Neo-Platonism in “The Tempest”

Neo-Platonism is a collective designation for the philosophical and religious doctrines of a heterogeneous school of speculative thinkers who sought to develop and synthesize the metaphysical ideas of Plato. Such synthesis occurred especially in Alexandria and included Hellenistic Judaism, as exemplified by the Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, as well as other outlooks. The doctrine kept its essentially Greek character,   however. By extension, the term is applied to similar metaphysical theories expounded in medieval, Renaissance, and modern times.

From the late Renaissance in Medicean Florence to the end of the seventeenth century, the Neoplatonic possibility of uniting “pagan” Classical learning with the Christian spirit fascinated such thinkers as Marsilio Ficino. Recently, critics have argued that William Shakespeare’s late comedy The Tempest (1611) may be interpreted in light of such Neoplatonic archetypes as the virginal princess, the young knight, the primitive, and the magus. Shakespeare’s romantic comedy may reflect Ficino’s postulations that there are three modes of human existence (the contemplative, the active, and the pleasurable) and three roads to felicity (wisdom, power, and sensual pleasure). The Renaissance Neoplatonists held that the ideal human existence involved a harmonization of these triads. One may argue, as Soji Iwasaki does in The Political Discourse and the Iconography of Commonwealth in the Tempest, that Shakespeare’s dark comedy is a Neoplatonic allegory about the necessity for our striving for practical rather than purely esoteric wisdom as a moral principle to live by.

The Neoplatonists regarded the poet as a god-like figure in that he had the capacity to create a perfect world, a world directly reflecting the divine archetype itself–as Elizabethan critic and novelist Sir Philip Sidney remarks at the beginning of “An Apology for Poetry,” the poets “deliver a golden” world from Nature’s fundamentally flawed and imperfect world. Prospero may be regarded as the poet, the island his field of creation, and Ariel his agent or means of producing such illusions as the masque for Miranda and Ferdinand or the dance of the islanders for the Neopolitan nobles. Prospero is a magus, an advanced and altruistic thinker, not a practitioner of the black arts, a sorcerer. Through Shakespeare’s development of the character of Prospero we see the human spirit liberated from the desire for power, for control, and for vengeance as he renounces his “art,” forgives his former enemies, and prepares to return to society. His exile and suffering have purified him and enabled him to expiate the crime of abandoning the care of his subjects in Milan for the pursuit of esoteric magic, as symbolized by the books that he perused instead of attending to his duties as duke.

These books rather than his robe, his wand, or his servant Ariel are the chief source of his power to create illusions, charms, and spells. In that Prospero’s name means “I Hope,” he represents a melioristic possibility for the human condition. If Prospero represents the highest Neoplatonic level attainable by human beings (the sensible, the rational, and the intellectual in perfect balance), Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo represent the lowest level, in which the sensible or sensory predominates; the symbol of their pursuit of sensual pleasure is the butt of wine, which clouds their self-knowledge and releases the forces of the Freudian Id, the animalistic passions of gustatory and sexual appetite. The story’s fairy-tale prince and princess, Ferdinand and Miranda, represent the rational and the imaginative faculties, bound together in a non-sensual, Platonic relationship, the most complete stage of human love, according to the Greek philosopher Plato.

Volumes have been written about what is believed to be Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest, treating its theme and the significance of its characters all the way from politics through allegories to fantasy. There is a generally accepted view that a famous shipwreck off the Bermudas in 1609 from which those aboard was “miraculously saved” served as Shakespeare’s inspiration. But a deeper meaning in the play is worth considering. It is surely more than a fairy tale about a duke called Prospero, who had been dispossessed by his ambitious younger brother and exiled to a secluded island where he wields magic powers over the elements. Nor is it merely a dramatic narrative of a strange shipwreck which immerses its passengers in the sea yet somehow deposits them dry upon the island; recounts their adventures, amusing and otherwise, and follows the trials of one of them in particular, Ferdinand, who eventually meets Prospero’s daughter Miranda, their ultimate betrothal sealing the reconciliation of the brothers. No, it is none of these alone, nor even the dissipation of the island’s peculiarities by Prospero’s extraordinary power of will, when at length he decides to leave for his original home and duties.

Prospero is one of Shakespeare’s more enigmatic protagonists. He is a sympathetic character in that he was wronged by his usurping brother, but his absolute power over the other characters and his overwrought speeches make him difficult to like. In our first glimpse of him, he appears puffed up and self-important, and his repeated insistence that Miranda pay attention suggest that his story is boring her. Once Prospero moves on to a subject other than his absorption in the pursuit of knowledge, Miranda’s attention is riveted. Despite his shortcomings as a man, however, Prospero is central to The Tempest’s narrative. Prospero generates the plot of the play almost single-handedly, as his various schemes, spells, and manipulations all work as part of his grand design to achieve the play’s happy ending. Watching Prospero work through The Tempest is like watching a dramatist create a play, building a story from material at hand and developing his plot so that the resolution brings the world into line with his idea of goodness and justice.

Many critics and readers of the play have interpreted Prospero as a surrogate for Shakespeare, enabling the audience to explore firsthand the ambiguities and ultimate wonder of the creative endeavor. Prospero’s final speech, in which he likens himself to a playwright by asking the audience for applause, strengthens this reading of the play, and makes the play’s final scene function as a moving celebration of creativity, humanity, and art. Prospero emerges as a more likable and sympathetic figure in the final two acts of the play. In these acts, his love for Miranda, his forgiveness of his enemies, and the legitimately happy ending his scheme creates all work to mitigate some of the undesirable means he has used to achieve his happy ending. If Prospero sometimes seems autocratic, he ultimately manages to persuade the audience to share his understanding of the world—an achievement that is, after all, the final goal of every author and every play.

Just under fifteen years old, Miranda is a gentle and compassionate, but also relatively passive, heroine. From her very first lines she displays a meek and emotional nature. “O, I have suffered / with those that I saw suffer!” she says of the shipwreck (I.ii.5–6), and hearing Prospero’s tale of their narrow escape from Milan, she says “I, not rememb’ring how I cried out then, / Will cry it o’er again” (I.ii.133–134). Miranda does not choose her own husband. Instead, while she sleeps, Prospero sends Ariel to fetch Ferdinand, and arranges things so that the two will come to love one another. After Prospero has given the lovers his blessing, he and Ferdinand talk with surprising frankness about her virginity and the pleasures of the marriage bed while she stands quietly by. Prospero tells Ferdinand to be sure not to “break her virgin-knot” before the wedding night (IV.i.15), and Ferdinand replies with no small anticipation that lust shall never take away “the edge of that day’s celebration” (IV.i.29). In the play’s final scene, Miranda is presented, with Ferdinand, almost as a prop or piece of the scenery as Prospero draws aside a curtain to reveal the pair playing chess.

But while Miranda is passive in many ways, she has at least two moments of surprising forthrightness and strength that complicate the reader’s impressions of her as a naïve young girl. The first such moment is in Act I, scene ii, in which she and Prospero converse with Caliban. Prospero alludes to the fact that Caliban once tried to rape Miranda. When Caliban rudely agrees that he intended to violate her, Miranda responds with impressive vehemence, clearly appalled at Caliban’s light attitude toward his attempted rape. She goes on to scold him for being ungrateful for her attempts to educate him: “When thou didst not, savage, / know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like / a thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes / with words that made them known” (358–361).

These lines are so surprising coming from the mouth of Miranda that many editors have amended the text and given it to Prospero. This reattribution seems to give Miranda too little credit. In Act III, scene i comes the second surprising moment—Miranda’s marriage proposal to Ferdinand: “I am your wife, if you will marry me; / If not, I’ll die your maid” (III.i.83–84). Her proposal comes shortly after Miranda has told herself to remember her “father’s precepts” (III.i.58) forbidding conversation with Ferdinand. As the reader can see in her speech to Caliban in Act I, scene ii, Miranda is willing to speak up for herself about her sexuality.

Prospero’s dark, earthy slave, frequently referred to as a monster by the other characters, Caliban is the son of a witch-hag and the only real native of the island to appear in the play. He is an extremely complex figure, and he mirrors or parodies several other characters in the play. In his first speech to Prospero, Caliban insists that Prospero stole the island from him. Through this speech, Caliban suggests that his situation is much the same as Prospero’s, whose brother usurped his dukedom. On the other hand, Caliban’s desire for sovereignty of the island mirrors the lust for power that led Antonio to overthrow Prospero. Caliban’s conspiracy with Stefano and Trinculo to murder Prospero mirrors Antonio and Sebastian’s plot against Alonso, as well as Antonio and Alonso’s original conspiracy against Prospero. Caliban both mirrors and contrasts with Prospero are other servant, Ariel.

While Ariel is “an airy spirit,” Caliban is of the earth, his speeches turning to “springs, brine pits” (I.ii.341), “bogs, fens, flats” (II.ii.2), or crabapples and pignuts (II.ii.159–160). While Ariel maintains his dignity and his freedom by serving Prospero willingly, Caliban achieves a different kind of dignity by refusing, if only sporadically, to bow before Prospero’s intimidation. Surprisingly, Caliban also mirrors and contrasts with Ferdinand in certain ways. In Act II, scene ii Caliban enters “with a burden of wood,” and Ferdinand enters in Act III, scene i “bearing a log.” Both Caliban and Ferdinand profess an interest in untying Miranda’s “virgin knot.” Ferdinand plans to marry her, while Caliban has attempted to rape her. The glorified, romantic, almost ethereal love of Ferdinand for Miranda starkly contrasts with Caliban’s desire to impregnate Miranda and people the island with Calibans.

Finally, and most tragically, Caliban becomes a parody of himself. In his first speech to Prospero, he regretfully reminds the magician of how he showed him all the ins and outs of the island when Prospero first arrived. Only a few scenes later, however, we see Caliban drunk and fawning before a new magical being in his life: Stefano and his bottle of liquor. Soon, Caliban begs to show Stefano the island and even asks to lick his shoe. Caliban repeats the mistakes he claims to curse. In his final act of rebellion, he is once more entirely subdued by Prospero in the pettiest way—he is dunked in a stinking bog and ordered to clean up Prospero’s cell in preparation for dinner. Despite his savage demeanor and grotesque appearance, however, Caliban has a nobler, more sensitive side that the audience is only allowed to glimpse briefly, and which Prospero and Miranda do not acknowledge at all.

His beautiful speeches about his island home provide some of the most affecting imagery in the play, reminding the audience that Caliban really did occupy the island before Prospero came, and that he may be right in thinking his enslavement to be monstrously unjust. Caliban’s swarthy appearance, his forced servitude, and his native status on the island have led many readers to interpret him as a symbol of the native cultures occupied and suppressed by European colonial societies, which are represented by the power of Prospero. Whether or not one accepts this allegory, Caliban remains one of the most intriguing and ambiguous minor characters in all of Shakespeare, a sensitive monster who allows him to be transformed into a fool.

The Tempest is one of the most original and perfect of Shakespeare’s productions, and he has shown in it all the variety of his powers. It is full of grace and grandeur. The human and imaginary characters, the dramatic and the grotesque, are blended together with the greatest art, and without any appearance of it. Though he has here given “to airy nothing a local habitation and a name,” yet that part which is only the fantastic creation of his mind, has the same palpable texture, and coheres “similarly” with the rest. As the preternatural part has the air of reality, and almost haunts the imagination with a sense of truth, the real characters and events partake of the wildness of a dream. The stately magician, Prospero, driven from his dukedom, but around whom (so potent is his art) airy spirits throng numberless to do his bidding; his daughter Miranda (“worthy of that name”) to whom all the power of his art points, and who seems the goddess of the isle; the princely Ferdinand, cast by fate upon the heaven of his happiness in this idol of his love; the delicate Ariel; the savage Caliban, half brute, half demon; the drunken ship’s crew—are all connected parts of the story, and can hardly be spared from the place they fill. Even the local scenery is of a piece and character with the subject.

Prospero’s enchanted island seems to have risen up out of the sea; the airy music, the tempest-tossed vessel, the turbulent waves; all have the effect of the landscape background of some fine picture. Shakespeare’s pencil is (to use an allusion of his own) “like the dyer’s hand, subdued to what it works in.” Every-thing in him, though it partakes of “the liberty of wit,” is also subjected to “the law “of the understanding. For instance, even the drunken sailors, who are made reeling-ripe, share, in the disorder of their minds and bodies, in the tumult of the elements, and seem on shore to be as much at the mercy of chance as they were before at the mercy of the winds and waves. These fellows with their sea-wit are the least to our taste of any part of the play: but they are as like drunken sailors as they can be, and are an indirect foil to Caliban, whose figure acquires a classical dignity in the comparison.

No reading of The Tempest can do it justice: Shakespeare’s tale of Prospero’s Island is inherently theatrical, unfolding in a series of spectacles that involve exotic, supra-human, and sometimes invisible characters that the audience can see but other characters cannot. The play was composed by Shakespeare as a multi-sensory theater experience, with sound, and especially music, used to complement the sights of the play, and all of it interwoven by the author with lyrical textual passages that overflow with exotic images, trifling sounds, and a palpable lushness.

The Tempest is so elusive in its protean ability to accommodate different interpretations that any critic or any worthy reader would account to his own judgment of his reading of the play. The richness of The Tempest as theater is matched by the extraordinary thematic complexity of its text. The genius of the play is very undoubtedly eluded to the master dramatist Shakespeare. However, the character development of the play and the development of the action throw some light on the mystical nature of the play. Very truly it is often called a “mystery”. However, with the basic concept of neo-Platonism in the very onset, one may judge the characters and the plot overview as a step towards neo-Platonism. The play challenges our senses and is self-consciously a performance orchestrated by Shakespeare’s effigy in the master illusionist Prospero. There are, in addition, numerous interpenetrating polarities in the play, most notably between nature and civilization or Art. These thematic strands come together at multiple points of intersection. We can but agree with still that the play is an allegory, a poetic “version of the universal epic,” and that it deals in values that are “enshrined in all that is best and most enduring in ancient myth and ritual, in religious concepts and ceremonies, in art and literature, and in popular tradition.”

References 

• Shakespeare’s Mystery Drama

                   http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/arts/ar-mcos2.htm

• The Tempest Study Guide

                  http://absoluteshakespeare.com/guides/tempest/tempest.htm

• The Tempest

                   http://shakespeare.mit.edu/tempest/full.html

• Tempest

                  http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/tempest/

• Tempest Summary

                        http://www.about-shakespeare.com/tempest.php

• The Tempest Book Notes Summary

                  http://www.bookrags.com/notes/tmp/

• The Tempest

                     http://awerty.com/tempest2.html