ON SHAKESPEARE’S THE TEMPEST

Shakespeare’s first comedy I read. I had, I confess, partially low expectations

not because I don’t like Shakespeare (I do love his works), but the motive
lies in the fact that it is a comedy, a genre of which I’m not fond of. I was
very confused, in fact, regarding the expectations I had to have. “What I’m
going to find?”, asked myself, “laugh, gaiety, mirth, melancholy, amour,
drama, myths?” (I knew it wasn’t going to be something tragic —certainly).
To my surprise, the work was bare pleasant to me. It was particularly
delightful and engaging the mythological facet, that as regards to Prospero,
the isle, Ariel, the spirits of the Roman gods: Iuno (god’s queen, Iupiter’s
wife), Ceres (harvest and fertility), and Iris (heavenly courier), all of them
subjugated by Prospero’s wizardry, and —from my point of view— by the
isle, too, especially by the isle, which is —clearly, I think— a mythological
place, not a real island of the Mediterranean, Bermoothes, or Cuba (as some
feeble theory claims). Some say that, judging by the aspect described, it must
be a real island. There are, of course, headlands, peaks, cliffs, beaches, but
which isle doesn’t have one of those natural formations? Even the
mythological ones are like that. See, for instance, Odysseus’ struggle with
Polyphemus at the Cyclopean Isles (it has headlands and peaks). Odysseus
was captured by Poseidon’s son and was encaptivated in a cave, just as
Caliban is.
Prospero’s magic can be linked to Circe, the Greek sorceress, who also
lives on an island. Remind that Shakespeare took many elements of
grecolatin culture, history and mythology, obviously dispersed in many of
his plays. The poet, as a matter of fact, borrowed dozens of story from
historical treatises, many of them describing myths and fairy tales, viz:
Hamlet (Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus), Romeo and Juliet (The
Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, Arthur Brooke —also based in
mediaeval romances), Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, etc. Therefore, it
shouldn’t be invalid to consider The Tempest mainly as a mythological tale.
I don’t think it’s an allegory of British colonialism or some kind of
defamatory tale about the native tribes. Caliban is a native, yes, yet
remember he was born by a foreigner witch and that he used to have Ariel
—a spirit— as a servant. No American or African native would have had a
sort of divine being as a servant. Remember, also, that the isle, at a certain
time, had no habitants, therefore, no native tribes at all. The first ones were
Sycorax and her son, both foreigners. Sycorax is an African which was
expelled from her country. Some sees in that fact a resemblance to the heresy.
It may be true, but I have seen that many writers —all over the history—
have decided to set their stories in many places around the world and create
characters from any origin. Perhaps this is why Shakespeare decided to leave
Hamlet, for instance, in Denmark, and not to born him in England or any
other country. The same happens with Romeo and Juliet, King Lear,
Macbeth; they could have been set in any other country without losing their
art, energy and quality. Regarding The Tempest, its only condition for
existence was that it had to be a mythological island, not a real one, so that
all myth, magic, lyricism, gods and spirits had a logical role in the work.
Iuno, Ceres, couldn’t appear in England, Bermoothes, Cuba, Malta or any
other islet —They could only have had life in Greece or Rome, which are, in
this case, transformed into a magical island with no name, and this lack of
identity is the one that Shakespeare needed to exploit magic and fantasy.

José Luis Krede Rossi,

Córdoba, Argentina
April, 2022