This is a chapter from the book Shakespeare Characters: Chiefly Those Subordinate by Charles Cowden Clarke who was one of the outstanding literary critics of his time. The book was originally published in 1863 by Smith-Elder and Co. of
SHAKESPEARE-CHARACTERS
CHIEFLY THOSE SUBORDINATE
Chapter XI
T E M PES T
Page 275:
IN the play of the" Tempest" Shakespeare has combined all the resources of his wonderful imagination; and in it has with consummate skill displayed the vast variety of his powers. In this latter quality-that of his variety-the play may be pronounced the most original, as well as the most complete of his productions. It is at once instinct with grace and beauty, grandeur and sublimity, mirth, cheerfulness, and broad humour. It is not more natural in its human passion than it is in its spiritual emotion and affection; and such is the power of the poet's" so potent art," that his ideal beings, however wild and fantastic, possess as complete an individuality and identity, with show of verisimilitude, (or, in plainer words, they are as natural,) as his most ordinary and everyday characters. Such, too, is his skill in exciting our sympathies with them all, that we take no more interest in the crowning .of Miranda's happiness with her lover, than we do in the emancipation and unchartered liberty of the delicate Ariel; nay, so consociated have we the" gentle spiritings" of that sweet little angel with his master's missions,-they have been so long together, ruler and ministrant, that I know not whether their final separation does not ensue with a feel.
Page 276:
ing of regret on our part. Well may Prospero say, at leave-taking, " I shall miss thee, my delicate Ariel!" To be sure he would,-and why should they have parted? Who would not rather have remained lord of that enchanted island, with its "sounds and sweet airs, that delight, and hurt not," than have returned common-place Duke of Milan? Ferdinand and Miranda might have instituted a very pretty patriarchal government; and what an heirloom to the estate would they have possessed in the faithful Ariel as their prime minister in perpetlto! But it was necessary to dissolve that lovely vision, and resign its aerial creatures to their primitive elements.
It has just been said that the" Tempest" is the most "varied," as well as the most" original, of Shakespeare's productions." In it, and it alone, he has brought together, in their several stages of progression, human beings, and beings possessing human impulses, affections, and aspirations; from the earthly Caliban-part clod, part witch-born, an impersonation of the grosser and lower propensities of the human animal, up to the most attenuated form, that has no more su bstance than the fleeting air or the tinted rainbow.
The subject of Shakespeare and his power of invention are never, or rarely, alluded to, without an instancing of his creative power in producing such contrasted perfections of character as Lear and Falstaff, Hamlet and Aguecheek, Othello and Malvolio,-and so we may go on with the enumeration, heaping wonderment on wonderment, till we are exhausted; for his mind intellectual plumb hath never yet sounded. In the play now under consideration, what exquisite discrimination and consistency are evinced in the two creations alone, of Ariel and Caliban! Caiman, the' essence of primitive grossness,-redeemed, however, as Hazlitt has excellently observed, from every particle of "vulgarity" in his composition; adding. w, his own fine talent
Page 277:
at definition, "Vulgarity is not natural coarseness, but conventional coarseness, learned from others, contrary to, or without an entire conformity of, natural power and disposition; as fashion is the common-place affectation of what is elegant and refined, without any feeling of the essence of it." In no one point, indeed, does Shakespeare more signally manifest his power, than in the approximating shades and minute discriminations in those of his characters that are congenial in complexion-whatever may be said of his skill in contrast-and which, after all, is not so high in quality, if it be of more startling achievement. Great, therefore, as is the contrasted effect between the refined and the imaginative, and the gross and the sensual persons in this play, that effect does not appear to exhibit so elevated a design in invention and detail, as in the manner in which he has discriminated between, and, indeed, has brought into relief, the common working-day coarseness of Trinculo and Stephano, against the wild and romantic brutishness of Caliban. What a gusto there is in the latter's remembrance of" water with berries in it;" and what a dash, too, of poetry in it, compared with the riotous bawlings of the others' wine-songs. Again, his remonstrance to Trinculo,-" Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon, I know it by thy trembling," compared with that of Stephano, in his drunkenness,-" Prithee, do not turn me about, my stomach is not constant," Again, Caliban says:
"I pry' thee, let me bring thee where crabs grow; And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts, Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how To snare the nimble marmoset: I'll bring thee To clust'ring filberds, and sometimes I'll get thee
Young sea-mells from the rock. Wilt thou go with me? "
Stephano says,-" He shall taste of my bottle," The drunkard butler has no higher notion of earthly bliss than the wine
Page 278:
cask. Caliban, it is true, upon tasting it, calls it "celestial liquor," which only proves that Stephano has aggravated the poor monster's brutality. Even his gloating exclamations, revolting as they are, by reason of his bestial conformation, are higher, and more true to the natural animal, than the vulgar worldliness of the city-bred one. His exultation to Prospero, who reviles him with ingratitude in attempting the violation of his daughter
“Oho I Oho I-would it had been done! Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else This isle with Calibans."
And afterwards, to Stephano, when proposing to him the murder of the father, and seizure of the daughter, he says:
“She will become thy bed, I warrant,
And bring thee forth brave brood."
The other, in the true spirit of “vulgarity," and consequently of inferiority to the monster, replies,-" His daughter and I will be king and queen, (save our graces!) and Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys." And lastly, Stephano's obtuse, worldly comment upon the aerial symphony which they heard he says,-" This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing" in answer to Caliban's exquisitely poetical description of those wandering sounds in the air :
" The isle is full of noises
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds, methought, would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again."
Page 279:
To which beautiful piece of imagination, one of the other two merely replies,-" The sound is gone away; let's follow it, and after do our work,"-that is, commit the murder of Prospero.
Caliban says,-" I pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not hear a foot-fall" At the
glowing case for the hybrid monster; and, in the comparison, the natural animal, whether considered poetically or morally, assumes a dignity in our minds over the artificial and conventional animal,-" The vulgar knaves of the civilised world," as Schlegel well calls them; adding, "The whole delineation of this monster is inconceivably consistent and profound; and, notwithstanding its hatefulness, by no means hurtful to our feelings, since the honour of human nature is left untouched."
In one of his early lectures, Coleridge drew a humorous comparison between Caliban and a modem Radical This was subsequent to that period in his career when Mr. Coleridge was a private soldier, and preached J Jacobinism to his brethren militant He would then, in all probability, have done full justice to Caliban, by acknowledging him proprietor of the land "inherited from Sycorax, his mother; and Prospero, then, would have been pronounced an aristocrat-probably a Tory. But, really so to speak, with all our admiration of and sympathy with the illustrious magician, we perforce must acknowledge Prospero to be of a revengeful nature. He has not the true social wisdom; and he only learns Christian wisdom from his servant Ariel. By nature he is a selfish aristo
Page 280:
crat. When he was Duke of Milan he gave himself up to his favorite indulgence of study and retired leisure, yet expected to preserve his state and authority. When master of the
Ariel is the extreme opposite of Caliban. Ariel is the ethereal personification of will and accomplishment, with the lightning's speed. When despatched on an errand by Prospero, and desired to make good speed, he answers, "I drink the air before me I"
What an idea do those six words convey of compassing time and space!
With a refinement of his art, Shakespeare has contrived to secure our interests in and sympathies with this exquisite being, by imbuing it with the frolicsome and wayward fancies of a petted child. We incline to take part with Ariel in his little fretfulnesses and longings
Page 281:
to be as unfettered as the winged winds. His desires to be set free, (for freedom is his nature,) and his pretty frowardness under the constraint of ~he mighty magician, who, although his liberator, is still his master, even his tyrant, is more excusable than the latter's tetchy reproaches;
"Is there more toil? [says the little libertine.]
Since thou dost give me pains,
Let me remember thee what thou hast promis'd,
Which is not yet perform'd me.
" Pro.
What is 't thou canst demand?
"Ari. My liberty.
"Pro. Before the time be out? no more!
" Ari. I prithee,
Remember, I have done thee worthy service;
Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, serv'd
Without or grudge or grumblings ; thou didst promise
To bate me a full year.
" P1'O. Dost thou forget
From what a torment I did free thee?
"Ari. No.
"Pro. Thou dost ; and think'st it much to tread the ooze
of the salt deep,
To run upon the sharp wind of the north,
To do me business in the veins o' th' earth
When it is bak'd with frost.
. . . .
How now! moody?
If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak, And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters."
All this enlists our sympathy with the little" featureless angel," as he has been happily called; but Shakespeare has gone yet farther upon this point, by giving to Ariel a feeling of tender commiseration for the interests of those whom he is commanded to punish and torment. Here the poet's own sweet nature steps in, and he makes the being with feelings
Page 282:
and notions foreign to the human, read his master a lesson upon forbearance and forgiveness. Is not the following little dialogue between them a practical homily upon the first great principle of social humanity ?
" Your charm so strongly works them, That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.
" Pro. Dost thou think so, Ariel ?
"Ari. Mine would, sir, were I human.
" Pro. And mine shall.
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions; and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,
Passion as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs
I am struck to the quick,
Yet, with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Do I take part. The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance; they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown farther. Go, release them, Ariel."
Whenever and wherever Shakespeare speaks from the movement of his own mind, and not from traditional authority, we invariably find him swayed by the highest and most refined principle of magnanimity; the common and heathenish notion of revenge seems to have been utterly foreign to his nature. Magnanimity, in its most extended sense, was the characteristic of his mind.
I believe that we may search through the fields of fancy and discover no imaginative being equalling, in beauty of conception, the creation of Ariel in the "Tempest." The" Ideal" may indeed be said to constitute the main feature of this matchless composition. In addition to the imaginary beings that have just been alluded to, the young Prince Ferdinand, upon his first .introduction to Miranda, “ Most sure, the goddess on whom these airs attend I " not only
Page 283:
is prepared, but is eager to receive her as a supernatural creation; and also, in alluding to the aerial music, he says, "This is no mortal business, nor no sound that the earth owes;" but he, moreover, discovers that he had always previously held a faith in the unknown, which led him to be fastidious with regard to the persons moving around him :
" Full many a lady
I have ey'd with best regard; and many a time
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so full soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she ow'd,
And put it to the foil; but you, 0 you!
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature's best."
His abrupt and eager belief in her worth, in the third speech only that he makes to her
"Oh, if a virgin, And your affection not gone forth, I '11 make Thee queen of
and again, his prodigal acquiescence in any plan which may lead to their union-even to the abandonment of all his worldly advantages, and to live with her in the. island : "Let me live here ever. So rare a wonder'd father, and a wife, Make this place paradise" all proclaim his ardent imagination and thorough faith in goodness: only the good know the full truth of goodness i this very faith forms a feature of the" Ideal," and it is the characteristic of all the worthy persons in this play. All this, be it observed, harmonises with the first grand outline of the story-being in itself an idealised conception
Page 284:
and construction. Here again appears the dominant feature in the poet's mind-that of" keeping," and consistency.
The full and entire confidence of these two young creatures (Ferdinand and Miranda) in each other's integrity of love is an absolute type of the primitive innocence and bliss of
At mine own unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give; and much less take
What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;
And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!
And prompt me plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, if you will marry me ;
If not, I '11 die your maid; to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant,
Whether you will or no."
Here we have an epitome of what alone can sublimate and consolidate the social compact between the sexes,-viz., the non-conceit in our own power to please: the promptness to receive, and the gratification in receiving and imparting pleasure, constitute the true cement of a pure and passionate love j a cement that hardens rather than crumbles with use.
The good old lord, Gonzalo, in his disposition, also carries out the" Ideal" principle insisted upon in this play. He, too, partakes of the faculty of imagination, and it may be remembered how tenderly he employs it to amuse and cheer his sorrowing master, the King Alonzo. His utopian scheme for a commonwealth, if he were master of the island, is quite in character with a merry and crotchety old man. He
Page 285
" I’ the commonwealth, I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use of metal, com, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women, too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty."
The worthy old nobleman had been reading Florio's translation of Montaigne's essay" Of the Cannibals ;" for this, his scheme to construct a commonwealth, he had adopted, almost literally, from the delightful and most merry old Frenchman. Gonzalo is a most sweet and gentle character. How placidly he bears the hard quizzing of the other lords; with a worldly wisdom of indifference, as befits a counsellor and courtier, but full of a chirping spirit and happy feeling, springing out of a pure conscience, that causes him to turn to the sunny side of things in misfortune. With the true generosity of genuine goodness, too, he rebukes the reproaches which the others, in their selfishness, heap upon the king for bringing them into trouble:
" My Lord Sebastian, The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness, And time to speak it in. You rub the sore When you should bring the plaster."
And then he turns to divert the king from his grief at the supposed death of his son Ferdinand. He does this, too, in the full knowledge of Alonzo's former guilt; for, after the thunder and lightning, with the dreadful forms raised by Ariel to terrify them, and they rush out distracted, Gonzalo says:
" All three of them are desperate: their great guilt,
Like poison given to work a great time after,
Page 286:
Now 'gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you,
That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly,
And hinder them from what this ecstasy
May now provoke them to."
It is in this scene that the conscience-struck Alonzo makes confession of his crime in those grand lines ;
" Oh, it is monstrous! monstrous!
Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it:
The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd
The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass."
We note also the pious gratitude in the conduct of GOl1zalo. He is the only one whose speech assumes that tone upon the happy reconciliation of the families. With gentle pathos, upon contemplating the scene, he says :
" I have inly wept,
Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods, And on this couple drop a blessed crown!
For it is you that have chalk'd forth the way
Which brought us hither."
It is to be observed that the good people, old Gonzalo and the two lords, Adrian and Francisco, maintain throughout an unaffected cheerfulness, and evince a gay desire to discover all that is pleasant and agreeable in their wanderings through the island. Their principle is to make the best account of everything they encounter. And here, again, we note the uniform tendency of Shakespeare's moral philosophy, while Antonio and Sebastian, the two bad ambitious brothers, indulge in hollow jests and flippant sneers at the others, and are, moreover, querulous and unhappy. Coleridge has truly said-" Shakespeare has shown the tendency in bad men to indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions as a mode of getting rid of their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the . good, and. also of rendering the transition to wickedness easy,
Page 287:
by making the good ridiculous. Shakespeare never puts habitual scorn into the mouths of other than bad men." So with Antonio and Sebastian; and he must be a superficial reader who does not perceive in their hollow jests and bullying deportment a sense of ,unreality. Moreover, they lose their presence of mind in the storm, and betray their fear in abusing the captain of the vessel. They abuse him as though
he had raised the tempest; and they reproach the king of
" Sir, he may live.
I saw him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs: he trod the water,
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
The surge most swoln that met him: his bold head
'Bove the contentious waves he kept,
and oar'd Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke
To the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd
As stooping to relieve him. I not doubt
He came alive to land."
Let no one say that all this contrast in character-painting of the foregone individuals is not true to nature in her course of action. We cannot tell the deepest thoughts of men from their betrayals of feature-expression; but we may be sure that bad men are not happy. The celebrated "Junius," who certainly knew something of mankind, makes the following
Page 288:
affirmation : "After long experience of the world, I affirm before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy."
The manly and dreadnought character of the seafaring man-at all events, of the English sailor-is admirably hit off in the conduct of the boatswain in the midst of the terror and confusion of the sea-storm. His perfect manifestation of true courage-fully appreciating the danger they were threatened with, (and it is no " courage," but stupidity, that does not" appreciate" the danger which is imminent,) and yet maintaining an animated and encouraging tone :-" Heigh, my hearts !-cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare; take in
the topsail; 'tend to the master's whistle. Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room tJ1Zough!" The perfect ejaculation of a seaman,-" Blow till thou burst, so long as we are off shore." And then the rough and contemptuous check he gives the king and his courtiers, who endeavour to assume authority over him :
" I pray you now keep below.
"Gonz. Nay, good, be patient.
"Boats. When the sea is.-Hence !-What care these
roarers for the name of king? To cabin-silence; and trouble us not.
"G01zz. Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.
"Boats. None that I more love than myself. You are
a counsellor; if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more: use your authority. If you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap."
Gonzalo's reflection upon this blunt fellow harmonizes with his own lively temper and honest life:
" I have great comfort from this fellow;
methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him,-his complexion is perfect gallows.
Stand fast, good fate, to his hanging.
Make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advan
Page 289:
tage! If he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable."
And true to his character, when they are all in extremity, and the ship is going down, he maintains his humour to the last
"Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.-Long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death,"
The Boatswain's rough and straightforward speech at the end of the play comes in the midst of the poetical winding up like a well-contrasted colour in a picture, He is asked, " What news? "
" The best news is, that we have safely found
Our king and company; the next, our ship, Which but three glasses since we gave out split, Is tight, and yare, and bravely rigg'd, as when We first put out to sea:'
. Upon the technical orders and manoeuvrings of the vessel during the storm, Lord Mulgrave, Captain Glascock, and Sir Henry Mainwaring-an eminent naval tacticians-have borne testimony to Shakespeare's accuracy. Lord Mulgrave says that the poet" must have drawn his knowledge of seamanship from accurate personal observation, or have had a remarkable power of applying the information of others." And Captain Glascock says, .' The Boatswain in the . Tempest' delivers himself in the true vernacular style of the forecastle." Doctor Johnson-preferring pickthanking to approbation says, "The scene of the shipwreck exhibits some inaccuracies and contradictory orders." Whom does the critic show to be at fault?
There is stilI the" Mask" to speak of in this enchanting drama. As if he had not heaped beauty on beauty, rapture high, the poet yet" throws a tint upon the rose, and adds a
Page 290:
perfume to the violet." Only observe how, in a mere show - a casual and fleeting pageant-Shakespeare, with a prodigal hand, scatters some of his most sparkling gems! Here, too, where there is more simple description, and where other poets can with better chance compete with him, than in his transcendent power of dramatic passion, yet, even here, see how he surpasses them all-all the professors of Mask composition. Shall we in any of them find more pure rythmical harmony, or poetic diction to compare in chaste adherence to rustic nature, with Iris's invocation to Ceres?
"I Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas
Of wheat, rye,. barley, vetches, oats, and peas;
Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,
And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep;
Thy banks with peonied and 1ilied brims,
Which spongy April at thy hest betrims,
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom-groves,
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipp'd vineyard;
And thy sea-marge, sterile, and rocky-hard,
Where thou thyself dost air: the queen o' the sky,
Whose wat'ry arch and messenger am I,
Bids thee leave these; and with her sov'reign grace,
Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,
To come and sport. Her peacocks fly amain:
Approach rich Ceres, her to entertain."
And what poetry, in its class, is more fanciful and elegant
than the reply of Ceres to this invocation of Iris ?
"Hail, many-colour'd messenger, that ne'er
Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;
Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers
Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers;
And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown
My bosky acres, and my unshrubb'd down,
Rich scarf to my proud earth; why hath thy queen
Summoned me hither, to this short-grass’d green? "
Page 291:
Rich and gorgeous as Spenser is in his mythological dis
plays, he has nothing finer or more true than this pageant.
“Highest queen of state,
Great Juno comes; I know her by her gait,"
is like Homer; or, as the commentators would say-after trying to prove that he had no classical learning-" this phrase Shakespeare found in Homer." And what poet but the poet of poets would have thought of that lovely epithet-" ever harmless looks," as applied to those gentle imaginary beings, the Naiads? and how gracefully elegant is the manner of their summoning:
"You nymphs, call'd Naiads, of the winding brooks,
With your sedg'd crowns, and ever-harmless looks,
Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land
Answer your summons: Juno does command.
Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate
A contract of true love: be not too late.
You sun-burnt sicklemen, of August weary,
Come hither from the furrow and be merry:
Make holyday: your rye-straw hats put on,
And these fresh nymphs encounter everyone
In country footing."
They who can turn aside from the hard and macadamised road of dry duty and daily labour, to wander amid the glades and flowery knolls of the imaginary world of never-dying poetry, are privileged beings; for they have a sense and a sensation superadded to the ordinary dispensation of their fellows. They are, for the time, lifted" above the smoke and stir of this dim spot called earth;" they are in another world, and they revel in unworldly thoughts and unworldly associations; they become denizens of the golden sphere of romance; and romance is the salt in the ocean of life, keeping its waters sweet and fresh amidst the turmoiling and common-places of every-day action.
End Page 291
End Chapter on The Tempest