them, Ariel:

My charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore,

And they shall be themselves. [5.1 L 20-32]

Here Prospero has reversed himself from seeking vengeance to bestowing forgiveness so quickly that it's obvious that this has been his intention all along. His forgiveness has been contingent on them being repentant, which Ariel assures him they are.

Oedipus didn't have this disposition available. His sons, his own blood, only received his vengeance. Polyneices, the son who was at one time king and had exiled his father, repents and says he'll return him and set him "up in his own house," which might easily be compared with King Alonso's remorse. But Oedipus is deaf to any talk of reconciliation and curses both his sons.

All that's left now is for Shakespeare's story to play out. But first Prospero reviews his past magical fetes, his "so potent art," calls it a "rough magic" that he abjures, and vows that once he's completed his task:

I'll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I'll drown my book. [5.1 L 54-7]

Prospero will give up the knowledge he's gained through his books that has made him so powerful. Now he'll again become Duke of Milan, which was his rightful place anyway, and forsake the studies that had produced his blindness to his brother's evil nature.

Then Ariel brings the King, Prospero's brother, and their entourage before the cell. First Prospero lists his brother's crimes, then says, "I do forgive thee, / Unnatural though thou art." [5.1 L 78-9] His brother, so close in his criminal plot to murdering the King, makes no response. Then Prospero turns to the King and his company and bids "A hearty welcome." The King, fresh from his mind-altering experience and fearful that Prospero has some "enchanted trifle to abuse" him, then says:

...since I saw thee,

Th'affliction of my mind amends, with which,

I fear, a madness held me; this must crave—

An if this be at all—a most strange story.

Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat

Thou pardon me my wrongs. [5.1 L 114-19]

Again, confession and repentance is the key. When the King laments the loss of his son, whom he still believes is dead, Prospero relates to this and confesses that that same day in the same storm, he lost his daughter. He then "discovers" to the King, Ferdinand and Miranda who are busy at Chess. Father and son reunite, and Miranda has her first view of all those present, to which she responds:

O, wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in 't. [5.1 L 182-5]

The irony of course is that here exposed are all these criminal minds, but she sees only glorious mankind and exposes her naivety. Or is it really naivety? They've committed crimes and been redeemed, so is it not a "brave new world"? It certainly is different from the one exposed by Sophocles. It is a redeemed world, a brave world renewed by the power of forgiveness. Prospero has said of Miranda that "she will outstrip all praise, / And make it halt behind her." Surely on this score, she sees truly.

Shakespeare pinned some curious lines at this point, just when Alonso is about to ask his son for forgiveness. Prospero stops him and says:

There, sir, stop

Let us not burthen or remembrance with

A heaviness that's gone [5.1 L 200-2]

The parallel between these lines and that in Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus is unmistakable. It's Ismene who utters them as she makes her first entrance, having searched far and wide for her father and sister. When Oedipus asks her to tell of her wanderings, she replies:

The sufferings I endured, father,...I shall pass over and let go; for I do not wish to endure the double pain of suffering them and then going over them once more. [58]

Though the speaker and words are changed, the sentiment is identical.

Now that Prospero has regained his dukedom, and his daughter is to marry the King's son and rightful heir to the throne, Prospero's offspring through Miranda will inherit the throne. Prospero has pulled a coup d'état of sorts, but the goodwill of the King is essential to a bright future for the couple. Antonio henceforth is of little consequence, and this seems to be the reason for so little mention of him at the conclusion.

And herein lies one of many secrets at the heart of the play: ultimately redemption comes to us by way of our children. [59] This was something Oedipus could not see, not just because he hated his sons, but because Greeks had no tradition of forgiveness. What a different story that would have been if Oedipus had put aside his old grudges and brokered a peace between his sons. Oedipus had the power to seek vengeance after death, but Prospero has the power to redeem his enemies and forgive them, to set things right, before he goes. In a sense, Shakespeare is correcting Sophocles' script.

Shakespeare's characters exhibit no anguish of choice, no exquisite agony of conscience as with Hamlet, or agony of guilt such as that with Macbeth. From the level this play is constructed, with the playwright as omnipotent protagonist, no real tension about the outcome is possible. Since Shakespeare controls the gods who affect nature, he has placed Prospero above the gods also, and this can only be as an authorial creator of a fictional world. Prospero can raise the dead with the help of "elves" who are the executors of his "most potent art." The key to Prospero's magic is that he was educated in "the liberal arts, without a parallel." In his time, that meant the classics in opposition to the servile arts of the crafts.

Many elements of The Tempest may also have been playing out in Shakespeare's own life. Shakespeare had been away from Stratford for most of his adult life, he being "literary minded" as had Prospero, and undoubtedly his brothers played the larger part in managing the family estate that he would have, being the eldest son, if he'd stayed in Stratford. But two of his brothers were already dead and the third would die in less than six months. Shakespeare, like Prospero, was on his way back home to assume his rightful place at the head of the family. In London, he'd been in exile because of his love of literature, his potent art, and once back at Stratford he'd given it up. Just as with Prospero, Shakespeare had no living son, and his estate would pass primarily to his eldest daughters, the youngest having just married a scoundrel.

*

If the play has been strange and magical, indeed mythical, throughout, the epilogue spoken by Prospero himself is stranger still. As he steps out onstage, Prospero seems half-character and half-playwright, to have partially slipped out of the character's persona and taken on part of the author's. Prospero has made a point of putting on and taking off his robe of magic, much as an actor playing his various parts, and as had Oedipus, just before his descent into the Underworld had taken off his rags and dressed himself for the event. Prospero assumes the wardrobe of the Duke of Milan, meets his enemies, and at the very end turns to the audience.

The address is a self-stated prayer, not to God but to the audience as a god in its aloof position as an observer for whom the events have been performed, they being both in and out of the performance. Here's the epilogue in its entirety, spoken by Prospero in rhymed couplets:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have's mine own,

Which is most faint. Now 'tis true

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands.

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;

And my ending is despair

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free. [Epi. L 1-20]

The words "my ending" seem to have a double meaning and apply to both the play's ending and the end of the playwright's life. It both does and doesn't. And he asks to be taken into the audience's "heaven," Milan, where he'll live his true life again. The audience is now the god he wished to please. But this appeal, perhaps toward the end even a confessional, seems not to be for just this one play but also for his career as a playwright, and he seems to be asking for his release so that he may go back to Stratford. Has he pleased the "god," the audience who oversees this fictional landscape? And on a deeper level, remembering that he has taught us that "all the world is a stage," he seems to be asking God, since earlier he's said, "every third thought shall be my grave," to forgive and take him into Heaven. It's as if he's on his deathbed, and this his final prayer.

Is Prospero like Oedipus at the end of his life, and like the initiate to the Mysteries, looking into the face of God? Does Prospero ask for forgiveness because he has, as an author, assumed the role of God? Shakespeare was Catholic to the end. [60] Is this his confessional? The key to Prospero's art is that it is "literary in nature," the liberal arts without parallel. For Prospero, his purpose is to please the audience, but for Shakespeare it is to please God, that he has created all his work. It's as if Shakespeare himself has been in bondage in London and now wishes to be pardoned from some sin for which he's been serving time abroad and can now be released so that he may go back to Stratford.

Even if Shakespeare were following Sophocles' lead, eventually in Shakespeare's hands, the story must become its own, and surely, it does. Just as a reincarnation is a separate life, Shakespeare's play in the end is his own, distinctive if not wholly original. Regardless of their sources, both Sophocles and Shakespeare pay homage to deeper forces within the collective unconscious, the myths of human existence, that surface according to their own design to shape and reshape these tales that order civilization.

If in this final epilogue, one imagined Shakespeare himself onstage in the role of Prospero, then the three faces would be apparent: Prospero the character, Shakespeare the actor, Shakespeare the playwright. The epilogue, indeed the entire play, speaks for all three, an earthly trinity, but also for a fourth, the audience that is the god overseeing and passing judgment. All four represent a mirror image of Jung's quaternion [61], the quaternion of existence: [62] three earthly aspects and one divine.

And so the play is over, the audience has gone home, and we're left to judge what to make of it. The late Charles Segal said it best:

Great mythic literature, and perhaps all great literature, operates at a level where that question [about a poet's intention] is itself problematical.

The patters of myth function below the level of full consciousness across all the codes of the social structure. One effect of the recasting of myth in tragedy is to call these implicit, unconscious structures into consciousness. This is a consciousness of emotionally experienced symbols rather than of abstractly perceived concepts. Myth and mythic literature are among the ways in which the members of a society can reach these structures. Myth presents them in tangible, concrete forms where they can be experienced as symbolic models of the actual conflicts or tensions of the society. [63]

Thus the father-daughter stories we've reviewed continue to resurface and resonate generation after generation and eternally administer to society's unconscious needs. Shakespeare always seemed to understand that he was serving the community at large. As Kernan put it when discussing Shakespeare's plays of the 1590s:

...in these plays art is never seen as some abstract thing far removed from life but always as a force working directly and immediately upon life, changing the world by reconciling opposites and transmuting a different reality into the forms that man desires. [64]

The play then serves the purpose of directing society, as Jung would have put it, toward the middle ground. But it is also in keeping with the ancient Greek tradition. Aristophanes in The Frogs has Euripides say under questioning by Aeschylus:

Aeschylus: Come, tell me what are the points for which a noble poet our praise obtains.

Euripides: For his ready wit, and his counsels sage, and because the citizen folk he trains

To be better townsmen and worthier men. [65]

From the beginning, the playwright has had an eye on the social impact of his creation. Sophocles and Shakespeare thought about consequences while in the act of creation. These then are the "myths" that shape our society, as Malinowski said about primitive society.

In the end, something is missing in our interpretation of The Tempest, and it has to do with Caliban, who has been viewed for almost four-hundred years as Prospero's darker side. [66] Prospero's exile to an island where he has been alone with his books may be a metaphor for Shakespeare being exiled to London where he has worked his magic in theatre. Caliban then becomes the people of London that Shakespeare has tried to teach, but who have only become more grotesque with what Shakespeare has shown them. The ancient Greeks used theatre to teach the Athenians to be better citizens, and with his play of forgiveness, this was undoubtedly also true of Shakespeare. As opposed to Sophocles' tale of revenge and the struggle for power, Shakespeare's play is about giving up power, a difficult proposition for those who wield it. This will have a potent application in the 20th century, something we'll get to in a later chapter.

*

Just a quick thought on the fact that the Unicorn is mentioned once in The Tempest. This is not an important item in this play, but it's the beginning of an important train of thought for this narrative. It's Sebastian who utters the word just as spirits wheel out the phantom banquet, "Now I will believe / That there are unicorns." The comment shows the transformation in state of mind that has occurred in those stranded. It's a throwaway line with a myth behind it, but not a myth Shakespeare pursued. We'll take time to investigate it in the next chapter.

*

Three-hundred fifty years following Shakespeare's death, Hollywood would produce a science fiction movie based on The Tempest that exploits more of the Oedipus myth, but before we discuss this startling fictional vision of the future, we must revisit Oedipus to pick up a few additional threads of his many woes that we've skipped over and fully prepare ourselves for the intellectual challenge presented by Forbidden Planet.

CHAPTER 3: Oedipus Tyrannus

In 429 BC, Athens' most prominent citizen had taken to what would be his deathbed. His supreme intellect and unassuming demeanor had guided democratic Athens through its genesis into what many believe is still the greatest civilization in the history of the world, and Athens didn't do well without him. His death would signal the decline of Athens and eventual military defeat at the hands of the Spartans.

The Athenian was Pericles, and he was slowly dying of the plague, which had been decimating Athens for the last year. It had already killed his sister and two sons. Generally the plague was fast acting, but it seemed to take its time with Pericles. According to Plutarch:

...the plague seized Pericles, not with sharp and violent fits, as it did others that had it, but with a dull and lingering distemper, attended with various changes and alterations, leisurely, by little and little, wasting the strength of his body, and undermining the noble faculties of his soul. [67]

The plague had originated in northern Africa and spread by sea, entering Athens through its seaport at Piraeus. [68] Undoubtedly the plague wouldn't have been so devastating if it wasn't for the fact that Athens was at war. Athens was under siege by Spartan forces, and all Attica had been brought within the city walls. The crowded conditions caused the extremely contagious illness to spread like wildfire. The symptoms were almost too gruesome to describe. It started with fever, bleeding from the mouth and throat, progressed to the respiratory system, then produced violent vomiting, and the skin ulcerated. When it progressed to the bowels, it produced "violent ulceration and uncontrollable diarrhea." To this day, the scientific community has no consensus on the cause of the illness.

Practically everyone came down with it, and half-dead creatures staggered about the streets and clustered at the fountains to quench their insatiable thirst. Despair was so great that citizens no longer followed the law or worshiped the gods because the disease stalked criminals and the law-biding, religious and the impious alike. Physicians and other caretakers were among the first to go. Bodies stacked up until burial ceremonies were hopeless, and the dead lay rotting in the alleyways and fields. Vultures and wild animals that feasted on the dead got the disease themselves and perished. Civilization came undone.

But the plague was only one of the natural phenomena that set the mood for the times. The ancient historian Thucydides described the situation:

...there were earthquakes of unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. [Book 1, 23]

Pericles was not just Athens' first citizen. He was a member of the famous, some would say infamous, noble Alcmaeonid family. When his pregnant mother was close to delivering, she had a dream in which she envisioned that she was "brought to bed of a lion." A few days later she gave birth to a baby boy that was perfect in every way, except that he had an unusually large and "longish" head. This wasn't just the temporary distortion caused by passage through the birth canal but stayed with him throughout life. Poets called him "squill-head." He was so much an oddity that he rarely went out in public, and statues of him were helmeted.

But as an aristocrat, Pericles was well educated and well mannered. Many spoke of "the sweetness of his voice, and his volubility and rapidity in speaking." [69] As Plutarch put it:

...Pericles entertained an extraordinary esteem and administration, and filling himself with [an] elevation of purpose and dignity of language, raised far above the base and dishonest buffooneries of mob eloquence, but, besides this, a composure of countenance, and a serenity and calmness in all his movements, which no occurrence whilst he was speaking could disturb, a sustained and even tone of voice, and various other advantages of a similar kind, which produced the greatest effect on his hearers. [70]

If his manner was exceptional, his intellect was god-like, and thus he acquired the nickname "Olympian." He rarely appeared in public and never supped at the homes of friends or neighbors, but reserved his appearances for big occasions where he might eloquently express the gravity of the subject. In political orientation, he was one of the "radical" democrats as oppose to the "aristocratic" democrats, being a champion of the common people. He was in fact so influential and powerful as the first citizen of Athens that many considered him a tyrannus, tyrant. As Thucydides put it: "...in what was nominally a democracy, power was really in the hands of the first citizen." [71]

Sophocles was a great friend of Pericles. Pericles had appointed him treasurer in 443 during the reorganization of Athens and three years later during the Samian War, Sophocles had been a general under Pericles. [72] But their friendship must have gone back further than that, because they were both about fifteen, Sophocles possibly a year or two older, during the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC when the Greeks crushed the Persian fleet. Pericles' father, Xanthipus, was a prominent general, and Sophocles was the center of attention when he danced naked at the celebration.

No man is perfect, and Pericles did have an underbelly, and this is what makes him so interesting as we prepare ourselves for Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus. Some twenty years after Salamis, and thirty years before the plague, Pericles and Ephialtes, an older man and then first citizen among the Athenians, succeeded in limiting the influence of the Areopagos, an ancient legislative and judicial council of twelve aristocrats who managed the affairs of the city. [73] By undercutting its authority, the two of them, although Ephialtes by his stature as an elder statesman was by far the more influential, made Athens more democratic. And then a strange thing happened.

Not long after the successful attack on the Areopagos, Ephialtes was "done to death by night and none ever knew how he lost his life." [74] He was murdered, although no one knew why or by whom. But Plutarch tells us that Idomeneus charged "...Pericles as if he had by treachery procured the murder of Ephialtes." [75] Plutarch then goes on to say that Pericles had nothing to do with Ephialtes death, that because of the hostility of those Ephialtes had crossed as a result of his attack on the Areopagos, "his enemies, lying in wait for him, by the means of Aristodicus the Tanagraean, privately dispatched him." [76]

Those responsible for the murderer of Ephialtes were never brought to justice, and this is how the matter has stood through the millennia, but it's possible to speculate that more information on this murder might be contained, hidden away, in Sophocles' play Oedipus Tyrannus. It would be difficult for an Athenian, particularly in a society where argument was so highly valued, to pass up the opportunity to see this as another reference to Pericles. Perhaps, Sophocles has used Oedipus as a surrogate for Pericles.

Once Ephialtes was out of the way, Pericles had become the unquestioned leader of the Athenian city-state. The fact that no one ever knew the full details of Ephialtes death, nor seemingly bothered to find out, is a matter well worth noting, particularly in light of the Oedipus myth.

In the summer of 430 BC, the great plague that claimed Pericles' life hit Athens. Sophocles is thought to have written Oedipus Tyrannus the year after Pericles died. Although much of the Oedipus storyline had come down by way of an oral tradition, speculation concerning the plague of the opening scene is that Sophocles had introduced this element and patterned it after that suffered by Athens, just as some 2000 years later Shakespeare would use the hurricane off Bermuda to open The Tempest. Was Sophocles' opening something of a confessional about the plague, Pericles, and how Ephialtes died? Did Sophocles know some terrible secret? Was the plague caused, in Sophocles' view, by Ephialtes murderer never being brought to justice? Was Pericles the man who bore responsibility for the murder? Did Sophocles wish to draw this parallel with Oedipus unknowingly killing his own father?

*

This then concludes the context for Oedipus Tyrannus, Sophocles' most famous play. The play itself picks up Oedipus' story many years after his encounter with the Sphinx and winning the hand of the queen, but some twenty years before his death at Colonus. The audience needed no prepping, for they already knew the whole story. It was written only eighty years after the formation of democracy in the northern Peloponnesus and incorporation in Athens in 508 BC, and thus it stands at the forefront of literature that, if one can believe Malinowski and Segal, helped create Western Civilization. One hundred years after it was written, Aristotle would hold up Oedipus Tyrannus as an example of the best in tragedies, and over 2,000 years later Freud would use it to help explain much of the nature of the human psyche. Not only was it a product of ancient myth but, as was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, also a product of the times.

As stated before, Sophocles opens his story of Oedipus' downfall many years after his encounter with the Sphinx and ascension to the throne of Thebes. A great plague decimates the city and surrounding countryside. The priest of Zeus describes it to Oedipus:

A blight is on the buds that enclose the fruit, a blight is on the flocks of grazing cattle and on the women giving birth, killing their offspring; the fire-bearing god, hateful Pestilence, has swooped upon the city and harries it, emptying the house of Cadmus, and black Hades is a plutocrat in groans and weeping. [82]

Oedipus sends his brother-in-law, Creon, to Delphi to learn the problem and how they might end the plague. Apollo was the prophetic deity at Delphi, but he was also the bringer of plague. Apollo's unseen arrows were believed to strike the victim and cause the illness. Creon returns with the answer, and it's that the city is polluted because it harbors the man who killed the previous king, Laius. Oedipus then vows to find the murderer and bring him to justice.

For it will not be on behalf of a distant friend, but for my own sake, that I shall drive away this pollution; whoever killed him may well wish to turn the same violence against me, so that in defending him I am helping myself. [83]

A little later, with a bit of dramatic irony, Oedipus says"

I shall fight for him [Laius] as though he had been my father, and shall go to every length in searching for the author of the murder... [84]

The previous king had, of course, also been married to Jocasta, and when Oedipus then goes to the queen and asks how the king died, she tells him that: "...he, as the story goes, was murdered one day by foreign robbers at the place where three roads meet..." She also says that the murder occurred not long before Oedipus himself arrived at Thebes. Oedipus becomes uneasy at hearing this, and he tells Jocasta about an encounter he had at that same spot just before he'd first come to Thebes.

When I was walking near this meeting of three roads, I was met by a herald and a man riding in a wagon, such as you describe; and the leader and the old man himself tried to drive me from the road by force. In anger I struck the driver, the man who was trying to turn me back; and when the old man saw it, he waited till I was passing his chariot, and struck me right on the head with his double-pointed goad. Yet he paid the penalty with interest; in a word, this hand struck him with a stick, and he rolled backwards right out of the wagon, and I killed them all. [85]

Just as Oedipus is telling Jocasta this, a messenger from Corinth arrives at Thebes to tell Oedipus that his father, back at Corinth, has died. Oedipus expresses great relief at his father's passing because he then knows that the priestess at Delphi had been wrong, and that he would never kill his father. But he's still concerned, even after all these years, that he might end up sleeping with his mother, and he expresses this concern.

The messenger is surprised at both Oedipus' relief that his father is dead and concerned that he might sleep with his mother. The messenger then tells Oedipus that he (Oedipus) was the adopted child of the king of Corinth and not his biological son. This messenger had in fact been the shepherd who'd received Oedipus as an infant from another shepherd as they grazed their flocks on Mt. Kithaeron. That other shepherd was from Thebes.

Oedipus sends for the other shepherd, over Jocasta's objections. "I beg you, do not search this out, if you care for your own life! My anguish is enough!" She realizes what has happened and exits in despair.

Oedipus calls the shepherd, who is reluctant at first to say anything. But under threat of death begrudgingly reveals that Oedipus was the baby he took from the arms of Jocasta.

In this story, and this is what has kept it alive for some 3,500 years, we can feel that terrible gravity, that "conspiracy of the elements" drawing Oedipus toward his fate, much as in the real world it had drawn Mary Shelley into the setting and circumstances that lead her to write Frankenstein. Oedipus senses what has happened, "Alas, now all is crystal clear!" [86] But instead of stopping the search for the murderer, he continues, playing out the terms of his dreadful fate. The entire truth out, Oedipus then expresses his lament:

Oh, oh! All is now clear! O light, may I now look on you for the last time, I who am revealed as cursed in my birth, cursed in my marriage, cursed in my killing! [87]

Years before, Oedipus had indeed killed his father and married his mother. Oedipus then rushes to find Jocasta. A messenger tells what happened next:

And with a dreadful cry, as though someone were guiding him [Oedipus] he rushed at the double doors, forced the bolts inwards from their sockets and fell into the room. There he saw the woman hanging, her neck tied in a twisted noose. And when he saw her, with a fearful roar, poor man, he untied the knot from which she hung; and when the unhappy woman lay upon the ground, what we saw next was terrible. For he broke off the golden pins from her raiment, with which she was adorned, and lifting up his eyes struck them... [88]

The Chorus then speaks what are probably the most important lines in the entire play:

With your fate as my example, your fate, unhappy Oedipus, I say that nothing pertaining to mankind is enviable. [89]

The actual word Sophocles used is not, of course, "example," but "paradeigm." Oedipus is a paradigm for human behavior. This is a devastating indictment of the human condition. Still, it's a rather puzzling lesson, but not one that would have been lost on the ancient Greek. And the lesson is this. The man we cross horns with is always a surrogate for our father, and the woman we take to bed, is always a surrogate for our mother.

To take these indictments literally is to miss the point. We are all guilty of Oedipus' crimes on the psychological level. It's the way the human psyche is constructed. We always have a part of our own behavior to which we are blind. We do have an unconscious part to our mind that is active in our daily lives. Our problems are of our own choosing, and we always suffer the consequences. As the ancient Greek would have put it, we have one foot in the animal world and the other in the divine. The best we can do is to recognize this hidden part of ourselves and realize how it manifests in our choices.

*

One last strange story concerning Pericles before we leave him and Oedipus behind. Plutarch tells us that Pericles' shepherd once brought to his master a ram with a single horn growing "strong and solid out of the midst of the forehead," a Unicorn, if you will. So the story goes, Pericles took the Unicorn to both his friend Lampon, a seer, and Anaxagoras, a philosopher who had a major impact on Pericles' thinking. Pericles questioned each of them concerning the meaning of such an animal. Anaxagoras killed the ram and opened the skull. He showed that:

...the brain had not filled up its natural place, but being oblong, like an egg, had collected from all parts of the vessel which contained it in a point to that place from whence the root of the horn took its rise. [90]

Lampon had a different take on the matter. At the time, two political factions were prominent in Athens, one headed by Pericles, the other by Thucydides. When he saw the Unicorn, Lampon said it foretold that Pericles would become leader of Athens because the Unicorn, with two horns formed as one, was found on his estate. When support for Thucydides collapsed, Pericles did become head of state uniting the two factions, as Lampon had foretold.

These two methods of interpreting the meaning of this particular Unicorn illustrate the differences between the scientific method and the mythological perspective. Anaxagoras' method, although also an astute observation, led nowhere, the animal simply being interpreted as a freak of nature. But Lampon's method foretold the future by recognizing of the animal's relation to the current political climate.

According to the Unicorn myth, one not known in ancient Greece, once it is captured, it is sent to the king, in this case the landowner Pericles, and then killed. All these elements were fulfilled: capture, king, and killing. The fact that it was taken to Pericles was an indication that he was to be "king" or leader of the Athenian state. Plutarch didn't tell of it, but it would have been interesting to know the details of the capture because the Unicorn is very strong, illusive, invincible in battle and cannot be taken by conventional means. The Unicorn can only be captured by exploiting its one weakness. Once he sees a maiden, a virgin, the Unicorn will come to her willingly, put his head in her lap, and fall asleep. It would be more than a little interesting to know how Pericles' Unicorn was capture and whether the shepherd's maiden daughter, if he had one, was involved.

Perhaps even more curious, the description of the Unicorn's head is similar to Pericles' head, although he obviously had no horn. But if one thinks about these matters too closely, it could be imagined that Pericles, who had such a major impact on Western Civilization, was playing a role in the myth of the Unicorn, the wisest of all beings.

*

Before we dig into Forbidden Planet, let's pay quick tribute to Sir James Fraser, who observed that in evolving primitive societies, "magic is gradually superseded by religion," which is then rejected "as an explanation of nature" and "displaced by science." [91] Thus one might say that science has supplanted magic because it fulfills the same societal need. With this in mind and realizing that we're a little out of sequence, we go from the religious myth of Oedipus to that of Prospero, the 17th century magician, and now to Morbius, a 23rd century scientist, and in doing so we see the literary transformation of a myth from ancient religion to magic to modern science, in literary fashion verifying Frasier's statement.

A few years after Oedipus' son Polyneices and the seven armies from Argos tried unsuccessfully to retake the throne of Thebes, Polyneices' son Thersander, Oedipus' grandson, returned with the sons of the Argos generals and sacked Thebes and burned it. This was the first of a series of major battles that occurred in the Mycenaean world. Thersander went off with the Greek forces under Agamemnon, and although Thersander was killed in an aborted attempt, the Greeks did lay siege to Troy and burned it to the ground after ten years of fighting. In the coming decades every major city-state in Greece, with the exception of Athens, was destroyed. Archaeologists are still digging through the ashes of the collapsed Mycenaean civilization, and they have never determined why it occurred or who did it. It was as if the war monster, once awake, could not be put back to sleep.

This then brings us to the fictional tale of an ancient civilization on a distant star in the constellation Aquila that also destroyed itself. With all these lessons in forbidden knowledge, we're now ready to tackle Forbidden Planet.

CHAPTER 4: Forbidden Planet

Jacob Adler was perhaps the greatest actor in the history of Yiddish theatre. Born to poor Jewish parents in tsarist Russia in 1855, the year of Tsar Alexander's coronation, he was able to attend public schools and as an adult became a Yiddish thespian. With the assassination of Alexander in 1881, which unleashed an anti-Jewish pogrom, Yiddish theatre's days were numbered, and when it was outlawed in 1883, Jacob left for London and took his family with him. There he resumed his stage career, and his wife Sonya gave birth to a son, Abram, in 1886. Sonya died a month later as a result of an infection contracted giving birth. [92] In the fall of 1887 a simulated fire onstage, "with a chemical called Bengal Fire," [93] was misinterpreted by the audience, and when someone shouted "Fire!" all three hundred went into "blind animal panic." Seventeen people lost their lives. Yiddish theatre in London never recovered, and Jacob sailed in steerage to New York with his infant son. Jacob had for years been known as Nesher Hagodel, The Great Eagle. [94] The word "adler" is German for eagle.

By 1922, Abram was a successful Broadway manager, and later acted some himself. Abram had a son, Allen, who was born on Christmas day 1916. Allen Adler would be the creator of Forbidden Planet. Allen attended New York University where he majored in English but apparently didn't take a degree. For a while, he wrote for Ripley's "Believe It Or Not," was later active in the New York theatre community, and joined the US Air Force during World War II. [95]

Most of what else we know of Allen comes from Lulla Rosenfeld's comments at the end of Jacob's memoir:

Allen Adler, grandson of Jacob Adler and Sonya Oberlander, made it through the lean years as best he could. He ran a little movie house, lost it again, produced a road show of Ben Hecht's Front Page, tried his hand at a play, wrote an interesting novel, and after a two-year stint in the army had a fling at Hollywood in the fifties. His movie, Forbidden Planet, is now a classic. But his career ran aground in the political carnage of the Hollywood hearings, and the studio did not renew his contract....he died before his time. [96]

Allen Adler's "interesting novel" is titled, Mach 1, A Story of Planet Ionus, and was published in 1957, the year after Forbidden Planet was released. It's the story of Earth under attack by an extraterrestrial monster. Although it may have a certain historical interest in the science fiction community, as a literary work it is seriously lacking and reminds one of a bad B-movie. Allen's black-and-white picture on the back of the dustcover shows a young man who could be the twin brother of a rock singer of the '50s and '60s, Bobby Darin. Allen sports a tweed dress jacket, white shirt and has his hand on his hip. A real cool cucumber.

Although Allen Adler created the initial storyline for Forbidden Planet, others were also involved before the movie came to the big screen. It would be nice to be able to separate each writer's contribution to the screenplay, to know how the different thoughts that came from the individual minds melded into a consistent storyline, but it's only to a limited extent that this can be reasonably conjectured. Among the things that show Allen's indelible stamp on Forbidden Planet are both the setting of the movie and the basis for it. The first thing to know is that the storyline was taken from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Since his family's history was in part the Shakespearean stage, and The Tempest being such a magical drama, it seems reasonable to believe that Allen would drift toward Shakespeare as a model for story structure and characters. His military experience also seems to cast a shadow over the flying saucer's crew. But perhaps the most personal touch he left on it concerns his grandfather. Forbidden Planet is set in the constellation Aquila, which represented Zeus' Eagle from Greek mythology. Aquila carried Zeus' lightning bolts in his talons. Altair, also known as Alpha Aquila, is the brightest star in the constellation, and the word "altair" comes from the Arabic meaning "to fly." His grandfather, the Great Eagle himself, had brought the family from Russia through England to America, the home of the great Bald Eagle. Aquila would then be Alan's family's symbolic home in the heavens.

This would all be marvelous if it had the added advantage of being true. However, it doesn't. Or at least it's not necessarily true. Allen's original treatment was set on the planet Mercury, well within the Solar System and not in a far-off constellation. Whether the writer of the screenplay selected the new setting in difference to Allen Adler and his grandfather is anyone's guess at this point. Possibly Allen was working on the script but in the background since his contract had not been renewed and at least two of this family members (his uncle Luther Adler and aunt Stella Adler) had been blacklisted by the House On Unamerican Activities Committee. But perhaps it would be best to leave it there with this seemingly inescapable connection lying broken like an open circuit. Sometimes things like this can be more meaningful if the connection is made in the collective unconscious rather than the continuity of human thoughts and events.

While developing on the storyline for would eventually be titled Forbidden Planet, Allen worked with Irving Block [97], an artist from New York City, who painted murals during the depression and for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Irving was educated at NY University and the National Academy of Design. But by 1949 he was in Hollywood doing matte painting for an early, pre-Disney version of Alice in Wonderland and his first science fiction film, Rocketship X-M released in 1950. In addition to working initially with Allen Adler on the concept for the movie, he eventually became the production designer for Forbidden Planet, and as such, Allen could have had an impact on the overall look and style of the film. Their first attempt at the story, thirteen pages titled Fatal Planet, was submitted to the studio on December 24, 1952.

The great cliché is that movie making is by necessity a collaborative effort. If the minds and egos impinging on a single project do not congeal, it can result in a film not making it to the screen, but even if it does make it, the result can be an incoherent disaster. Occasionally a truly remarkable, even inspired, film is the result of a synergistic collaboration. Forbidden Planet is such a movie, and not only is it collaboration that makes it good, but also its intellectual heritage, which includes Pericles, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Freud to mention only a few.

The man credited with writing the screenplay for Forbidden Planet is Cyril Hume, a descendent of the famous Scottish philosopher David Hume who'd had such a major influence on Percy Shelley, see my [ Introduction to Frankenstein: Origins and Aftermath] and through Percy's influence on Mary, on Frankenstein. Cyril was born in London on March 16, 1900(?) and was a major literary figure in America in the '20s along with F. Scott Fitzgerald. He wrote poetry, short stories and novels, many times under the influence of Greek mythology, (his poem "Ode to Pan" from his book Myself and the Young Bowman, for example), but unlike Fitzgerald, his work didn't capture the times or the public's imagination. In the '30s he started contributing to screenplays for MGM, an activity he continued until 1959. His many screenplays included the Tarzan series, and quite frequently he wrote for television: The Rifleman, The Wonderful World of Disney, and The United States Steel Hour, among others. His talent for story telling is obvious in all his writing. It's also evident, along with his propensity to evoke Greek mythology, in Forbidden Planet. Cyril Hume had actually worked on the film earlier. He'd completed a treatment of it, still titled Fatal Planet, based on the story by Adler and Block. He sent it to the studio on February 23, 1952.

MGM released Forbidden Planet four years later on March 15, 1956. It was an immediate critical success, and over the years, it became a cult hit and finally a commercial success. Filmed in gorgeous color and wide-screen Cinemascope format, it was the first big-budget science fiction movie and influenced both Gene Roddenberry, who pulled heavily from it for the original Star Trek series, and George Lucas for Star Wars.

The opening image of Forbidden Planet is a black sky filled with twinkling stars. A flying saucer enters the screen as a speck, which then grows, coming toward the audience, until it looms large and disappears at the top of the screen. Les Tremayne's voiceover accompanies the images.

In the final decade of the 21st century, men and women in rocket ships landed on the moon. By 2200 A.D., they had reached the other planets of our solar system. Almost at once there followed the discovery of hyper-drive through which the speed of light was first attained and later greatly surpassed. And so at last mankind began the conquest and colonization of deep space. United Planets cruiser C-57D now more than a year out from Earth Base on a special mission to the planetary system of the great main sequence star Altair.

The saucer is grey with a bulby center, the bottom of which glows red, is segmented, and rotates slowly. Inside, we find a crew hard at work and nearing their destination, Altair. Our first focus is a large transparent globe with a model of the Spacecruiser at its center, an obvious navigation mechanism, which dominates the control room where the Commander, ship's doctor, and astrogator go about their duties with several crewmembers working in the background.

They decelerate to sub-light speed with each crewmember standing in a device that becomes a vertical blue blur, a precursor of the Star Trek transporter beam. The saucer goes into orbit about Altair IV, the fourth planet from the star. The Cruiser has been sent to Altair IV to checkup on the Bellerophon expedition, a mission to colonize the planet that hasn't been heard from in twenty years.

Once in orbit, the Starcruiser scans the surface of Altair IV for signs of civilization but finds none. The uncanny thing about the images of the planet's surface from orbit is that they resemble those taken some twenty years later by the Viking spacecraft of the planet Mars, the fourth planet from our star, the Sun. No one knew what the surface of Mars looked like in 1956. The starship's sage doctor, Lieutenant Ostrow, makes the comment that "The Lord sure makes some beautiful worlds." This is a marriage of science and religion and is a theme that won't overtly come up again until the end, although it casts a shadow over the entire storyline.

While scanning Altair IV for signs of life, a Dr. Edward Morbius contacts them from the planet's surface to say that they are not welcome and advises them to leave immediately. The Commander of the flying saucer, John J. Adams played by a very young and serious Leslie Nielsen, has no intention of returning without fully evaluating the colony. Dr. Morbius then absolves himself of all responsibility for their safety and reluctantly gives them landing coordinates.

As C-57D makes a safe landing, we see a landscape that continues to demonstrate the art director's clairvoyance. The surface of Altair-4 is remarkably similar to scenes of Mars shot by the NASA Pathfinder rover, which landed on Mars in 1997. Once outside the Starcruiser, the crew marvels over the landscape, then sees a hovercraft traveling toward them at such great speed that it's apparently being piloted by a madman. The pilot turns out to be a robot named Robbie, who escorts them to "the residence," an oasis in a desert landscape with towering spires of rock that would rival Canyon de Chelly on Earth. The three people from the Cruiser who go with Robbie to meet with Dr. Morbius are Commander Adams, Lieutenant Ostrow, and Lieutenant Jerry Farman, the Cruiser's astrogator and resident "space wolf." They constitute what one day, on a famous TV series, will be called an "away team." They form a triumvirate that will be repeated as variations on a theme throughout future science fiction films on both the large and small screen.

This then constitutes the setup for the story, much as Oedipus and Antigone arriving at Colonus, and the ship running aground in The Tempest. Dr. Morbius, of course, has his origin in both Oedipus and Prospero although he'll not control the action, as did both of them. In many ways, Forbidden Planet is closer to the Oedipus myth than The Tempest, which is strange considering that the storyline for the movie was consciously and deliberately taken from The Tempest with no mention of the Oedipus myth. This could well signify that the cosmic story has an unconscious organic unity in the human psyche that allows various aspects of it to resurface from time to time.

The origin of the name "Morbius" is somewhat of a mystery. It sounds Greek, and if it is, perhaps it came from two words: moros = man's appointed doom, fate, destiny; [98] and bios = a course of life, manner of living. [99] Combined, they would become morbius = a doomed life.

The bearded, graying at the temples, Dr. Morbius, played marvelously by an aging Walter Pidgeon, meets them at the door to his establishment and rather congenially expresses displeasure at their arrival but invites them to stay for lunch. The cuisine has been prepared by Robbie the robot, which is a marvelous machine that Dr. Morbius "tinkered" together not long after he arrived on Altair IV. Robbie is bulky, somewhat like the Michelin Man, metallic, immensely strong and speaks 187 languages. His rich baritone voice only speaks when spoken to, and only then after a pause of mechanical clicks and clanks while his machinery composes a response. His masculine voice, that of voice-over actor Marvin Miller, is confident but congenial, and projects a wonderful sardonic quality that has caused him to become a cult icon. Robbie has a "built in safety factor" in the Asimov tradition [100] that prohibits him from harming a human being. Of course, Robbie is the reincarnated Ariel, a la Theseus, and he can do practically anything and does so without complaint, but his tone of voice always betrays a trace of irritation, as did the words of Shakespeare's Ariel. He's also Morbius' mechanical slave as was Ariel, Prospero's spirit slave.

After lunch and under questioning by Commander Adams, Dr. Morbius reveals that the rest of the Bellerophon expedition were murdered when they decided to return to Earth. Their spacecraft was vaporized, "By some devilish thing that never once showed itself." Morbius and his wife were the only survivors, and they seem to have been spared because of their love of Altair IV and their desire to remain on the planet. This revelation raises the Commander's eyebrows. The monster hasn't made an appearance since, Dr. Morbius says, although he does sense its presence, but:

Only in nightmares of those times. And yet, always in my mind I seem to feel the creature is lurking somewhere close at hand, sly and irresistible, and only waiting to be re-invoked for murder.

Just as at the beginning of Oedipus Tyrannus, a murder had been committed, and the murderer never been brought to justice, Morbius has not found out what or who killed the rest of the Bellerophon expedition. Thus from the beginning, the storyline for Forbidden Planet is closer aligned with Oedipus Tyrannus than The Tempest.

At this point, we might also speculate that a surrogate for Shakespeare's Caliban has just entered the scene, although he has been transformed into an invisible monster instead of an Earthly one. The reason for this, we'll learn toward the end of the movie.

This then is a foreshadowing of serious things to come, but before they can pursue this subject further, his daughter Altaira, whom he'd told to stay in her room, joins them, to Dr. Morbius' surprise and irritation. Altaira, played by Golden Globe winner Anne Francis, makes a startling appearance in a miniskirt, it being some ten years before young women would wear them on the streets of America. Some actually credit Helen Rose, who designed Miss Francis' wardrobe, with inventing the miniskirt for this movie. Helen had already been nominated seven times and won two Oscars. Altaira, blond, blue-eyed and curvaceous, cut a stunning figure in Ms. Rose's creations for the duration of the film. The one article of clothing that didn't get much exposure was Altaira's shoes. She rarely wore any.

Just as with Antigone and Miranda, we don't learn much of Altaira's mother, other than that her name was Julia Marsen and that she was a biochemist. She'd died of natural causes not long after giving birth, and that's the end of her story.

These are the first men Altaira has ever seen, other than her father, and she doesn't try to hide her fascination with the three from Earth:

Altaira: I've always so terribly wanted to meet a young man, and now three at once.

Doctor: That's very kind of you.

Altaira: You're lovely, Doctor. Of course, the two end ones are unbelievable.

This is reminiscent of Miranda's naiveté shown in the lines:

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world

That has such people in't!

Skimpily clad and barefoot, Altaira is immediately set upon by space-wolf Jerry while her father, the Commander, and the Doctor view from across the room as he "helps" her get a cup of coffee. It's obvious that Altaira is a maiden, in the full sense of the word, and has never been initiated into the mysteries of love and physical attraction. She hasn't an inkling of what sex is. She is presented as a child and even dressed as a child. But as we shall soon see, this is not the normal Hollywood fascination with a hot and naively vulnerable young lady. The writers have presented Altaira this way because of her unique characterization, as we shall see shortly.

They question Morbius about Altaira's freedom, whether she can visit Earth if she so chooses. Altaira returns to say that she's never been lonely, after all she has her father and Robbie, and her friends. Her friends turn out to be a deer and a tiger, which come at her call and allow her to pet them. This demonstration of her influence over savage beasts is truly remarkable. The movie, as released, never provides an explanation for her ability or why her naivety of sexual subjects in so important; however, two scenes were cut that did contain an explanation, and these deleted scenes are crucial to understanding Altaira's character and making her more than just a cardboard love interest. The conversation concerning this subject is contained on the newly released DVD. [101] The deleted portion of the conversation concerning Altaira's influence over the tiger is as follows:

Morbius: Outside of the range of my daughter's influence, it's still a deadly wild beast.

Commander: How does she do it?

Morbius: Aa...How would you explain it, Doctor?

Doctor: The medieval myth of the Unicorn.

Commander: Well, that's not exactly in my line, Doctor.

Doctor: Well, the Unicorn was a...was like a snow-white horse, the legs of an antelope, tail of a lion, and a single straight horn which grew out of the middle of his forehead. He was the wisest and most savage of beasts, yet more than a beast because with all his soul he worshipped purity. And when he met a maiden in the forest, he'd run gently to her and kneel before her. She'd sit down, take his fierce head in her lap and lull him to sleep.

Altaira at this point is a magical creature, as is the Unicorn. She still lives in a fantasy world where her very presence tames wild beasts and all her wishes are granted.

This then for the moment is the end of the Unicorn discussion, and (returning to the theatrical release), the conversation drifts to the commander's need to contact Earth Base for further instructions. The Commander states that, "Fundamentally, it's a question of crude power, how to short-circuit the continuum on a five or six parsec level." (The producers had been to Cal Tech to solicit assistance with the science, and the results were quite remarkable. Altair is in fact 17 light years from earth, which equals 5.2 parsecs.) The construction of communication equipment shielding would take at least ten days, but Morbius, ever concerned for their safety with the invisible monster on the loose, wants them off the planet as soon as possible. Dr. Morbius has Robbie manufacture a special isotope lead shielding to expedite the operation.

Later that night, in another eerie scene left on the cutting-room floor, the Commander and Doctor walk alone in the dark under the exposed disk of the flying saucer, and their discussion again turns to Altaira and the Unicorn effect:

Doctor: You know Skipper, there's still two or three questions I'd like to have answered.

Commander: Ya, that tiger of hers.

Doctor: Personally, I still prefer the medieval explanation. [The Unicorn Effect]

Commander: You mean that?

Doctor: Most all superstitions have their roots in real science.

Commander: Yes, alchemy, transmutation of metals, is elementary atomic science.

Doctor: And now days, any schoolboy knows that the brain sends out electric impulses, the brain itself is monitored by the glandular system.

Commander: Ah...so, you take an exceptionally fine human brain in a totally unawakened female body...

Doctor: Sure, and now isn't it just as conceivable that quantum waves could set up some special and soothing resonance in the reflex patterns of a wild animal?

Commander: Of course, it'll be a pity, won't it, when the time comes when she has to lose a gift like that.

Doctor: Oh, yes it will. You know, every now and then a very fine thing can be replaced by something even finer still.

Commander: Oh? Like what?

Doctor: Love.

Commander: You're quite a heart specialist, Doctor.

Altera has never experienced love, and once she does, she'll lose her influence over wild animals, as a maiden would the Unicorn. These two short conversations concerning the Unicorn explain Altaira's character as she is when we first encounter her, that unfathomable sexual immaturity, and also explain the profound change about to occur within her and how it affects her relationship with those around her.

How these two snippets about the Unicorn ended up on the editing room floor is a story I wish I could tell, but can't. How it got into the script in the first place might be easier. Cyril Hume wrote a story titled "Forester" in a book of short stories and poetry that he published in limited edition. The story concerns a certain planter of trees who had at one time been active in the stock exchange. Because of a powerful but disturbing dream, he'd quit the city and come into farm country where he'd planted whole forests and befriended a dryad, a tree nymph. Cyril's story bares no relation to Forbidden Planet but for one sentence about how the Forester felt about his tree planting. Cyril wrote, "...he told himself that he had planted glades fit for unicorns to hide their sovereign whiteness in, and the chivalric worship of virginity." [102] These are the same elements of the Unicorn myth that play out in Forbidden Planet. It would then seem that the guilty party who introduced the Unicorn effect was Cyril Hume. The story doesn't quite make sense without the Unicorn scenes, and one can well imagine the arguments over them in the editing room.

The "Special Features" of the DVD allude to a much-discussed theory that the film editing process was never completed. At the end of the film, a noticeable "jump cut" where dialogue was omitted provides an indication that editing was not finished. The DVD says that "This cut, and several other edits found in the film, has prompted years of discussion over whether the film's editorial process was ever completely finished." Apparently, a test audience was so overwhelmingly positive that the film was rushed into release before the final editing could be completed.

Fred M. Wilcox directed Forbidden Planet. His first film, Lassie Come Home (1943), had been highly regarded. He'd shot the Unicorn scenes, so it seems reasonable that he wasn't the one to give them the ax. After making Forbidden Planet he'd leave MGM to become an independent filmmaker.

The editor was Ferris Webster, [103] one of the best in the business. He'd been nominated for an Oscar for Blackboard Jungle just the year before, and in years to come, he'd be nominated twice more for The Manchurian Candidate and The Great Escape. His career would span the years 1943 to 1982. He'd edit The Outlaw Josey Wales, Bronco Billy and The Magnificent Seven. One could well imagine Cyril Hume being incensed that he'd cut the Unicorn scenes. What kind of protest he might have made at the film being rushed into release, we'll never know. The Unicorn scenes flesh-out Altaira's character, make her more believable and provide her with a depth she's been sorely lacking for the past fifty years.

The myth of the Unicorn is one of great beauty. As Odell Shepard tells it:

A dream, if it is no more than that, of such great age and beauty as this of the unicorn, is far more worthy of consideration than the question whether we shall have one species more or less in the earth's fauna. And the dream, at any rate, is an unquestionable fact, a phenomenon of the mind; it has grown like a tree, striking deep roots in thought and spreading huge boughs against our mental sky. [104]

The projection of the Unicorn theme backward in time some 2,400 years to Pericles serves to illustrate the tremendous power of this myth and the influence of Jung's collective unconscious. The Unicorn is important because it doesn't "exist" as we usually mean something exists as a part of the natural world. But then we might also ask the question, Do numbers or the alphabet exist? Only in the minds of mankind. Are they important? With mathematics we can release the power of the atom, the energy that creates and animates matter in the Universe. With the alphabet we can preserve human thought for millennia. The fact that the human mind cannot let go of the Unicorn myth indicates its own power to exist in the psychic world and affect the natural world we live in. If the Unicorn has an influence, it does have a psychic reality, and possibly one more important than a physical presence.

The next morning when Robbie delivers the lead shielding, Altaira comes along for the ride. Once there, space-wolf Jerry takes her into the rocks for a lesson in biological stimulation achieved through hugging and kissing. But it doesn't seem to work for Altaira, so they "keep at it" until the Commander, who's been occupied examining the klystron transmitter for use in contacting Earth, arrives on the scene to admonish Jerry for his predatory behavior. Then the Commander has words with Altaira about the clothes she wears and how she shouldn't tempt all the young men of the Spacecruiser. He tells her to "Get out of here before I have you run out of the area under guard...and then I'll put more guards on the guards!" Obviously, he's quite infatuated with her himself.

Altair, still ignorant of sexual matters and unaware of her vulnerability, feels humiliated and goes back home to tell her father about her confrontation with the Commander. Morbius suspects something but doesn't say what. After learning from Dr. Ostrow about the Unicorn effect, he probably realizes the implications should his daughter fall in love with the Commander. He is about to lose her. Again, with the missing Unicorn discussion, Morbius' response is not understandable. He sends Altaira to bed and retreats to his study.

Back at the flying saucer, two guards patrol the perimeter at the edge of darkness. They believe they hear something breathing, but since they don't see anything, they discount it. The camera follows something invisible as it climbs the Spacecruiser's steps. Inside, the crew sleeps quietly. As the hatch opens, one of them stirs, looks around, but seeing nothing, he returns to sleep.

The next morning they discover that the klystron frequency modulator has been sabotaged. The Commander and Dr. Ostrow return to the residence to confront Morbius about this, but according to Robbie, he's in his study and never to be disturbed while the door is closed. The Commander then goes out on the patio where Altaira is swimming. In this short cat-and-mouse love scene where they discuss the theoretical aspects of human biology, he kisses her. Suddenly, the tiger enters the scene on a cliff above them. He attacks, and the Commander has to kill him.

Commander: I'm sorry, Alta. I had to do that.

Altaira: He didn't recognize me. He would've killed me. Why?

Commander: You really don't know, do you?

Altaira: No, I don't.

This conversation makes no sense at all unless you have seen the two scenes concerning the Unicorn effect. The wild beast saw her as a friend while she had a "totally unawakened female body," but now he doesn't recognize her at all. She has in fact fallen in love with the Commander, and as Dr. Ostrow anticipated, she is a changed woman and lost her ability to tame the tiger, i.e., lost the Unicorn effect. The Commander realizes that she is no longer safe on Altair IV, possibly because she has had a similar calming effect on the invisible monster but has now lost that also, and when they return to Earth, they will have to take Altaira with them, whether Morbius wants them to or not.

Since Morbius still hasn't returned, Dr. Ostrow and the Commander violate Robbie's command not to disturb him and enter his study. But Morbius is not in there. His office is a small room with a large globe of the constellations before the left wall, a blackboard with strange writing and formulas on the far wall, and on the right, behind a semicircular desk, is a mural of a brilliant galaxy on a background of deep dark space. On his desk, they see sheets of paper with writing resembling hieroglyphics.

As they examine these symbols, the blackboard slides aside to expose a stone wall with a triangular-shaped door. Morbius enters through it. A short confrontation follows where Morbius accuses them of trying to lute his residence. The Commander tells him that their communications equipment was sabotaged during the night. Realizing they believe he is to blame, Morbius then sits them down and, in his own defense, starts telling them the ancient history of Altair IV:

Morbius: In times long past this planet was the home of a mighty and noble race of beings, which called themselves the Krell. Ethically, as well as technologically they were a million years ahead of humankind for, in unlocking the mysteries of nature, they had conquered even their baser selves. And when in the course of eons, they had abolished sickness and insanity and crime and all injustice, they turned, still with high benevolence outward toward space. Long before the dawn of man's history, they had walked our Earth and brought back many biological specimens.

Commander: I see. That explains the tiger and the deer.

Morbius: The heights they had reached. But then, seemingly on the threshold of some supreme accomplishment, which was to have crowned their entire history, this all but divine race perished in a single night.

Morbius then takes them through the stone doorway, through which he had just returned, and through a hall to another closed doorway that even the Commander's blaster can't make warm much less burn a hole through. It's protected by a large combination lock on a pedestal to the side. After Morbius works the combination, he leads them into a Krell laboratory to show them some of the remaining Krell "artifacts."

The levels of strangeness have continued to escalate as the storyline has progressed. First we've been led to a strange star system aboard an unusual spacecraft, onto a barren landscape with a magical robot and an exotic young lady, all ruled over by a mysterious Earth-man with an unknown monster on the loose. The strangeness escalated further when we entered Morbius' study, but in just one of what Morbius calls "many Krell laboratories," the strangeness rises to a much higher level. Though some of it looks familiar, one wall contains a bank of electronic gauges, the rest is surreal. One structure, one might call it a sculpture, stands out. It is metallic, circular and composed of widely separated horizontal layers of plates. Halfway up, a series of vertical plates converge at the apex, which then connects to the wall of gauges. A second triangular structure with a flat top has a chair before it and appears to be a workstation.

A smaller square structure with a flat top attracts the Commander's attention:

Commander: What's this?

Morbius: On this screen may be projected the total scientific knowledge of the Krell from its primitive beginning to the day of its annihilation, a sheer bulk surpassing many million earthly libraries.

Commander: You're able to read this?

Morbius: A little. It's my profession. Twenty years ago, I began here with this page of geometrical theorems. Eventually I was able to deduce most of their huge, logical alphabet. I began to learn. The first practical result was my robot, which you gentlemen appear to find so remarkable. Child's play. I've come here every day now for two decades painfully picking up a few of the least difficult fragments of their knowledge.

Commander: A thing like this, it's too big to evaluate. Think what a discovery of this kind...

Doctor Ostrow cuts off the Commander sensing that if they let Morbius know of their increasing uneasiness with the knowledge he has accumulated, he just might cut short his tour of Krell marvels, and they may never learn the extent of his own power.

Doctor Morbius is a philologist, an expert in languages and the use of words, and his expertise has allowed him to solve some of the riddles posed by the ancient text. Morbius gaining the knowledge of the Krell is reminiscent of Oedipus having the knowledge necessary to solve the Sphinx's riddle, which led to his doom. But it is also, and of course this is its true source, Prospero's library that he prized beyond his dukedom, from which he learned such powerful magic that it enabled him to control the minds of men and the natural elements.

Ostrow asks about the other laboratory device. Morbius sits before the "plastic educator" used for Krell young and adjusts a three-pronged, overlarge interface that touches at the temples and the center of the forehead. Immediately off to the right, a transparent cylindrical tube, with a mechanism inside that elevates halfway, indicates his intellectual capacity, which classifies Morbius as a low-grade moron compared to Krell children.

Morbius then pulls a lever, and inside the console view plate, electrical arching starts, then a blue fog forms, out of which a small image of Altaira appears. George Lucas will use a much larger version of this effect some twenty-one years later in Star Wars when Princess Leia appears in a holographic projection and speaks the unforgettable words, "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."

The Doctor and Commander are astounded. "But it's alive!" shouts the Commander, seeing the image of Altaira move about. "Because my daughter is alive in my brain from microsecond to microsecond," says Morbius. These words are a valuable clue to the way Morbius' mind works and to the nature of the monster that is soon to make another visit to the Spacecruiser. Dr. Ostrow will pickup on this later in explaining the nature of the monster.

Each of them then uses the machine to gauge their own intellectual capacity with both coming up considerably short of Morbius. He stops the Commander from attempting to make an image as he did Altaira, and then tells them that the Bellerophon commander had tried it, and that it killed him instantly. Then he tells them that when he, Morbius himself, first used the machine in that way, he'd afterward lay unconscious for a day and a night. However, the incident had doubled his intellectual capacity.

Then somewhat out of the blue, Morbius presents his latest discovery:

Morbius: Recently I have turned up some rather puzzling indications that in those final days before their annihilation, the Krell had been applying their entire racial energies to a new project, one which they actually seemed to hope might somehow free them once and for all from any dependence on physical instrumentalities.

Here then is another clue to the nature and source of the monster. The Commander tries to assess all this:

Commander:...what was their power source?

Morbius: That's a good question. May I draw your attention to these gauges all around here, gentlemen? Their calibrations appear to indicate that they are set in decimal series each division recording exactly ten times as many amperes as the one preceding it: Ten times ten, times ten, times ten, times ten, times ten, on and on and on, row after row, gauge after gauge. But there is no direct wiring that I can discover. However, when I activate this machine, it registers infinitesimally, you see down there in the lower left-hand corner. And then when I activate the educator here, it registers a little more.

Ostrow: But this much is negligible. The total potential here must be nothing less than astronomical.

Morbius: Nothing less. The number ten raised almost literally to the power of infinity.

At this point, one might expect the tour to be over. They've seen marvels that they'll attempt to synthesize for years to come. But in what constitutes a full-frontal assault on their imagination, Morbius suggests they see more Krell wonders. They then board a shuttlecraft, a small futuristic rail car, only large enough for the three of them, that at one time had been used by Krell technicians. They travel at lightning speed accompanied by a piercing whine through a small tunnel lit by rows of lights that disappear into a point in the distance before them as Dr. Morbius tells them to "Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical scientific values, gentlemen."

In the next scene, we peer down from above through a huge vertical shaft sunk into the planet. The rumbling reverberations of operating machinery are broken by the crackle and sizzle of electrical arching between giant cylinders on rails slowly traversing the depth of the shaft. We see a walkway cutting across the shaft and soon realize that the three ant-like creatures walking upon it are Morbius, the Commander, and Dr. Ostrow. This square ventilator shaft has a dizzying array of 7,800 levels and is only one of 400 shafts just like it. The complex is 20 miles on a side, a 400 square mile technology complex.

They walk the length of the walkway and leave the ventilator shaft to enter a power complex sporting cylindrical balls of light twice the height of a man along a line vanishing in the distance. A gigantic machine suspended above their heads throbs and flashes lights, a grinding heartbeat with a continuous cataclysmic groan. The roar is deafening.

Commander: But what's it all for?

Morbius: Sometimes the gauges register a little when the buck deer fight in the autumn or when birds fly over in the spring, and nearly a whole dial became active when your ship first approached from deep space.

They approach a wall with a large hexagonal window on the left and the same shaped mirror on the right.

Morbius: I'll show you a section of one of the power units. These units are sunk in the body of the planet fifty miles right below our feet. Now, be sure and look only in the mirror. Man does not behold the face of the Gorgon and live. Ninety-two hundred thermonuclear reactors in tandem. The harnessed power of an exploding planetary system.

The scene then abruptly switches to the Spacecruiser where the crew is busy erecting and testing an electronic fence to keep out intruders. With the fence up, test complete, and sentries posted along the perimeter, a momentary short in the fence startles Lt. Farman, but just as suddenly, it quits. Then a little later, in the dark and unseen by the crew, a series of footprints from an invisible being appear in the soft soil. The steps up the ramp leading into the Cruiser buckle under tremendous weight. Shortly, Lt. Farman hears a scream from inside.

Back at Morbius' study, the three have returned from the tour of Krell wonders and argue the course of action to deal with the fruits of Morbius' effort, the deciphered knowledge of the Krell:

Commander: Dr. Morbius, a scientific find of this magnitude has got to be taken under United Planet supervision. No one man can be allowed to monopolize it.

Morbius: For the past two hours I've been expecting you to make exactly that asinine statement. Just one moment, Commander. For close on twenty years now I've been constantly, and I hope dispassionately, considering this very problem, and I have come to the unalterable conclusion that man is unfit as yet to receive such knowledge, such almost limitless power.

Doctor: Whereas Morbius, with his artificially expanded intellect is now ideally suited to administer this power for the whole human race.

Morbius: Precisely, Doctor. Such portions then of the Krell science as I may, from time to time, deem suitable and safe, I shall dispense to Earth. Other portions, I shall withhold. And in this, I shall be answerable exclusively to my own conscience and judgment.

Essentially, Morbius wishes to set himself up as God, doling out knowledge when he believes mankind is ready for it. Quite possibly, the film is postulating that this is exactly what God now does for mankind, that knowledge itself is not forbidden, but only that which could do mankind harm. This does make a lot of sense. Mankind has always made discoveries and then assimilated them into the culture even though they have at times caused that "trail of misery" Zeus found so amusing. See [ Introduction to Frankenstein]

This heated conversation is interrupted by a call from Lt. Farman at the Spacecruiser. Lieutenant Quinn, the engineer setting up the equipment to contact Earth Base, has been murder. When the Commander asks how it was done, Farman says, "Done? Skipper, his body is plastered all over the communications room." We realize that the reason the monster has killed the chief engineer is that he is the only one who can put together the communications equipment to contact Earth Base.

The next morning, Dr. Ostrow has made a plastic model of the strange thirty-seven-inch footprints left in the soil. According to Ostrow, the print "runs counter to every known law of adaptive evolution."

Doctor: Notice this structure here: characteristic of a four-footed animal. Yet our visitor last night left the tracks of a biped. Primarily a ground animal too. Yet this claw could only belong to an arboreal creature, like some impossible tree sloth. Just doesn't fit into normal nature. Anywhere in the galaxy, this is a nightmare.

This composite monster is obviously the latest incarnation of Oedipus' Sphinx, a monster with the head and bosom of a woman and the winged body of a lion. But we can also see that this monster has his origin in the malicious, deformed Caliban, offspring of a witch and Satan himself. Of course, Dr. Ostrow's statement that it "is a nightmare" is pure prophecy. They quickly eliminate Robbie as a suspect and decide to go back to the residence, visit the Krell laboratory and take the brain boost, so they can solve the murder mystery. They know they will never survive if the monster is still on the loose.

Shortly after they bury Quinn, Morbius shows up with a warning:

Morbius: Believe me, Commander, that is only a foretaste. The Bellerophon pattern is being woven again. Remain here and the next attack on your party will be more deadly and general.

Commander: How do you know that?

Morbius: Know? I... I seem to visualize it. If you wish, call it... a premonition.

With this, Morbius leaves.

The crew spends the day setting up a radar and massive artillery battery that represents some sort of atomic fission cannon. That evening after dark, no sooner do they have it set up than the monster attacks. They hit it with the atomic fission beam, but it keeps coming. Several times it tries to break through, with its outline made visible by energy from the disintegrator beams. The crew also fires their blasters, and Lt. Farman and two others are torn apart by the monster before it backs off.

Engaged in conversation with the Commander, Dr. Ostrow tries to understand what they've just witnessed.

Doctor: ... any organism dense enough to survive three billion electron volts would have to be made of solid nuclear material. It would sink of its own weight to the center of this planet.

Commander: You saw it yourself standing there in those neutron beams.

Doctor: There's your answer. It must have been renewing its molecular structure from one microsecond to the next.

This renewing of molecular structure is the same comment Morbius made concerning his mental processes while creating the image of Altaira in the Krell laboratory. Dr. Ostrow is homing in on solving the mystery.

Late that evening the Commander and Dr. Ostrow start to leave for the residence, but before they go, the Commander tells the Bosun to get the Cruiser operational and to lift off if the monster attacks the fence again. With that the two go to the residence to surreptitiously enter the lab, but Robbie stands guard at the door, stating, "I am monitored to admit no one at this hour." Robbie has them stalemated when Altaira appears and tells him, "Emergency cancellation Archimedes." The robot then turns and walks away as they enter.

Let us pause the TV remote at this point and contemplate Altaira's act of betrayal. This is not the first time in a story of this nature that a daughter has betrayed her father. Actually, the act has quite a history. Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Knossos, gave Theseus a golden thread by which he found his way out of the Labyrinth after killing her brother the Minotaur. Medea betrayed her father, King Aeëtes of Colchis, allowed Jason to steal the Golden Fleece, and returned home with him. During the Trojan War, Achilles plundered Lesbos' cities one by one, but when he came to Methymna, even the greatest warrior of all time came up short. Peisidice, the daughter of the king of Methymna, saw him outside the city gates and fell in love with him. She sent word by her governess that, if he would marry her, she would open the gates. Achilles readily agreed. These are but three of many famous daughters who betrayed their fathers for the love of men they hardly knew or didn't know at all. Altaira is another. In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Miranda does not betray her father, although she does fall in love with the son of his enemy. And this must be seen as the seed for Altaira's shift in allegiance.

Again we push the remote button and set our characters back in motion. While the Commander tries to talk Altaira into going back to Earth with them, the Doctor quickly slips through the study and into the Krell lab. When the Commander notices that Ostrow is gone, it's already too late because Robbie has found him unconscious and is carrying back him into the living room. The Doctor has taken the brain boost. "You oughta see my new mind," he tells the Commander. "Up there in lights bigger than his [Moribus'] now." The Doctor has been mortally injured and only has a few seconds to live, but now he knows the Krell's dark secret. He tells the Commander:

Doctor: Morbius was too close to the problem. The Krell had completed their project. That big machine. No instrumentalities. True creation.

Commander: Doc, let's have it.

Doctor: But the Krell forgot one thing.

Commander: Yes, what?

Doctor: Monsters, John. Monsters from the Id.

With this bit of incomplete information that if fully understood would divulge the secret of the monster, the Doctor dies. Morbius then enters. He has no sympathy for what has happened to the Doctor, and Altaira, seeing her father's lack of compassion, decides to leave with the Commander. Morbius heatedly protests.

The Commander combatively questions Morbius concerning the "Id" and finally he responds. "It's an obsolete term, I'm afraid, once used to describe the elementary basis of the subconscious mind." The man who came up with the concept of the Id is, of course, a German scientist, who also conceived of and named the "Oedipus Complex." We are then quite suddenly aware that another personality has been lurking in the background of this story: Dr. Sigmund Freud. Freud had brought the Oedipus myth to the forefront of the investigation of human psychology first in his Interpretation of Dreams and later with The Ego and the Id, though he'd continue to develop the concept the rest of his life. Of course, he'd developed the concept by use of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus.

Freud said that, "The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions." Functionally, the ego "is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse." [105] Freud also defines the superego that "answers to everything that is expected of the higher nature of man" and "contains the germ from which all religions have evolved. The self-judgment which declares that the ego falls short of its ideal produces the religious sense of humility to which the believer appeals in his longing." [106] Morbius' monster, a derivative of Shakespeare's Caliban, is nothing less than Freud's Id projected into the physical world, just as Morbius had projected Altaira's image in the Krell lab machine, and set loose upon the planet. This must also remind us of Oedipus' hidden animal nature.

The Commander then pounces on this new information, for he has realized the consequences of Dr. Ostrow's discovery. He has also brought to bear his previous discussion with Morbius. According to the Krell intelligence analyzer the Commander may not be the sharpest pencil in the room, but he has the capacity to see through the maze of ideas and into functional reality. He now realizes how the Krell destroyed themselves.

Commander: The big machine, twenty cubic miles of Klystron relays, enough power for a whole population of creative geniuses operated by remote control. Morbius, operated by the electromagnetic impulses of individual Krell brains.

Morbius: To what purpose?

Commander: In return, that machine would instantaneously project solid matter to any point on the planet, in any shape or color they might imagine for any purpose, Morbius!

Morbius: Creation by mere thought. Why haven't I seen this all along?

Commander: Like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger: their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.

Morbius: The beast. The mindless primitive. Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning.

Commander: And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious had access to a machine that could never be shutdown. The secret devil of every soul on the planet all set free at once to loot and maim and take revenge and kill!

We see more reflections of Shakespeare's Caliban in Morbius' "mindless primitive." Caliban could not be civilized and neither can the Id. But we can also see even further back in time to the plight of Oedipus and his hidden animal nature. Also, now Morbius will experience that same "conspiracy of the elements" that Oedipus must have felt as all the evidence converged on him.

Robbie enters the scene and stands to one side, motionless, listening, and unnoticed. Morbius expresses doubts that the Commander's theory is correct:

Morbius: Yes, young man, all very convincing but for one obvious fallacy: The last Krell died centuries ago, but today, as we all know, there's still at large on this planet a living monster.

Altaira then also enters the scene with a light jacket and what is apparently a small kit of things she plans to take with her on her first trip to Earth. This is probably the lightest a woman has traveled since Eve left the Garden of Eden. As she enters we hear the tonalties associated with the appearance of the monster.

Commander: Your mind refuses to face a conclusion.

Morbius: What do you mean?

As this argument ensues, Robbie, still standing in the background, now tells Morbius that "Something is approaching from the southwest." We hear the monster rustling in the grove outside. Some invisible thing pushes over a tree exposing its roots. Morbius activates the segmented shield made of Krell metal, and it snaps sequentially into place around the residence blocking off all outside access.

Commander: Morbius, that thing out there. It's you.

Morbius: You're insane! You have led it here where Alta must see you torn to pieces!

Commander: You think she's immune? She's joined herself to me, body and soul!

Altaira: Yes, whatever comes, forever.

Morbius: Say it's a lie. Let it hear you! Tell it you don't love this man!

Altaira: Not even if I could.

Morbius: Stop it, Robby! Don't let it in! Kill it!

Robbie's built in safety factor that prohibits him from harming a human being kicks in and his computer brain goes into overload and shorts out. He falls silent. The fact is that Robbie has gone into an unresolvable paradox of the first law of robotics, and his mental meltdown confirms the point.

Commander: It's no use. He knows it's your other self.

The Krell shield starts to bend, splits and finally gives way. Morbius' invisible monster-within is finally objectified as a plasmatic outline and shown on screen. This monster isn't Morbius' creation gone wrong; it isn't his creation at all but a real part of himself, the monster within given substance and projected into the outside world by the Krell's marvelous machine. It doesn't have that first degree of separation between creator and created that existed in all the stories told in this narrative up to this point. It retains the factual unity of the external persona and the internal shadow.

Realizing that they are in eminent danger, the three run from the room and into the Krell laboratory, where the Commander and Morbius have a physical altercation. The Commander manhandles him into the student chair, where Ostrow had fatally boosted his brain, and gives Morbius a lecture.

Morbius: I'm not a monster, you...

Commander: We're all part monsters in our subconscious! So we have laws and religion. [Another of the few but crucial references to God.]

Morbius: Let me go!

Commander: You've got to listen. We don't have much time. Here's where your mind was artificially enlarged. Consciously it still lacked the power to operate the great machine, but your subconscious had been made strong enough!

Morbius: I won't hear you!

Commander: You've got to listen! Twenty years ago, when your comrades voted to return to Earth, you sent your secret Id out to murder them! Not quite realizing it, of course, except maybe in your dreams.

Morbius: What man can remember his own dreams?

Commander: At least when we approached from space, you remembered enough to warn us off. But when you thought we were a threat to your little egomaniac empire, your subconscious sent its Id monster out again! More deaths, more murder!

Morbius: And now this too? Harm my own daughter?

Commander: But now she's defying you, Morbius, and even in you, the loving father, there still exists the mindless primitive, more enraged and more inflamed with each new frustration. So now you're whistling up your monster again to punish her for her disloyalty and disobedience! And if you don't do something about it soon, it's going to be coming right through that door.

The power-usage gages flash in the background, the monster marshaling more power to penetrate the two-foot-thick Krell-metal door. Morbius then turns to his daughter.

Morbius: Alta, say you don't believe this of me! Tell me you don't! Then it must be true. Yes, I must be guilty!"

Morbius finally realizes that it is he who has committed all the murders. While Altaira pleads for her father to help them, the Commander draws his blaster to kill Morbius if the monster breaks in. Though Morbius' subconscious is unstoppable, the man is still mortal. Killing him will kill it also. Morbius then speaks the most memorable lines in the film:

Morbius: Guilty! Guilty! My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it!

This again is reminiscent of Oedipus' words, "I am discovered to be evil," and Prospero owning up to Caliban, "...this thing of darkness, I / Acknowledge mine." [5.1 L 275-6] Morbius then comes to his feet and charges the door, which is white-hot and slowly crumbling. "Stop! No further!" he cries, "I deny you! I give you up!" He then collapses on the floor and Altaira runs to him. Morbius is dying, but he has one last thing he can do to save them. He points to a mechanism and tells the Commander to turn a disk and then throw a switch that starts a small circular apparatus on the floor slowly pulsing red. It's a device that will be used in many future science fiction films to destroy worlds or spacecraft, including James Cameron's Aliens and Barry Levinson's Sphere.

Morbius: In twenty-four hours you must be one-hundred million miles out in space. The Krell furnaces... chain reaction... They cannot be reversed.

We don't see anything kill Morbius, but we couldn't because the act of denying his own Id dealt him an internal mortal wound. The monster dies simultaneously with Morbius, much like Oedipus' sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, killing each other with a two-fold-blow. They were surrogates for Oedipus, and they died simultaneously, the only way they could die.

Morbius in the end understands what even the Commander does not, that mankind cannot handle the Krell's knowledge. Instead of a slow release, they should destroy not only all Krell knowledge but also all Krell technology.

The scene then shifts to the Spacecruiser, which is now one-hundred million miles from Altair IV. With Lt. Farman dead, Robbie the Robot is now the new astrogator and doing quite well at it. They watch in the space viewer as the planet explodes and takes with it the remains of the Krell civilization, the dead crewmen, and Altaira's father. The Commander hugs Altaira and, to comfort her, has the final word:

Commander: Alta, about a million years from now the human race will have crawled up to where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and tragedy, and your father's name will shine again like a beacon in the galaxy. It's true, it will remind us that we are, after all, not God.

Thus ends the story of the man from Earth who stumbled upon practically infinite knowledge and power and had it destroy him. This echoes the theme of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and its forbidden fruit, as well as Oedipus' knowledge that he used to answer the Sphinx's riddle.

As we bring this narrative to a close, we must also think back to where we started and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the almost two-hundred years since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Frankenstein and his monster have merged in the public's mind. The perfect example is the movie Bride of Frankenstein in which the monster, now the Frankenstein of the title, has his creator make a mate for him. The name "Frankenstein" now stands for both the man and his monster. Morbius and his Id are an even more complete metamorphosis of creator and created into a single unity. This is the same unity Sophocles attempted in his story of the myth of Oedipus and his children.

Of course, Pericles, the man with the unusually shaped head, the unicorn, is the person in the background of all three stories: Oedipus, The Tempest, Forbidden Planet. Here within the images and words of the '50s SciFi movie we finally get the full package: colonization and the start of a new civilization; the warning from an old civilization that destroyed itself (as did the Mycenaeans); the attainment of forbidden knowledge; and the revelation that the enemy, the murderous monster as the myth eternally returning, is always ourselves.

Epilogue

All literary warnings from Genesis to Forbidden Planet seem to ultimately point prophetically to the scientific discoveries of the 20th Century. In the next volume of this series, Let There Be Light, we will turn from literary pursuits to the perils of the science of our time. God's warning in Genesis not to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, "For you shall surely die," are no longer an idle warning but a literal one that all life on Earth may be destroyed. The myth no longer lies in the literary work but has surfaced in the lives of the scientists who have brought us these new evils. Instead of dying, the old myths become the new reality and play out in our private, national, and international lives. Thomas Mann's assertion that "myth is the foundation of life" is about to bear terrible fruit. Not only is nuclear weaponry a threat to civilization, but we've now learned now dangerous nuclear energy is in any form as pointed out by the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan cause by the earthquake and resultant tsunami.

Let us step back for a moment from this futuristic view of the world seen through the eyes of the Krell and look at what was not known during Shakespeare's time. The King James translation of the Bible appeared in 1611, so that Shakespeare himself would not have been familiar with it. English translations had been around for two hundred years but were considered heretical. The church wanted to interpret the Bible for the people and kept it from them. The church also kept a tight reign on what it considered heretical scientific beliefs. Science as a strict discipline did not exist, and what of it did, still had no firm explanation of how life on Earth came to be. Spontaneous generation of small animals from earth was still a popular belief even among scientists, and Darwin's voyage to the Galapagos, which resulted in his On the Origin of Species that put forth the theory of evolution, was still some 250 years in the future.

The origins of the Solar System, including that of Earth, were still unknown, and it was assumed, even dictated by the church, that the Sun and planets orbited the Earth. The nature of the planets, stars, the Sun and Moon were all also unknown. Church dogma had it that the Sun and Moon were perfect, unblemished celestial spheres created by God. The Sun's source of power that provides light and warmth for Earth was seen as divine.

All this was about to change.

Whereas in ancient times, knowledge had been contained in myth and was malleable through its philosophical interpretation by religious leaders, in modern times knowledge would come from observation, experimentation, and interpretation and therefore be more authorative and not subject to intellectual whim. The giants of science were at the point of origin of this knowledge. These men stood above their contemporaries and changed not only life as we knew it but also how we thought about it and our relationship to the Creator. They were very human but had seemingly dipped into a primordial pool of knowledge unavailable to the rest of us. According to Jolande Jacobi:

The essence of a man whose mind reaches down to the primordial depths can never be apprehended in the recorded documents of his biography.... [I]n these primordial depths of the soul there lies hidden the treasure of the eternal images which are the fountainhead of everything creative. And the more a man penetrates into these depths and by reviving them becomes suffused with their mysteries, the more compelling will be his influence and the stronger the fascination that he give out.... In this realm [of legend and myth] mediation is no longer necessary, for its language is a language common to all men, and everyone can find access to it in his own soul's depths. In this language, everything individual has room only as a symbol, and in the myth it becomes integrated with the universal. In the myth, the individual destiny is exalted to the domain of the timeless and becomes a symbol valid for all time. [107]

The lives of these 20th Century men and women scientists crossover into the realm of myth and become a mythology unto themselves.

The same year Shakespeare was born in England, another man of note was born in Pisa, Italy. He would set the scientific community on its ear, confound the church, and spend the last ten years of his life under house arrest. His name was Galileo Galilei. During 1610, while Shakespeare was writing The Tempest, Galileo was turning the newly invented telescope toward the heavens. Humanity was about to take a giant step forward into forbidden knowledge and the future.

Now we leave that "fictional" world of Oedipus, The Tempest and Forbidden Planet as a central focus and let it become a side issue as we concentrate on the great leaps in scientific knowledge that have propelled civilization bravely into the ever-dangerous new world. Science follows in the train of both magic and religion; it is their grandchild and child, and so they never really vanish. [108] Magic, religion and science are three aspects of the same principle. Something exists at a deeper level than any of these, but it exists only in the divine realm, and we can only learn about it through the practices of these three arts. This principle is somewhat like Levi-Strauss's crossroads concept of human beings. Each of its three manifestations, a suggestive trinity, is always present. Recognition of this might lead one to believe that God is the greatest of magicians, priests, and scientists, and indeed perhaps even the guiding force behind them, a changeling of sorts, who metamorphoses to drive the search toward grasping his own forbidden knowledge. Did God abandon his attempt to keep us ignorant after he evicted us from the Garden? Or is he a willing participant in our search, but as the ancient Greeks believed, serving out two curses for each blessing?

THE END

ENDNOTES

1 Whitman, Cedric H., Sophocles, A Study of Heroic Humanism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951, page 11.

2 Whitman, pg. 12.

3 Garland, Robert, The Greek Way of Death, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, pages 21-37.

4 Sophocles II, edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Vol. II, LCL, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994, page 415.

5 Not the Christian hell but according to the ancient Greek tradition where all souls go following death.

6 Sophocles II, pp. 419/21.

7 Sophocles, The Complete Plays of Sophocles, tr. by Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, New York: Bantam Books, 1967, page 221.

8 Sophocles II, page 423.

9 Sophocles II, page 479.

10 Sophocles II, page 567/9.

11 Sophocles II, page 575.

12 Sophocles II, page 579/581.

13 Kerenyi, Carl, Eleusis, Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967.

14 Sophocles II, page 583/5.

15 Segal, Charles, Tragedy and Civilization, An Interpretation of Sophocles, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981, page 2.

16 Malinowski, Bronislaw, Myth in Primitive Psychology, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., Page 23.

17 Segal, Charles, Tragedy and Civilization, An Interpretation of Sophocles, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981, page 207.

18 Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return, tr. by Willard R. Trask, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954, page xxxviii.

19 Eliade, page 10.

20 Columbus, Christopher, The Journal of Christopher Columbus, tr. by Clements R. Markham, London: The Hakluyt Society, 1893, Elibron Classics, 2005, pg. 20.

21 Columbus, 22.

22 Columbus, 16.

23 Columbus, 23-4.

24 Columbus, 24.

25 Columbus, 28.

26 Columbus, 36

27 Columbus, 35-6.

28 Columbus, 37.

29 Eliade, page 3/4.

30 Eliade, page 5.

31 Eliade, page 10.

32 Columbus, 37.

33 Columbus, 38.

34 Romoli, Kathleen, Balboa of Darien: Discoverer of the Pacific, Garden City: Coubleday & Company, Inc., 1953, page 4.

35 Kennedy, Jean, Isle of Devils, London: William Collins Sons and Co., 1971, page 18-19.

36 Reported in Isle of Devils, by Jean Kennedy, London: William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd., 1971, pages 22-3.

37 Kennedy, page 38.

38 Kennedy, page 38.

39 Kennedy, page 29-33.

40 From http://bermuda-online.org/seesouth.htm, on 4/14/07.

41 Ackroyd, Peter, Shakespeare, The Biography, New York: Anchor Books, 2005, page 514-5.

42 Garland, Robert, The Greek Way of Death, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, 100-1.

43 Thompson, Ann, "'Miranda, Where's Your Sister?': Reading Shakespeare's The Tempest," in Critical Essays on Shakespeare's The Tempest, ed. By Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan, New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1998.

44 Hamilton, Donna B., "Defiguring Virgil in The Tempest," in Critical Essays on Shakespeare's The Tempest, ed. By Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan, New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1998, page 42-4. Also see Colin Still, Shakespeare's Mystery Play, A Study of The Tempest, London: Cecil Palmer, 1921, page 21-2.

45 Shackford, Martha Hale, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Dramatic Themes and Modes, New York: Bookman Associates, 1960, page 108.

46 Actually Aristotle in his Poetics only mentions unity of action with the time and place added as unities much later.

47 The exception comes in Act III, Scene iii, where Prospero appears invisible to the other characters on an upper stage.

48 Muir, Kenneth, Shakespeare's Sources, Vol. 1, Comedies and Tragedies, London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1957 (1961), page 260-1.

49 SOPHOCLES. - Sophoclis tragoediae omnes / nunc primum Latinae ad uerbum factae, ac scholijs quibusdam illustratae, Ioanne Baptista Gabia veronensi interprete. - Venetiis : apud Io. Baptistam à Burgofrancho Papiensem, 1543. http://www.burcardo.org/english/library.html, as of 4/12/07.

50 Grene, David, Reality and the Heroic Pattern, Last Plays of Ibsen, Shakespeare, and Sophocles, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967, page vii.

51 For a thorough discussion of Shakespeare's sources for The Tempest see Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Volume VIII, ed. by Geoffrey Bullough, New York: Columbia University Press, 1975, 237-339.

52 Jung, C.G., The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, tr. by R.F.C. Hull, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966, page 104.

53 Essay by Bernard Knox, "'The Tempest' and the Ancient Comic Tradition," in English Stage Comedy, ed. By W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., New York: Columbia University Press, 1955, page (?).

54 For father/daughter plot parallels of the time, see Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Volume VIII, ed. by Geoffrey Bullough, New York: Columbia University Press, 1975, 245-8.

55 Wood, Michael, Shakespeare, New York: Basic Books, 2003, page 323.

56 See the essay, "Epilegomena," by C. Kerenyi, pp. 178-183, in Essays on a Science of Mythology, The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, by C. G. Jung and C. Kerenyi, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

57 For a reading of The Tempest that focuses entirely on an ancient mystery interpretation, see Colin Still, Shakespeare's Mystery Play, A Study of The Tempest, London: Cecil Palmer, 1921.

58 Sophocles II, page 453/5.

59 Wood, page 322.

60 Wood, page 340.

61 Jung, C. G. and C. Kerenyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949, page 19.

62 In mathematics a quaternion has one real component and three imaginary, and is used frequently to represent the orientation of an object. In religion, it can represent mortal man spiritually aligned with the Holy Trinity.

63 Segal, Charles, Tragedy and Civilization, An Interpretation of Sophocles, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981, page 19.

64 Kernan, Alvin B., The Playwright as Magician, Shakespeare's Image of the Poet in the English Public Theater, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, page 81.

65 Aristophanes, Five Comedies of Aristophanes, tr. by Benjamin Bickley Rogers, Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1955, page 121.

66 See Jonathan Bates's essay, "From Myth to Drama," in Vaughan, Virginia Mason and Alden T. Vaughan, Critical Essays on Shakespeare's The Tempest, New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1998 (1993), page 50ff.

67 Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, tr. by Arthur Hugh Clough, New York: The Modern Library, 1992, page 233.

68 The following discussion of the plague is from Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, tr. by Rex Warner, New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 1954, page 151-6.

69 Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, tr. by Arthur Hugh Clough, New York: The Modern Library, 1992, page 206.

70 Plutarch, page 204.

71 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, tr. by Rex Warner, New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 1954, page 164.

72 Robinson, Jr., Charles Alexander, Athens in the Age of Pericles, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959, page 51.

73 Wallace, Robert W., The Areopagos Council, to 307 B.C., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985, page 79.

74 Diodorus Siculus, Diodorus of Sicily, Book XI, 77, 6, tr. by C. H. Oldfather, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, LCL, 1989, page 327.

75 Plutarch, page 209.

76 Plutarch, page 210.

77 Levi-Strauss, Claude, Myth and Meaning, Cracking the Code of Culture, New York: Schocken Books, page 4.

78 Tripp, Edward, The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology, New York: The Penguin Groop, 1970, page 421. See also Neville Lewis, Delphi and the Sacred Way, London: Michael Haag Limited, 1987, pages 71-4.

79 This description is based on my own visit to the site on October 25, 1993.

80 Sophocles I, tr. by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Vol. I, LCL, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994, page 407.

81 Sophocles I, page 329.

82 Sophocles I, page 329.

83 Sophocles I, page 339.

84 Sophocles I, page 349.

85 Sophocles I, page 407.

86 Sophocles I, page 403.

87 Sophocles I, page 453.

88 Sophocles I, page 459.

89 Sophocles I, page 453.

90 Plutarch, page 205.

91 Fraser, James, The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and Religion, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951, page 824-5.

92 Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage, A Memoir, tr. by Lulla Rosenfeld, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, page 286.

93 Adler, page 298-9.

94 Adler, page 283.

95 Back of dust jacket to Adler, Allen, Mach 1, A Story of Planet Ionus, New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957.

96 Adler, page 386.

97 http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/block65.htm, as of 6/13/07

98 Liddel & Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, page 519.

99 Liddel & Scott, page 150.

100 For the three laws of robotics, see Asimov, Isaac, I Robot, New York: Ballantine Books, 1950 (1977), page 40. Robbie however has no directive against harming himself.

101 Forbidden Planet, 50th Anniversary Edition, Warner Entertainment Co. and Turner Entertainment Co., 2006.

102 Hume, Cyril, Myself and the Young Bowman, And Other Fantasies, Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1932, page 30.

103 http;//imdb.com

104 Shepard, Odell, The Lore of the Unicorn, New York: Avenel Books, 1982 (1930), page 21.

105 Freud, Sigmund, The Ego and the Id, tr. by Joan Riviere, rev. and ed. by James Strachey, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1960, page 19.

106 Freud, The Ego and the Id, page 33.

107 From the introduction to Paracelsus, Selected Writings, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951, pages xxxviii-xxxix.

108 Malinowski, B., Myth in Primitive Psychology, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1926, page 112.

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