Concept of Discovery in 'The Tempest': Critical Essay

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Concept of Discovery in ‘The Tempest’: Critical Essay

Production History

On November 1st, 1611, at the Banqueting House in Whitehall Palace, Shakespeare’s The Tempest was performed for the first time in front of James I and the Royal Court. Only two known productions of the play took place during Shakespeare’s lifetime. The second performance took place two years later, as part of the festivities surrounding Princess Elizabeth’s marriage to King Frederick of Bohemia.

Over 400 years after its conception, The Tempest continues to be a popular choice for filmmakers to adapt to the stage and cinema. A significant movie picture adaptation was released in Hollywood in 2010.

Critical Analysis

There are several examples of confronting and provocative revelations in William Shakespeare’s masterpiece The Tempest (1611). During a confrontation between Prospero and Caliban concerning Caliban’s legal claim to the island, Prospero shouts, ‘Would it have been done!’ You were the one who stopped me. Caliban expresses his regret for allowing Prospero to prevent him from rapping Miranda. Caliban’s exclamatory tone expresses his desire to sexually explore Miranda. It’s possible that this isn’t motivated by sexual desire, but rather by a desire to overthrow his two prisoners, Prospero and Miranda, and claim the island for himself. Miranda’s second example of addressing discovery occurs when she tells her father Prospero, ‘I might call him… A thing divine, for nothing natural… I ever saw so noble.’ Miranda employs both metaphor and hyperbole to characterize Ferdinand. His look piques her interest because she has never seen any male other than her father or the disfigured Caliban. As a result, she falls in love as a result of her discoveries. These remarks speak to how the nature of discovery can be difficult to deal with for individuals. When confronted with a new discovery, an individual’s views, expectations, and knowledge are all challenged. As a result, when discoveries are provocative or confronting, they elicit an emotional reaction, such as shame, grief, wrath, or love.

Biography

Shakespeare was a poet, playwright, and actor. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564. His father was a well-known local businessman, and his mother was a landowner’s daughter. Shakespeare is largely recognized as the greatest English-language writer and the finest dramatist in the world. He is known as the Bard of Avon and is known as’s national poet. He authored approximately 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two major narrative poems, and a few additional pieces, the authorship of some of which is disputed. His plays have been performed more than any other playwright’s and have been translated into every major living language.

Career History

The most important fact about William Shakespeare’s career is that he was a well-known playwright. Shakespeare had the good fortune to be born 6 years after Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne, in the midst of the English Renaissance’s high period, and to find in’s theater a medium just coming into its own, as well as an audience drawn from a wide range of social classes eager to reward talents of the kind he possessed. His entire life was dedicated to public theater, and it appears that he only wrote nondramatic poetry when forced theater closures made creating plays impossible. It’s also worth noting that his days in the theater were almost perfectly contemporaneous with the theater’s other great triumphs, such as Christopher Marlowe’s, Ben Jonson’s, and John Webster’s work.

The world of the play

Environmental Facts

Geographical Information- It takes place on an island near Italy, where Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, and his lovely daughter Miranda reside alongside a sprite named Ariel and a frightening wildman named Caliban.

Economic Environment

The Tempest, Shakespeare’s final complete play, is mostly about Prospero and his quest for vengeance. As we advance through the play, we learn that Caliban, the island’s original resident, was enslaved by Prospero when the latter sought sanctuary on the same. While this plot alludes to colonization and the discovery of new places, it also delves into Prospero and Caliban’s relationship. It shows how socioeconomic inequality, Caliban’s anger the social division, and Ariel’s longing for freedom reflect the common man’s distaste for nascent capitalism in the sixteenth century.

Political Environment

Power and toppling the King are two major themes in The Tempest. This demonstrates how individuals attempted to depose King James at the time. Many people despised King James because he was Scottish, and they believed he had no right to rule. From lord Gonzalo to Stephano, nearly every character plots how he would control the island if he were King. At the start of the play, the Duke of Milan, Antonio, usurps Prospero’s Dukeship, and other characters attempt to assassinate King Alonso. Sebastian and Antonio are close to killing him, but Ariel intervenes. Later, Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano conspire to assassinate Prospero, the island’s king, but they are all foiled. Because Prospero’s scheme is the only one that succeeds in the play, King James would have enjoyed watching it. Furthermore, King James was nearly assassinated during the gunpowder conspiracy in 1605. This play was written six years later, in 1611, so King James would have seen this scene and been relieved to see Ariel interrupt (at Prospero’s command) and save King Alonso.

Social Environment

The Tempest by Shakespeare is a social satire on colonialism’s impact on colonized nations. Caliban should be grateful to Prospero for educating him and teaching him his language, as Prospero sees him as less than himself and beneath him. Caliban effectively becomes Prospero’s slave. This refers to how the locals would have been handled by the English colonizers when they landed in the newly discovered countries. In 1604 Caliban represented the innocent natives of places like St. Lucia and Granada. Caliban and other indigenous peoples were kidnapped and sold as slaves. Shakespeare’s characters in his play clearly demonstrate this.

Previous Action-

A storm hits a ship carrying Alonso, Ferdinand, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Stephano, and Trinculo, who are sailing to Italy after attending Alonso’s daughter Claribel’s wedding to the prince of Tunis in Africa. The royal party and other seamen begin to be concerned about their safety. When lightning strikes, everyone starts to be afraid of sinking. Following that, Miranda and Prospero stand on the beach, staring at the shipwreck. Miranda requests that her father assist the passengers aboard the ship, and Prospero assures her that everything will be fine, revealing that he arranged the shipwreck. After that, he tells her about her past. Prospero was the Duke of Milan until his brother Antonio, in collusion with Alonso, King of Naples, stole his title. Prospero and his daughter were kidnapped and left to die on a raft at sea, but they were saved because Gonzalo left them supplies and Prospero’s books, which are the source of his magic and strength. Prospero and his daughter came to the island and have been there for the past twelve years. Prospero claims that Fortune has finally thrown his foes his way, and he has summoned the tempest to put things right once and for all.

Ideas

The meaning of the title, ‘The Tempest,’ comes from the fact that Prospero asks Ariel to conjure up a tempest (or storm) to take down a ship from Naples that is very close to his island. And that is where the story begins.

‘Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground-long heath, brown furze, anything? The wills above be done, but I would fain die a dry death.’-Gonzalo pg.4 ‘The direful spectacle of the wrack, which touched the very virtue of compassion in thee, I have with such provision in mine art so safely ordered that there is no soul-no, not so much perdition as a hair betid to any creature in the vessel which thou heardst cry, which thou sawest sink.’-Prospero pg. 5-6 ‘Thou didst smile, infused with a fortitude from heaven, when I have decked the sea with drops full salt, under my burden groaned; which raised in me an undergoing stomach, to bear up against what should ensue.’-Prospero pg.10 ‘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. But thy vile race, though thou didst learn, had that isn’t which good natures could not abide to be with.’-Prospero pg.19 ‘I might call him a thing divine, for nothing natural I ever saw so noble.’-Miranda pg.22 ‘Who makest a show but darest not strike, thy conscience is so possessed with guilt.’-Prospero pg.24 ‘So they are. My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up. My father’s loss, the weakness which I feel, the wrack of all my friends, nor this man’s threats to whom I am subdued, are but light to me, might I but through my prison once a day behold this maid.’-Ferdinand pg.24-25 ‘And the fair soul herself weighed, between loathness and obedience, at which end o’ the beam should bow.’- Sebastian pg.30 ‘O, out of that no hope what great hope have you! No hope that way is another way so high a hope that even ambition cannot pierce a wink beyond, but doubts discovery there.’-Antonio pg.35 ‘I’ll deliver all, And promise you to calm seas, auspicious gales, and sail so expeditions that shall catch your royal fleet far off. My Ariel, chick, that is thy charge. Then to the elements be free, and fare thou well. Please you draw near.’-Prospero pg.87 There are lots of references to the stormy weather and the language in this play is very demanding. Everything has to do with nature and is connected to it in some way.

Prospero finally gets what he wants, by receiving his title as Duke again. Miranda is to be married to Ferdinand and Ariel is finally released and given his freedom because everyone that could hold him down is leaving the island. I guess the idea of all of this is that everyone is free (or at least has a false sense of freedom) when they finally get what they want.

This scene gives a detailed account of how Ariel came to be Prospero’s nymph slave and it gives some great exposition as to how Prospero had Ariel sink a Mediterranean vessel heading towards his island. And now Ariel is asking Prospero for his freedom, which Prospero has continually denied him. Prospero also explains what his next mission to Ariel is…offering him his freedom once more.

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