The Tempest is about the motivations for vengeance and murder, and what one might do with the power of a god. It shows the audience the arbitrary bloom of one love match, but also has something to say about earned and unearned forgiveness and the residue of viciousness.
Prospero, with his power to summon storms and spirits, create hallucinations, bestow sleep, hold others to his will, is a very human god. His love of Miranda and his capacity for mercy and forgiveness, ensure that the play is a comedy. The play is a pleasing fantasy that summons devils and then stoppers up their deviltry.
Ferdinand and Miranda fall in love at first sight. Both characters combine compassion and romance and are set in a kind of bland contrast to the drunken talk of Trinculo and Stephano, Caliban’s wildness and the various murder plots. One could argue that Ariel, the spirit longing to be free of Prospero, is the liveliest and most attractive character in the play, and along with Gonzalo, the conscience of the piece.
However, the threat of violence hovers over The Tempest, a tale that wants to be a comedy but comes perilously close to horror. Prospero wants revenge on Antonio for unseating him and trying to kill him and his daughter, Miranda. Caliban wants to kill Prospero for keeping him enslaved. Stephano, a drunk, sets out to murder Prospero at his behest. Antonio wants Alonso’s throne and will murder him in his sleep to get it. Any slip in any of these desires, and the stage would be ankle deep in blood. Thus, the potential for horror.
Antonio, brother to Prospero and his betrayer, and one of Shakespeare’s really repulsive characters, plans to murder his brother and blame it on a good old man, Gonzalo. He “[feels] not the deity in [his] bosom.” Caliban, the monster, wishes to murder Prospero, the magician, the god of the Isle, and would “knock a nail into his head” or “with a log batter his skull or paunch him with a stake.” Stephano and Trinculo are happy to oblige. Antonio and Sebastian, the King of Naples’ brother, would both be just fine with such actions. Proso, one of the Isle’s spirits, says of them, “Some of you there present are worse than devils.”
All of these murderous plots are resolved quickly and bloodlessly and … well, unbelievably. The work of why the threat of murder is so easily dismissed just is not present.
Antonio’s last words in the play are a mockery of Caliban. Then he goes silent. Prospero certainly takes Sebastian’s measure: “For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother would even infect my mouth ….” He knows Antonio’s character as well but forgives him too. This is the same Prospero who soon before this said that he would “plague them all, even to roaring.”
Antonio is not one to leave unpunished or even alive. His viciousness is blood and bone deep. Prospero may forgive him, but one may be certain that in the play’s afterlife, Antonio will seek his own vengeance and will not be ruled by any kind of nebulous, undefined pity.
One might argue this: Prospero loves his daughter. Alonso, the King of Naples, loves his son. All they want for them is their happiness. Alonso, broken by his belief that his son Ferdinand has drowned, finds room for pity and thus shows how he might be redeemed. He pities Gonzalo’s age and fatigue. These are the virtues that tip the play toward comedy and towards the general forgiveness of Act V. If one loves others, that person also has the capacity for forgiveness. Prospero is that rare human being who remains fundamentally uncorrupted by great power.
A good production would be a marvelous sight. The Tempest is a ‘clean play’ – easy to follow. Its storms, magic, the characters of Caliban and Ariel, the clowns Trinculo and Stephano – all serve to give it the potential for wonderful entertainment. If the leads playing Ferdinand and Miranda are good, throw a touching (though faintly sketched) love match into the mix.
According to scholars, The Tempest is Shakespeare’s final play that he wrote by himself. At the end, it feels like a play written by a tired man who just could not bring himself to further investigate Prospero’s change of heart regarding the murderous Antonio and Sebastian. Prospero simply forgives and the play speeds to its conclusion and his curious final speech – one that feels like an admission from Shakespeare –“Now my charms are all o’erthrown, and what strength I have’s mine own, which is most faint” and a desire to be free of his life’s work, finally, at the age of 46 or 47, his death to follow roughly 5 years later – “As you from crimes would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free.”
