You're viewing the archived Hearts Center Forum.

You won't be able to post, but you can still view old topics. If you want to post on our new forums you can do so here.


Hearts Center Forums

PrevPrev Go to previous topic
NextNext Go to next topic
Last Post 09/02/2010 7:19 PM by  BrianSweeney
Prospero
 1 Replies
Sort:
You are not authorized to post a reply.
Author Messages
Miriam Harris
Member
Member
Posts:25


--
08/30/2010 12:07 PM
    Has anyone else had a little trouble with Prospero?

    I was having a hard time seeing him as an adept when he can easily seem unkind in his interactions with Ariel and Caliban in the beginning of the story.

    Looking at him as someone who is still working on (or through?) his mastery is the perspective I needed to make sense of him and to like him. I thought this was very helpful from Shakespeare editors Hardin Craig, Scott Foreman and Company:

    "Whatever views we may adopt with reference to the personal significance of The Tempest to its author must not blind us to the actual greatness of the conception of Prospero. We may trust the expression of it, in honest admiration, to the pen of the late Edward Dowden, although in so doing we do not subscribe to the identification of Prospero with Shakespeare:
    'It is not chiefly because Prospero is a great enchanter, now about to break his magic staff, to drown his book deeper than ever plummet sounded to dismiss his airy spirits, and to return to the practical service of his dukedom, that we identify Prospero in some measure with Shakespeare himself.

    It is rather because the temper of Prospero, the grave harmony of his character, his self-mastery, his calm validity of will, his sensitiveness to wrong, his unfaltering justice, and with these, a certain abandonment, a remoteness from the common joys and sorrows of the world, are characteristic of Shakespeare as discovered to us in all his latest plays, Prospero is an harmonious and fully developed will.

    In the earlier play of fairy enchantments, A Midsummer Night's Dream, the human mortals wander to and fro in a maze of error, misled by the mischievous frolic of Puck, the jester and clown of fairyland. But here the spirits of the elements, and Caliban, the gross genius of brute-matter -- needful for the service of life-- are brought under the subjection to the human will of Prospero.

    What is more, Prospero has entered into complete possession of himself. Shakespeare has shown us his quick sense of injury, his intellectual impatience, his occasional moment of keen irritability in order that we may be more deeply aware of his abiding strength and self-possession, and that we may perceive how these have been grafted upon a temperament not impassive or unexcitable. And Prospero has reached not only the higher levels of moral attainment; he has also reached an altitude of thought from which he can survey the whole of human life, and see how small and yet how great it is. His heart is sensitive; he is profoundly touched by the joy of the children with whom in the egoism of their love he passes for a thing of secondary interest; he is deeply moved by the perfidy of his brother. His brain is readily set a-work, and can with difficulty be checked from eager and excessive energizing; he is subject to the access of sudden and agitating thought. But Prospero masters his own sensitiveness, emotional and intellectual...'

    His experience has taught him something efficacious. He has acquired self-mastery that secures the future as the present and is able to forego the power of vengeance over his enemies."

    When I look at Prospero as someone ON his path of adeptship, I feel more engaged in the story and what I can learn from the deeper meanings in the play.

    Miriam
    BrianSweeney
    Member
    Member
    Posts:17


    --
    09/02/2010 7:19 PM
    Methinks thou hath answered thine own query, my Dear.
    You are not authorized to post a reply.