Revising and improving text – 223
Prospero, Caliban and Miranda? Who said that Caliban is ‘A devil, a
born devil’? What doesn’t Prospero do? How can Miranda be a criterion of knowledge if she does not know much about the world? What
is it she displays that is more important than what?
If you know The Tempest you might be able to draw on your
knowledge to answer many of these questions without too much
difficulty. If you do not, you will have to hunt around in this first
text fairly assiduously before clues to some of the answers become
apparent. The next (extended) version should make most, but not all,
of these questions much easier to answer.
2
In The Tempest reason is set against ‘fury’ and nurture against nature.
But the duke Prospero is not the perfect exemplar of the providential
power of reason and nurture any more than Caliban is a savage ruled
solely by fury and unregenerate nature. Prospero’s magical Art, despite
the contrast he draws with the magic of ‘the foul witch Sycorax’, is not a
humane kind of learning; for otherwise he would have no cause to
renounce it at the end of the play. Nor is it true, as Prospero says of
Caliban, that he is ‘A devil, a born devil, on whose nature / Nurture can
never stick’. Caliban does learn, arguably even more than Prospero,
inasmuch as at the end of the play he says ‘I’ll be wise hereafter, / And
seek for grace’, which finds no echo in anything Prospero says. If we are
to look for a touchstone to knowledge in The Tempest, it will be found in
Miranda, in whom nature and nurture, reason and passion are perfectly
mixed. Miranda does not ‘know’ very much at all about the world: on first
seeing Ferdinand she thinks him, without any hint of metaphor, a spirit,
‘a thing divine’. What she displays is something more important, a depth
of understanding or sympathy.
Prospero’s learning seems to be of two quite distinct kinds.
Neither is admirable. In recounting the story of how he was dispossessed
of his dukedom, he boasts to Miranda how
being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal Arts
Without a parallel; those being all my study,
Prospero, Caliban and Miranda? Who said that Caliban is ‘A devil, a
born devil’? What doesn’t Prospero do? How can Miranda be a criterion of knowledge if she does not know much about the world? What
is it she displays that is more important than what?
If you know The Tempest you might be able to draw on your
knowledge to answer many of these questions without too much
difficulty. If you do not, you will have to hunt around in this first
text fairly assiduously before clues to some of the answers become
apparent. The next (extended) version should make most, but not all,
of these questions much easier to answer.
2
In The Tempest reason is set against ‘fury’ and nurture against nature.
But the duke Prospero is not the perfect exemplar of the providential
power of reason and nurture any more than Caliban is a savage ruled
solely by fury and unregenerate nature. Prospero’s magical Art, despite
the contrast he draws with the magic of ‘the foul witch Sycorax’, is not a
humane kind of learning; for otherwise he would have no cause to
renounce it at the end of the play. Nor is it true, as Prospero says of
Caliban, that he is ‘A devil, a born devil, on whose nature / Nurture can
never stick’. Caliban does learn, arguably even more than Prospero,
inasmuch as at the end of the play he says ‘I’ll be wise hereafter, / And
seek for grace’, which finds no echo in anything Prospero says. If we are
to look for a touchstone to knowledge in The Tempest, it will be found in
Miranda, in whom nature and nurture, reason and passion are perfectly
mixed. Miranda does not ‘know’ very much at all about the world: on first
seeing Ferdinand she thinks him, without any hint of metaphor, a spirit,
‘a thing divine’. What she displays is something more important, a depth
of understanding or sympathy.
Prospero’s learning seems to be of two quite distinct kinds.
Neither is admirable. In recounting the story of how he was dispossessed
of his dukedom, he boasts to Miranda how
being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal Arts
Without a parallel; those being all my study,