Prologue To What?

March 12, 1991

An editor of THE YALE SHAKESPEARE comments, “the true source of THE TEMPEST is Shakespeare's experience in coming to terms with life.” More than one reading of that play may be necessary to persuade you of the merit of that observation. It has occurred to me that THE TEMPEST is a prism, reflecting in its facets a variety of human experience – the love and care of a parent, the joy of young lovers, the bitterness of disillusion, and both the meanness and generosity of which the human spirit is capable.

Antonio (Act II, Sc. 1) says, “What’s past is prologue.” But, prologue to what? Antonio usurped his brother, Prospero, as rightful Duke of Milan. Together with other conspirators, [he] put Prospero on a leaky ship, sure to founder and drown Prospero and his infant daughter, Miranda. But Prospero, who has magical powers, brings
the doomed ship safely to an uninhabited island. There, his magic rules Ariel, the spirit, and Caliban, the monster. Miranda is reared with loving care, protected and unaware of the kind of world that exists outside the island.

Prospero, through his command of Ariel’s powers, has caused the ship of his old enemies to be wrecked on the island. While the old foes are spellbound by Ariel, Miranda and Ferdinand, son of Alonso, King of Naples, fall joyously in love. Then in the movements of the plot, the old enemies must confront Prospero, who has them in his power.

When Miranda, happy in her love for Ferdinand, meets the shipwrecked villains for the first time, she says naïvely, (Act V, Sc. 1)

“O wonder
How many goodly creatures
are there here!
O Brave New World
That has such people in’t.”

Prospero replies, “’Tis new to thee.” That line could be delivered sadly, ironically, or bitterly. With the exception of the aged counselor, Gonzalo, and young Ferdinand, Prospero knows them to be murdering villains, power-grabbers, winos, and crude buffoons. One can say that Miranda is the naïve idealist and Prospero the realist, who knows through experience how cruel and false men can be.

Brave New World? An ideal society? Aldous Huxley wrote BRAVE NEW WORLD, a book I read years ago. My recollection is that “Slave New World” would have been a more relevant title. Thomas More wrote UTOPIA, and the word caught on to indicate a better world than anyone has ever known. Thomas More used the fictional device of conducting a dialogue with a man from Utopia, Raphel Hythlodeus. But in the Greek, Utopia means “Nowhere”; and Hythlodeus means, “Lord of nonsense.” Interestingly enough, some Marxist scholars found the basis of much (but not all) theoretical socialism in More’s UTOPIA. If More knew that, he would be spinning in his grave, because his life was a denial of the ideas and politics that came to be known as socialism. For example, in UTOPIA, no lawyers are allowed. But Thomas More was a clever lawyer who used his legal talent to avert execution, almost to the end. Brave New World?

Gibbon, the historian whose knowledge of ancient sources was extraordinary, came to a melancholy conclusion, “History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” History can be interpreted in such a doleful appraisal.
Barbara Tuchman, in her sobering history, THE MARCH OF FOLLY FROM TROY TO VIETNAM, writes of how frequently countries, and their leaders, pursued policies that were against their own best interests. In outlining the follies of Troy, the Renaissance Popes, the British loss of America, Vietnam, she illustrates her theme (p.7), “Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists of assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary sign. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by facts.”

While there is no doubt that history reveals the stupidity and self-deception that has caused so much agony and death, one can look at more positive achievements. Human slavery has mostly been abolished. Medicine and more hygienic ways have provided skills and methods because of which many of us now alive would have long since been dead. In the more industrialized countries, child labor (although it still exists) is now illegal. Many countries (not ours) provide medical service to everyone. There is more food and shelter for the people of many nations (although millions of people still starve in Africa). We tolerate thousands of homeless, with little national will to address and ameliorate that scandal. One can still hope for human survival because, as Robert Lifton pointed out in his trenchant study, “We have the capacity for self-destruction AND self-renewal.” But one must remember (and I do not recall the source of this quote), “When all is left to diplomats and Presidents, the people get left.”

Brave New World? A perfect society is unattainable but a better one is possible. Prospero provided a clue, when, with the opportunity to destroy his enemies, he forgives them. He speaks to Ariel, (Act V, Sc. l)

“Though with their high wrongs
I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason
’gainst my folly
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance.”

THE TEMPEST has many allegorical possibilities, as Margaret Webster (Shakespearean actress, director, producer) suggested in her SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT TEARS.

The more you reflect on THE TEMPEST, the surer will be your grasp of the human condition – its folly and wisdom, its ugliness and beauty. She also believes Prospero’s speech, “our revels now are ended,” (ACT IV, Sc. 1) was Shakespeare’s farewell to the stage; and that in the original production, ended the play and not the Masque.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
(as I foretold you) were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: we are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
is rounded with a sleep.”

If any words are said over my ashes, those luminous, ethereal lines would be to my liking.