The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Alexander Text

The Tempest

Introduction by ROBERT GRANT

The Tempest is generally thought to be Shakespeare’s last single-handed play, and the only one apart from Love’s Labour’s Lost to boast an original plot. It dates from between September 1610, when some of its source material (the so-called Bermuda pamphlets) first reached England, and Hallowmas (1st November) 1611, when it received, at Court, its first recorded performance. Some scholars have supposed that the masque of Ceres in Act 4 was added for the second recorded performance, again at Court, in the winter of 1612–13, as part of the festivities preceding the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding in February.

Be that as it may, The Tempest’s prevailing idealism is certainly appropriate to the celebration of an aristocratic marriage (one such being anticipated on stage). Unclouded by the brooding, nihilistic equivocation of much Jacobean drama (including some by Shakespeare), the play movingly articulates what Lionel Trilling, in a different Shakespearean context, called a lucid moral lyricism, something inherited from the courtly Renaissance humanists and subsequently passed on to Cavalier poets such as Lovelace.

The Tempest is a digest, in mythic or fairy-tale mode, of its author’s profoundest reflections on the nature and ends of life. A work of masterly invention, faultless economy, and the most exquisite artifice, it contains scenes of surpassing dramatic poignancy and verse which, consistently gripping in its taut suggestiveness and athletic celerity, rises in the great set-piece speeches to an earth-shaking rhetorical and imaginative power.

Like the Duke in Measure for Measure, Prospero is the play’s prime mover and controlling, quasi-dramaturgical presence. He is also its moral centre, and the more interesting for being no saint. His goodness, nobility, wisdom and magnanimity are not God-given. They testify, rather, to the godlike rationality and self-command of one who is both naturally impatient and accustomed to expect obedience. Prospero’s virtue nevertheless seems entirely unforced. It resembles, indeed, that of his friend and saviour, the gentle, grandfatherly Gonzalo, in stemming from a spirit of reverence and gratitude wholly free from intimations of servility. Both Prospero and Gonzalo detect something hidden from the witty but wicked and trivial-minded cynics Antonio and Sebastian, namely, a providential pattern in events, in the light of which even one’s own misfortunes form part of an ultimately benign cosmic order.

Prospero’s expulsion from Milan (so he tells his daughter Miranda) was the tragic consequence of his negligence, which enabled his brother Antonio to usurp the dukedom. But Providence turns tragedy to comedy, as it does misfortune to deliverance, and evil to good (though a realistic note is struck in Antonio’s final impotent but impenitent silence). For Prospero’s negligence was the result, in turn, of his absorption in magic, a study without whose continued pursuit (Gonzalo having provided him with his books) Prospero could not subsequently have survived on the island, still less bring his enemy Alonso to a reconciliation and marry Miranda to Alonso’s son Ferdinand. In contriving the latter event, moreover, Prospero makes his heirs the future rulers of Naples, the very kingdom to which, in exchange for Alonso’s help in deposing him, Antonio has subjected Milan.

In keeping with this labyrinthine logic, the play is a Chinese puzzle of interlocking hierarchies, correspondences and contrasts. Antonio’s conspiracy against Alonso recapitulates the original one against Prospero; that of the drunkard Stephano burlesques both. Ariel, being discarnate, is literally a free spirit. Consequently, though he loves Prospero in his own teasing, featherweight fashion, he can only guess at the deeper emotional ties by which embodied rational beings, men and women, willingly bind themselves to duty and their kind. His diametric opposite is the earthy, carnal and savage Caliban, who, lacking self-restraint, is fit only (as in Aristotle) for slavery, be it under Prospero or (by his own choice) Stephano. Yet Caliban shows real aesthetic sensitivity and, like Gonzalo, a child-like capacity for wonder, seeming eventually, if only through his native intelligence and shame-filled disillusionment with Stephano, to be redeemed.

In one sense, The Tempest is a meditation upon authority. At sea even the royal party are subject, for good practical reasons, to the boatswain’s orders. Stephano’s grotesque, caricaturally populist authority derives from his hidden butt of sack. Prospero’s authority is variously derived, and is perhaps symbolised in, as it is certainly exercised through, his magical powers. Their chief purpose and justification (Ariel’s and Caliban’s subordination apart) are moral and educational. The young lovers’ ordeal, like Prospero’s solemn adjurations to sexual restraint, is necessary in order to test and strengthen their love. That of the royal party is designed to bring the wicked to repentance (it is wholly successful only with Alonso), thence to forgiveness, and overall to self-knowledge and a new life.

This ‘proper self, to which Ariel, Prospero and Gonzalo all allude, involves our realisation not only of what we have been, but also of what it is still our natural destiny, obligation and fulfilment to be, willing agents for good in the great universal drama, of which this beautiful and profoundly moving play is a kind of microcosm. Once we have been brought to it, as to adulthood, further compulsion is superfluous, and Prospero (or whatever his real-life equivalent may be) can safely break his staff, drown his book, and set us all free, himself included.

The Tempest

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ALONSO

King of Naples

SEBASTIAN

his brother

PROSPERO

the right Duke of Milan

ANTONIO

his brother, the usurping Duke of Milan

FERDINAND

son to the King of Naples

GONZALO

an honest old counsellor

ADRIAN, FRANCISCO

lords

CALIBAN

a savage and deformed slave

TRINCULO

a jester

STEPHANO

a drunken butler

Master of a Ship

Boatswain

Mariners

MIRANDA

daughter to Prospero

ARIEL

an airy spirit

IRIS, CERES, JUNO, Nymphs, Reapers

spirits

Other Spirits attending on Prospero

THE SCENE: A SHIP AT SEA; AFTERWARDS AN UNINHABITED ISLAND

ACT ONE

SCENE I. On a ship at sea; a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard.

Enter a Shipmaster and a Boatswain.

MASTER Boatswain!

BOATSWAIN Here, master; what cheer?

MASTER Good! Speak to th’ mariners; fall to’t yarely, or we run ourselves aground; bestir, bestir.

[Exit.

Enter Mariners.

7 BOATSWAIN Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to th’ master’s whistle. Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough.

Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO,

FERDINAND, GONZALO, and Others.

ALONSO Good boatswain, have care.

Where’s the master? Play the men.

10 BOATSWAIN I pray now, keep below.

ANTONIO Where is the master, boson?

BOATSWAIN Do you not hear him? You mar our labour; keep your cabins; you do assist the storm.

14 GONZALO Nay, good, be patient.

BOATSWAIN When the sea is. Hence! What cares these roarers for the name of king? To cabin! silence! Trouble us not.

18 GONZALO Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.

BOATSWAIN None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor; if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more. Use your authority; if you cannot, give thanks you have liv’d so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. – Cheerly, good hearts! – Out of our way, I say.

[Exit.

GONZALO I have great comfort from this fellow. Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging; make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage. If he be not born to be hang’d, our case is miserable.

[Exeunt.

Re-enter Boatswain.

35 BOATSWAIN Down with the topmast. Yare, lower, lower! Bring her to try wi’th’ main-course. [A cry within] A plague upon this howling! They are louder than the weather or our office.

Re-enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, and GONZALO. Yet again! What do you here? Shall we give o’er, and drown? Have you a mind to sink?

SEBASTIAN A pox o’ your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog!

40 BOATSWAIN Work you, then.

ANTONIO Hang, cur; hang, you whoreson, insolent noise-maker; we are less afraid to be drown’d than thou art.

45 GONZALO I’ll warrant him for drowning, though the ship were no stronger than a nutshell, and as leaky as an unstanched wench.

BOATSWAIN Lay her a-hold, a-hold; set her two courses; off to sea again; lay her off.

Enter Mariners, wet.

MARINERS All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost!

[Exeunt.

BOATSWAIN What, must our mouths be cold?

GONZALO The King and Prince at prayers!

50 Let’s assist them.

For our case is as theirs.

SEBASTIAN I am out of patience.

ANTONIO We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards.

This wide-chopp’d rascal – would thou mightest lie drowning

The washing of ten tides!

GONZALO  He’ll be hang’d, yet.

55 Though every drop of water swear against it,

And gape at wid’st to glut him.

[A confused noise within: Mercy on us!

We split, we split! Farewell, my wife and children!

Farewell, brother! We split, we split, we split!

60 ANTONIO Let’s all sink wi’ th’ King.

SEBASTIAN Let’s take leave of him.

[Exeunt Antonio and Sebastian.

GONZALO Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground – long heath, brown furze, any thing. The wills above be done, but I would fain die a dry death.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II. The island. Before Prospero’s cell.

Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA.

MIRANDA If by your art, my dearest father, you have

Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.

The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch.

But that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek,

5 Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered

With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel,

Who had no doubt some noble creature in her,

Dash’d all to pieces! O, the cry did knock

Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perish’d.

10  Had I been any god of power, I would

Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere

It should the good ship so have swallow’d and

The fraughting souls within her.

PROSPERO Be collected;

No more amazement; tell your piteous heart

There’s no harm done.

MIRANDA O, woe the day!

15 PROSPERO No harm.

I have done nothing but in care of thee,

Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who

Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing

Of whence I am, nor that I am more better

20 Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,

And thy no greater father.

MIRANDA More to know

Did never meddle with my thoughts.

PROSPERO ’Tis time

I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand.

And pluck my magic garment from me. So,

[Lays down his mantle.

25  Lie there my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.

The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch’d