The Tempest and Nature

Yay Shakespeare Time!  So in The Tempest there is this really smart dude named Prospero. He is a duke who is betrayed by his brother and basically exiled to a deserted island so that the brother can take his place as duke. In order to regain his dukedom, Prospero uses magic –and his wits- to stage an elaborate reveal of his brother’s treachery.

One of the first things that The Tempest mentions about Prospero is that his magic comes from his books. It isn’t that these books are spell books; the idea is that magic comes from knowledge. I really like how bluntly Shakespeare connects the idea of wizardry with wisdom.

Magic is also repeatedly referred to as an art. There is this theme in The Tempest of order versus chaos. Art and music are considered ordered patterns or ordered sound. Magic is being framed as orderly and purposeful in this text, which I think is very interesting. I had never specifically thought about magic as orderly, but most of the conjurers that I have read about adhere to rules when practicing magic. The fight for control of your magic is a sweeping theme in a lot of texts. In Harry Potter magic is controlled through learning and practice in a school environment. Their powers may not come directly from knowledge, but without gaining knowledge they would never be so versatile in their spell casting abilities. In the Harry Dresden series there are magic words and rituals that he had to learn to practice magic effectively. Even Merlin can only teach magic to someone who is first a scholar (Prose Merlin). 

If magic is cool when it is this thing that can be learned about and controlled, then it becomes scary when it is unfamiliar and uncontrollable. This suggests that magic has two sides to it, star wars style. It can be ordered like society or it can be unchecked like nature. I think that this has to say something about us as a society that we are drawn to order and are scared by raw nature. We are still fighting that whole cave man thing. Everyone wants to be better than our ancestors. It’s also just common sense to be terrified of nature. Nature is unpredictable; a tsunami might wipe out half of Japan or you might be struck dead by lightning while walking home one afternoon. What is very clear is that we as a society value knowledge as a trait. All of the good sorcerers are smart cookies, and a whole slew of the bad ones are less informed. Examples: Morgana (in some portrayals), Harry Dresden Book 1 villain, Caliban, and all of the witches ever (see Demonology). 

 

The Tempest can teach us that there is no Utopia. There is no control. As much as Prospero wants everything to go his way, even he can’t predict everything or fight his own imperfections. But it also teaches us that we will fight for that nonexistent Utopia even knowing it isn’t real.

End Thoughts: Witches are, unsurprisingly evil in this text. There are random spirits that Prospero also uses as a source of power – conjurers drawing power from the magical realm. Ariel is visually like the Blue Fairy, and Prospero had an invisibility cloak before they were popular. Prospero = the original hipster.