The Tempest notes continued...

Prospero is paternalistic benevolent authority- however he causes the storm (so opposite)

·         But paternal when speaking to Miranda he reassures her ‘no harm done’ making sure she understands the reasons behind his actions for the storm.

·         Motivation for actions are caring for his daughter ‘nothing but in care for thee’ use of ‘care’ demonstrating benevolent nature, he also explains reasons and dictators don’t explain reasons.

Prospero is tyrannical dictator.

·         ‘Obey, and be attentive’- patriarchal order, an imperative verb is used ‘obey’ which emphasises an order that of a dictator as people listen to them.

·         Prospero is wanting to control power, he wants to control the land over Caliban.

·         Prospero also controls information that Miranda and audience know – he is a controller of history.

·         Prospero creates the storm- power malevolent, starts the whole play, wrathful, angry side over people, revengeful.

 

Characterization

·         What he does

·         What people say to him

·         What people say about them

·         Appearance

 

‘My dearest father’ Miranda to Prospero

Shows close relations, a personal pronoun is used ‘my’ and superlative ‘dearest’ which is indicative.

Or can be seen as desperate, groveling or flattery

Shakespeare is suggesting people’s language around power attempts to gain hand hold in power struggle.

Analysis of language

Iambic pentameter- 5 beats per lie of unstressed/stressed pattern (de dum)

Eg. Shall I comPARE thee TO a SUMmers DAY?

An example from The Tempest- @have sunk the sea within the earth, or ere’

‘I have nothing but in care of thee’—‘nothing’ is trochee, emphasize of the word.

High class characters speak with iambic pentameter

 

BLANK VERSE VS PROSE

·         Blank verse- unrhymed iambic pentameter (Prospero and King)

·         Poetry- rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter (Prospero and King)

·         Prose- no rhyming of metrical structure.

·         ALL ABOUT CLASS AND STRUCTURE

·         CASURAE- punctuation in blank verse

 

‘Dashed all to pieces. O, the cry did knock

Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.’

‘pieces.’- dramatic stop, its broken, there is nothing she can do to fix it, blunt.

‘O, the cry’- caesura, reflects on what she has heard lost for words for a second while thinking about traumatic experience she witnessed.

‘Against my heart’- personal pronoun ‘my’- makes it personal, sympathy, emphasis of compassionate nature.

‘Poor souls,’ caesura- reflecting on people no longer alive, spiritual, imagining their death, has to pause because it’s too painful reliving the suffering as she couldn’t stop it.

‘They perished.’- ending is blunt with the use of a full stop, indicating finality of death. Sense of silence to line stops everything.

 

Act I scene II

 

·         Confrontation of Ariel

·         Prospero alone seems to understand that controlling history enables one to control the present. When he speaks to Miranda he calls his brother ‘perfidious’ then immediately says that he loved his brother more than anyone in the world except Miranda.

·         He repeatedly asks Miranda ‘dost thou attend me?’ through questioning he commands her attention almost hypnotically as he tells her his one sided version of the story.

 

·         Prospero doesn’t seem blameless, his brother did betray him, and he also failed in his responsibilities as a ruler by control of the government so that he could study.

·         He contrasts his popularity as a leader

·         ‘The love my people bore me’ with his brothers ‘evil nature’

 

·         When speaking to Ariel- treats him as a combination of a pet whom he can praise and blame as he chooses, and a pupil demanding that the spirit recite answers to questions about the past that Prospero has taught him.

 

Spark notes: themes, motifs and symbolism

·         Prospero’s idea of justice and injustice is somewhat hypocritical—though he is furious with his brother for taking his power, he has no qualms about enslaving Ariel and Caliban in order to achieve his ends. At many moments throughout the play, Prospero’s sense of justice seems extremely one-sided and mainly involves what is good for Prospero. Moreover, because the play offers no notion of higher order or justice to supersede Prospero’s interpretation of events, the play is morally ambiguous.

·         As the play progresses, however, it becomes more and more involved with the idea of creativity and art, and Prospero’s role begins to mirror more explicitly the role of an author creating a story around him. With this metaphor in mind, and especially if we accept Prospero as a surrogate for Shakespeare himself, Prospero’s sense of justice begins to seem, if not perfect, at least sympathetic.

·         Caliban’s exact nature continues to be slightly ambiguous

·         Miranda and Prospero both have contradictory views of Caliban’s humanity. On the one hand, they think that their education of him has lifted him from his formerly brutish status. On the other hand, they seem to see him as inherently brutish

·         Nearly every scene in the play either explicitly or implicitly portrays a relationship between a figure that possesses power and a figure that is subject to that power.

·         The object of chess is to capture the king. That, at the simplest level, is the symbolic significance of Prospero revealing Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess in the final scene. Prospero has caught the king—Alonso—and reprimanded him for his treachery

·         The play explores the psychological and social dynamics of power relationships from a number of contrasting angles, such as the generally positive relationship between Prospero and Ariel, the generally negative relationship between Prospero and Caliban, and the treachery in Alonso’s relationship to his nobles.