224 – Cohesion and texture
The government I cast upon my brother,
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies. (I, ii, 72–7)
Prospero’s studies were of the seven traditional liberal arts,
and through absorption in them forfeited his power in the state. A duke
cannot be a pure scholar or theoretician. These liberal studies were not
the magical Art that he practised on the island (the studies were ‘secret’
only in the sense that they were private and recondite). This latter ‘so
potent Art’ was studied solely for the power it bestowes on an egocentric
Prospero to do violence to nature (‘I have bedimm’d / The noontide
sun’) and to effect his revenge on other people. We notice that the
volumes that Prospero prizes ‘above my dukedom’ become a single book
(III, i, 94; V, i, 57), which he consults to further his project and which he
promises to drown only when he can be sure that he will no longer have
to rely on it. The book to Prospero is little more than the bottle to the
drunken butler Stephano.
This is something Caliban learns. He knows better than
Stephano and Trinculo that the rebellion against Prospero can only
succeed if first they burn his books; for without them Prospero is ‘but a
sot, as I am, nor hath not / One spirit to command’. There is a clear
parallel between the effect of Stephano’s ‘celestial liquor’ on Caliban and
Prospero’s charms – ‘the ignorant fumes that mantle / Their clearer
reason’ – on the usurpers he wishes to subdue. The sense of power
conferred by the butt of sack is, of course, illusory; but so is that of
Prospero’s Art. Both turn ordinary mortals into ‘masters’ (a word used
constantly throughout the play). But true learning is not a matter of
attaining mastery over nature, over other people or even, through the
use of reason, over oneself. This is the point which Gonzalo wishes to
have set down ‘With gold on lasting pillars’:
in one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife
Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom
The government I cast upon my brother,
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies. (I, ii, 72–7)
Prospero’s studies were of the seven traditional liberal arts,
and through absorption in them forfeited his power in the state. A duke
cannot be a pure scholar or theoretician. These liberal studies were not
the magical Art that he practised on the island (the studies were ‘secret’
only in the sense that they were private and recondite). This latter ‘so
potent Art’ was studied solely for the power it bestowes on an egocentric
Prospero to do violence to nature (‘I have bedimm’d / The noontide
sun’) and to effect his revenge on other people. We notice that the
volumes that Prospero prizes ‘above my dukedom’ become a single book
(III, i, 94; V, i, 57), which he consults to further his project and which he
promises to drown only when he can be sure that he will no longer have
to rely on it. The book to Prospero is little more than the bottle to the
drunken butler Stephano.
This is something Caliban learns. He knows better than
Stephano and Trinculo that the rebellion against Prospero can only
succeed if first they burn his books; for without them Prospero is ‘but a
sot, as I am, nor hath not / One spirit to command’. There is a clear
parallel between the effect of Stephano’s ‘celestial liquor’ on Caliban and
Prospero’s charms – ‘the ignorant fumes that mantle / Their clearer
reason’ – on the usurpers he wishes to subdue. The sense of power
conferred by the butt of sack is, of course, illusory; but so is that of
Prospero’s Art. Both turn ordinary mortals into ‘masters’ (a word used
constantly throughout the play). But true learning is not a matter of
attaining mastery over nature, over other people or even, through the
use of reason, over oneself. This is the point which Gonzalo wishes to
have set down ‘With gold on lasting pillars’:
in one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife
Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom