Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

 

The Tempest

(c. 1611)

 

William Shakespeare

(1564–1616)

 


    Pro.  Awake, deere hart awake, thou hast slept well,
Awake.
   Mir.  The strangenes of your story, put
Heauinesse in me.
   Pro.  Shake it off: Come on,
Wee'll visit Caliban, my slaue, who neuer
Yeelds vs kinde answere.
   Mir.  'Tis a villaine Sir, I doe not loue to looke on.
   Pro.  But as 'tis
We cannot misse him: he do's make our fire,
Fetch in our wood, and serues in Offices
That profit vs: What hoa: slaue: Caliban:
Thou Earth, thou: speake.
   Cal. within. There's wood enough within.
   Pro.  Come forth I say, there's other busines for thee:
Come thou Tortoys, when?     Enter Ariel like a water Nymph.
Fine apparition: my queint Ariel,
Hearke in thine eare,
   Ar.  My Lord, it shall be done.     Exit.
   Pro.  Thou poysonous slaue, got by ye diuell himselfe
Vpon thy wicked Dam; come forth.     Enter Caliban.
   Cal.  As wicked dewe, as ere my mother brush'd
With Rauens feather from vnwholesome Fen
Drop on you both: A Southwest blow on yee,
And blister you all ore.
   Pro. For this be sure, to night thou shalt haue cramps,
Side-stiches, that shall pen thy breath vp, Vrchins
Shall for that vast of night, that they may worke
All exercise on thee: thou shalt be pinch'd
As thicke as hony-combe, each pinch more stinging
Then Bees that made 'em.
   Cal.  I must eat my dinner:
This Island's mine by Sycorax my mother
Which thou tak'st me, & made much of me: woudst giue me
Water with berries in't: and teach me how
To name the bigger Light, and how the lesse
That burne by day, and night: and then I lou'd thee
And shew'd thee all the qualities o'th'Isle,
The fresh Springs, Brine-pits; barren place and fertill,
Curs'd be I that did so: All the Charmes
Of Sycorax: Toades, Beetles, Batts light on you:
For I am all the Subiects that you haue,
Which first was min owne King: and here you sty-me
In this hard Rocke, whiles you doe keepe from me
The rest o'th'Island.
   Pro.  Thou most lying slaue,
Whom stripes may moue, not kindnes: I haue vs'd thee
(Filth as thou art) with humane care, and lodg'd thee
In mine owne Cell, till thou didst seeke to violate
The honor of my childe.
   Cal.  Oh ho, oh ho, would't had bene done:
Thou didst preuent me, I had peopel'd else
This Isle with Calibans.
   Mir.  Abhorred Slaue,
Which any print of goodnesse wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill: I pittied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each houre
One thing or other: when thou didst not (Sauage)
Know thine owne meaning; but wouldst gabble, like
A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes
With words that made them knowne: But thy vild race
(Tho thou didst learn) had that in't, which good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
Deseruedly confin'd into this Rocke, who hadst
Deseru'd more then a prison.
   Cal.  You taught me Language, and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse: the red-plague rid you
For learning me your language.
   Pros.  Hag-seed, hence:
Fetch vs in Fewell, and be quicke thou'rt best
To answer other businesse: shrug'st thou (Malice)
If thou neglectst, or dost vnwillingly
What I command, I'le racke thee with old Crampes,
Fill all thy bones with Aches, make thee rore,
That beasts shall tremble at thy dyn.
   Cal.  No, 'pray thee.
I must obey, his Art is of such pow'r,
It would controll my Dams god Setebos,
And make a vassaile of him.
   Pro.  So slaue, hence.     Exit Cal.

 

Notes to The Tempest act 1 scene 2 (Caliban's first appearance)


Tempest:

Prospero:


dam: from dame; a human mother (Oxford Dictionaries)


Fen:

Southwest:

Charmes:

Cell:

Language:

learning:

businesse:

pray:


Art:




 
Introduction


Though it is the first play printed in the First Folio (1623), The Tempest is probably one of the last Shakespeare wrote. It can be dated fairly precisely: it uses material that was not available until late 1610, and there is a record of a performance before the king on Hallowmas Night, 1611. Since Shakespeare retired soon after to Stratford, The Tempest has seemed to many to be his valedictory to the theater. 

[...]
Before his [Prospero's] exile, the island had been the realm of the "damned witch Sycorax," who was banished there "for mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible" (1.2.265–66). The legitimacy of Prospero's power, including power over his slave Caliban, Sycorax's son, depends on his moral authority, but for one disturbing moment it is difficult to see the difference between "foul witch" and princely magician. Small wonder that as soon as he has disclosed that he has trafficked with the dead, Prospero declares that he abjures his "rough magic" (5.5.50).
[...]
Shakespeare adapted Gonzalo's utopian speculations from a passage in "Of the Cannibals" (1580), a remarkably free-spirited essay by the French humanist Michel de Montaigne. The Brazilian Indians, Montaigne admiringly writes (in John Florio's 1603 translation), have "no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate nor of politic superiority, no use of service, of riches or of poverty, no contracts, no successions...no occupation but idle, no respect of kindred but common, no apparel but natural, no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal." For Montaigne, the European adventurers and colonists, confident in their cultural superiority, are the real barbarians, while the American natives, with their cannibalism and free love, live in accordance with nature.

The issues raised by Montaigne, and more generally by New World voyages, may have been particularly interesting to The Tempest's early audiences as news reached London of the extraordinary adventures of the Virginia Company's colony at Jamestown. Shakespeare seems to have read a detailed account of these adventures in a letter written by the colony's secretary, William Strachey; though the letter was not printed until 1625, it was evidently circulating in manuscript in 1610. [...]

With the possible exception of some phrases from Strachey's description of the storm and a few scattered details, The Tempest does not directly use any of this vivid narrative. Prospero's island is evidently in the Mediterranean, and the New World is only mentioned as a far-off place, "the still-vexed Bermudas" (1.2.230), where the swift Ariel flies to fetch dew. Yet Shakespeare's play seems constantly to echo precisely the issues raised by the Bermuda shipwreck and its aftermath. What does it take to survive? HOw do men of different classes and moral character react during a state of emergency? What is the proper relation between theoretical understanding and practical experience or between knowledge and power? Is obedience to authority willing or forced? How can those in power protect themselves from the conspiracies of malcontents? Is it possible to detect a providential design in what looks at first like a sucession of accidents? If there are natives to contend with, how should colonists establish friendly and profitable relations with them? What is to be done if relations turn sour? How can those who rule prevent and alliance between hostile natives and disgruntled or exploited colonists? And—Montaigne's more radical questions—what is the justification of one person's rule over another? Who is the civilized man and who is the barbarian?

The unregenerate nastiness of Antonio and Sebastian, conjoined with the goodness of Gonzalo, might seem indirectly to endorse Montaigne's critique of the Europeans and his praise of the cannibals, were it not for the menacing presence in The Tempest of the character whose name is almost an anagram for "cannibal," Caliban. Caliban, whose god Setebos is mentioned in accounts of Magellan's voyages as a Patagonian deity, is anything but a noble savage. Shakespeare does not shrink from the darkest European fantasies about the Wild Man. Indeed, he exaggerates them: Caliban is deformed, lecherous, evil smelling, treacherous, naive, drunken, lazy, rebellious, violent, and devil worshipping. According to Prospero, he is not even human: "A devil, a born devil, on whose nature / Nurture can never stick" (4.4.488–89). [...]

Caliban enters the play cursing, grumbling, and above all disputing Prospero's authority: "This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, / Which thou tak'st from me" (1.2.334–35). By the close, his attempt to kill Prospero foiled and his body racked with cramps and bruises, Caliban declares that he will "be wise hereafter, / And seek for grace" (5.1.298–99). Yet it is not his mumbled reformation but his vehement protests that leave an indelible mark on The Tempest. The play may depict Caliban, in Prospero's ugly term, as "filth," but it gives him a remarkable, unforgettable eloquence. [...] It is not only in cursing, however, that Caliban is gifted: in richly sensuous poetry, he speaks of the island's natural resources and of his dreams. Caliban can be beaten into submission, but the master cannot eradicate his slave's desires, his pleasures, and his inconsolable pain. And across the vast gulf that divides the triumphant prince and the defeated savage, there is a momentary, enigmatic glimpse of a hidden bond: "This thing of darkness," Prospero says of Caliban, "I / Acknowledge mine" (5.1.278–79). The words need only be a claim of ownership, but they seem to hint at a deeper, more disturbing link between father and monster, legitimate ruler and savage, judge and criminal. Perhaps the link is only an illusion, a trick of the imagination on a strange island, but as Prospero leaves the island, it is he who begs for pardon.

 
—Stephen Greenblatt, "The Tempest," The Norton Shakespeare (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997): 3047, 3048–49, 3051–52, 3053.
 

Text
 
[...] The Tempest was the first text that the blind printer, William Jaggard, assigned to his compositors in February 1622 when work began on John Heminge and Henry Condell's collection of thirty-six dramas by their late theatrical colleague. After nearly two years of labour, with William Jaggard's son Isaac by then in charge after his father's death, Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Published according to the True Originall Copies was available to the public for approximately fifteen shillings unbound and perhaps a pound for a copy in calf binding (Blayney, Folio, 25–32).
[...]
Three compositors worked on The Tempest. Hinman's 'Compositor B', an experienced but sometimes careless journeyman in Jaggard's shop, who may have been given special responsibility for the entire volume, set the opening page and six more (Blayney, Folio, 11). The play's other compositors, Hinman's C and F, were also full-time employees and experienced printers. Each worked from his own type case [...]
[...]
Ralph Crane's manuscript
The manuscript used by the compositors has been identified as one of six prepared in the early 1620s by the legal scrivener Ralph Crane specifically, it seems certain, for the Folio project. [...] Crane probably copied from Shakespeare's own rough draft, or possibly a copy of it, rather than from prompt copy, which would have been more helpful to actors than to readers (Jowett, 109). Prompt copy, with its barely legible insertions, deletions and impromptu stage directions would have posed serious problems for the typesetters.
[...]
[...] Crane apparently sought to impose regularity upon the texts—Shakespeare's and others'—that he copied. [...]
Crane's tidying of (presumably) Shakespeare's rough manuscripts is perhaps reflected in the division of the texts into acts and scenes [...]
[...]
Whether The Tempest's stage directions were written by Shakespeare or a prompter, or were interpolated later by Crane, they represent the earliest evidence we have of how the play was staged by the King's Company.

Editorial practices
Because the Folio's The Tempest is necessarily the basic text for this edition, our editorial interventions are less numerous and problematic than they would be for plays with one or more quarto editions. Yet even the relatively well-printed and carefully proofread Folio version, like any early seventeenth-century text, presents innumerable peculiarities to the modern eye.
—Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan, "Introduction," The Tempest (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2011): 125–30.


The only authoritative printed text of The Tempest is the First Folio of 1923 (F), where it appears as the first play, at the head of the comedies.
—The Norton Shakespeare (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997): 3053.
 

Yet Caliban is no "cannibal," and some of his lines—as when he reminds Prospero that once he "lov'd thee, / And show'd thee all the qualities o'th'isle, / The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile"—are some of the most poetic in the play. At the same time, he is versatile enough to speak in bantering prose with the "jester" Trinculo and with Stephano, a "drunken butler," who contemplate taking the island over as theirs. Shakespeare's own ability to move back and forth between stunning poetry and prosaic wit distinguishes almost his entire dramatic canon, as he draws for his characters on extremely diverse segments of society and convincingly creates a world through their language; Elizabethans said they would go to hear, not see, a play, and this emphasis on the ear suggests for us the power that the dramatic word could have. 


—The Longman Anthology of World Literature, vol. 3: The Early Modern Period, 2nd ed., Eds. David Damrosch and David L. Pike (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2009): 613.




Study Questions

  • How does Prospero speak of Caliban to Miranda and to Caliban himself? What difference do you see in the description of his "slave" to his daughter out of Caliban's hearing compared to the description he gives in Caliban's hearing?
  • How much is Prospero's behavior toward Caliban an act? What purpose does this bluff or bluster serve?
  • In Caliban's exchange with Prospero in act 1 scene 2, we are presented with versions of stories from the perspective or point of view of three speakers. What parts from each character's offerings do you feel yourself sympathizing with? Why? What in the stories appealed to you?
  • Aside from giving us different accounts of themselves and their rights to the island, both Prospero and Caliban exchange much abuse toward each other. How would you characterize their curses? What ill wishes does Prospero invoke on Caliban and vice versa? What do the curses reveal about the characters?
  • Look closely at the words used in Caliban's and Prospero's cursing and accounts. How does each side hurt or has hurt the other? Consider the kinds of pain one inflicts on the other. What pain does Prospero feel is effective on Caliban? Why is it significant?
  • What is Caliban's value to Prospero and what is Prospero's value to Caliban? How reciprocal is the relationship?
  • When are the lines in iambic pentameter and when do they break that pattern?
  • What do the characters say to each other and what do they say to the audience? 

 



Vocabulary

blank verse
meter
backstory
character
characterization
motive
rhetoric
diction
pun
idioms; expressions
overstatement
point of view
contrast
irony
contradictions
imagery
logic
humor
comedy
textual analysis
typography
language
knowledge
authority
resistance
slave
slavery
imprisonment
history
exploration
the New World
colonial encounter

 



Sample Student Response to William Shakespeare's The Tempest

Response 1:

 

 

 

 

 

Student

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 15, 2009

Reading Response 1

 

Title

 

Text

 

 

 

 

 

            

 

 


 

Links
 1609 Sea Venture Shipwreck
 The New World
Authorship



Productions
  • The Tempest, Central Washington University Theatre Ensemble (2012; 1 h. 35:05 min.)

  • The Tempest, St. Louis Shakespeare (2010)

  • The Tempest, Utah Valley University (2010; 1 h. 39:39 min.)



Other Performances
  • The Tempest, by Thomas Adès, dir. Robert Lepage, perf. Simon Keenlyside, Isabel Leonard, and Alek Shrader, Metropolitan Opera (2012)
The Tempest
  • The Tempest, dir. Stanislav Sokolov, Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, BBC (1992; 25:42 min., episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8)

  • The Tempest, dir. Julie Taymor, perf. Helen Mirren, Felicity Jones, and Djimon Hounsou (2010 film; 1 h. 51:32 min.)



Documentaries

  • "Shakespeare: Original Pronunciation," Open University (10:21 min.)



Lectures
  • William Carroll, "400 Years Later: Shakespeare's The Tempest and Early America, Boston University (2011; 1 hr. 6:52 min.)

  • David Bevington, "Shakespeare's The Tempest," Scholars at Wright

  • Marjorie Garber, Lecture 12: "Shakespeare After All: The Later Plays," Harvard University (2007; 1 hr. 50:40 min.)

  • Shakespeare Uncovered Panel Discussion (2013; 33:39 min.)




William Shakespeare

 

 

Reference


Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Ed. John Dover Wilson. 1921. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare 33.



Further Reading


Vaughan, Alden T., and Virginia Mason Vaughan, eds. The Tempest: A Critical Reader. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Print.


Neville, John D. "John White." Eds. lebame houston and Wynne Dough. Fort Raleigh. National Park Service.


Shaeffer, Matthew. "John White (ca.1540–1593)." North Carolina History Project.


Strachey, William. "A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight; vpon, and from the Ilands of the Bermudas: his coming to Virginia, and the estate of that Colonie then, and after, vnder the gouernment of the Lord La Warre, Iuly 15. 1610." 1610.

 

Selections from Early American Writers 1607–1800. Ed. William B. Cairns. New York: Macmillan, 1909. Print.


Virginia Reader: A Treasury of Writings from the First Voyages to the Present. Ed. Francis Coleman Rosenberger. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1948. Print.




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Last updated March 2, 2016