"Characters in The Tempest" an essay by William Hazlitt
An essay by William Hazlitt, on Shakespeare’s characters in
“The Tempest,” From the book Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays By William Hazlitt,
There can be little doubt that Shakespeare was the most universal
genius that ever lived. 'Either for tragedy, comedy, history,
pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable
or poem unlimited, he is the only man. Seneca cannot be too heavy,
nor Plautus too light for him.' He has not only the same absolute
command over our laughter and our tears, all the resources of
passion, of wit, of thought, of observation, but he has the most
unbounded range of fanciful invention, whether terrible or playful,
the same insight into the world of imagination that he has into the
world of reality; and over all there presides the same truth of
character and nature, and the same spirit of humanity. His ideal
beings are as true and natural as his real characters; that is, as
consistent with themselves, or if we suppose such beings to exist at
all, they could not act, speak, or feel otherwise than as he makes
them. He has invented for them a language, manners, and sentiments
of their own, from the tremendous imprecations of the Witches in
MACBETH, when they do 'a deed without a name', to the sylph-like
expressions 'of Ariel, who 'does his spiriting gently'; the
mischievous tricks and gossiping of Robin Goodfellow, or the uncouth
gabbling and emphatic gesticulations of Caliban in this play.
THE TEMPEST is one of the most original and perfect of Shakespeare's
productions, and he has shown in it all the variety of his powers.
It is full of grace and grandeur. The human and imaginary
characters, the dramatic and the grotesque, are blended together
with the greatest art, and without any appearance of it. Though he
has here given 'to airy nothing a local habitation and a name', yet
that part which is only the fantastic creation of his mind, has the
same palpable texture, and coheres 'semblably' with the rest. As the
preternatural part has the air of reality, and almost haunts the
imagination with a sense of truth, the real characters and events
partake of the wildness of a dream. The stately magician, Prospero,
driven from his dukedom, but around whom (so potent is his art) airy
spirits throng numberless to do his bidding; his daughter Miranda
('worthy of that name') to whom all the power of his art points, and
who seems the goddess of the isle; the princely Ferdinand, cast by
fate upon the haven of his happiness in this idol of his love; the
delicate Ariel; the savage Caliban, half brute, half demon; the
drunken ship's crew--are all connected parts of the story, and can
hardly be spared from the place they fill. Even the local scenery is
of a piece and character with the subject. Prospero's enchanted
island seems to have risen up out of the sea; the airy music, the
tempest-tossed vessel, the turbulent waves, all have the effect of
the landscape background of some fine picture. Shakespeare's pencil
is (to use an allusion of his own) 'like the dyer's hand, subdued to
what it works in'. Everything in him, though it partakes of 'the
liberty of wit', is also subjected to 'the law' of the
understanding. For instance, even the drunken sailors, who are made
reeling-ripe, share, in the disorder of their minds and bodies, in
the tumult of the elements, and seem on shore to be as much at the
mercy of chance as they were before at the mercy of the winds and
waves. These fellows with their sea-wit are the least to our taste
of any part of the play: but they are as like drunken sailors as
they can be, and are an indirect foil to Caliban, whose figure
acquires a classical dignity in the comparison.
The character of Caliban is generally thought (and justly so) to be
one of the author's masterpieces. It is not indeed pleasant to see
this character on the stage any more than it is to see the God Pan
personated there. But in itself it is one of the wildest and most
abstracted of all Shakespeare's characters, whose deformity whether
of body or mind is redeemed by the power and truth of the
imagination displayed in it. It is the essence of grossness, but
there is not a particle of vulgarity in it. Shakespeare has
described the brutal mind of Caliban in contact with the pure and
original forms of nature; the character grows out of the soil where
it is rooted uncontrolled, uncouth and wild, uncramped by any of the
meannesses of custom. It is 'of the earth, earthy'. It seems almost
to have been dug out of the ground, with a soul instinctively
superadded to it answering to its wants and origin. Vulgarity is not
natural coarseness, but conventional coarseness, learnt from others,
contrary to, or without an entire conformity of natural power and
disposition; as fashion is the commonplace affectation of what is
elegant and refined without any feeling of the essence of it.
Schlegel, the admirable German critic on Shakespeare observes that
Caliban is a poetical character, and 'always speaks in blank verse'.
He first comes in thus:
Caliban. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen,
Drop on you both: a south-west blow on ye,
And blister you all o'er!
Prospero. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee: thou shalt be pinch'd
As thick as honey-combs, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made 'em.
Caliban. I must eat my dinner.
This island's mine by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou tak'st from me. When thou camest first,
Thou strok'dst me, and mad'st much of me; would'st give me
Water with berries in 't; and teach me how
To name the bigger light and how the less
That burn by day and night; and then I lov'd thee,
And show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:
Curs'd be I that I did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Who first was mine own king; and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o' th' island.
And again, he promises Trinculo his services thus, if he will free
him from his drudgery.
I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries,
I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.
I pr'ythee 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 marmozet: I'll bring thee
To clust'ring filberds; and sometimes I'll get thee
Young scamels from the rock.
In conducting Stephano and Trinculo to Prospero's cell, Caliban
shows the superiority of natural capacity over greater knowledge and
greater folly; and in a former scene, when Ariel frightens them with
his music, Caliban to encourage them accounts for it in the eloquent
poetry of the senses:
Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That if I then had waked after long sleep,
Would make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me: when I wak'd
I cried to dream again.
This is not more beautiful than it is true. The poet here shows us
the savage with the simplicity of a child, and makes the strange
monster amiable. Shakespeare had to paint the human animal rude and
without choice in its pleasures, but not without the sense of
pleasure or some germ of the affections. Master Barnardine in
Measure for Measure, the savage of civilized life, is an admirable
philosophical counterpart to Caliban.
Shakespeare has, as it were by design, drawn off from Caliban the
elements of whatever is ethereal and refined, to compound them in
the unearthly mould of Ariel. Nothing was ever more finely conceived
than this contrast between the material and the spiritual, the gross
and delicate. Ariel is imaginary power, the swiftness of thought
personified. When told to make good speed by Prospero, he says, 'I
drink the air before me.' This is something like Puck's boast on a
similar occasion, 'I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty
minutes.' But Ariel differs from Puck in having a fellow-feeling in
the interests of those he is employed about. How exquisite is the
following dialogue between him and Prospero!
Ariel. Your charm so strongly works 'em,
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.
Prospero. Dost thou think so, spirit?
Ariel. Mine would, sir, were I human.
Prospero. 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'd as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?
It has been observed that there is a peculiar charm in the songs
introduced in Shakespeare, which, without conveying any distinct
images, seem to recall all the feelings connected with them, like
snatches of half-forgotten music heard indistinctly and at
intervals. There is this effect produced by Ariel's songs, which (as
we are told) seem to sound in the air, and as if the person playing
them were invisible. We shall give one instance out of many of this
general power.
Enter Ferdinend; and Ariel invisible, playing and singing.
Ariel's Song
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands;
Curt'sied when you have, and kiss'd,
(The wild waves whist;)
Foot it featly here and there;
And sweet sprites the burden bear.
[Burden dispersedly.]
Hark, hark! bowgh-wowgh: the watch-dogs bark,
Bowgh-wowgh.
Ariel. Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry cock-a-doodle-doo.
Ferdinand. Where should this music be? in air or earth?
It sounds no more: and sure it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank
Weeping against the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air; thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather:--but 'tis gone.--
No, it begins again.
Ariel's Song
Full fathom Eve thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change,
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell--
Hark! I now I hear them, ding-dong bell.
[Burden ding-dong.]
Ferdinand. The ditty does remember my drown'd father.
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owns: I hear it now above me.
The courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda is one of the chief
beauties of this play. It is the very purity of love. The pretended
interference of Prospero with it heightens its interest, and is in
character with the magician, whose sense of preternatural power
makes him arbitrary, tetchy, and impatient of opposition.
The Tempest is a finer play than the Midsummer Night's Dream, which
has sometimes been compared with it; but it is not so fine a poem.
There are a greater number of beautiful passages in the latter. Two
of the most striking in The Tempest are spoken by Prospero. The one
is that admirable one when the vision which he has conjured up
disappears, beginning, 'The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous
palaces,' &c., which has so often been quoted that every schoolboy
knows it by heart; the other is that which Prospero makes in
abjuring his art:
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing
When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid
(Weak masters tho' ye be) I have be-dimm'd
The noon-tide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I giv'n fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have wak'd their sleepers; op'd, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure; and when I have requir'd
Some heav'nly music, which ev'n now I do,
(To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for) I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fadoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I'll drown my book.
We must not forget to mention among other things in this play, that
Shakespeare has anticipated nearly all the arguments on the Utopian
schemes of modern philosophy:
Gonzalo. Had I the plantation of this isle, my lord--Antonio. He'd
sow't with nettle-seed. Sebastian. Or docks or mallows. Gonzalo. And
were the king on't, what would I do? Sebastian. 'Scape being drunk,
for want of wine. Gonzalo. I' th' 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; wealth, poverty, And use of
service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth,
vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No
occupation, all men idle, all, And women too; but innocent and pure:
No sov'reignty. Sebastian. And yet he would be king on't. Antonio.
The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning. Gonzalo.
All things in common nature should produce Without sweat or
endeavour. Treason, felony, Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any
engine Would I not have; but nature should bring forth, Of its own
kind, all foison, all abundance To feed my innocent people!
Sebastian. No marrying 'mong his subjects? Antonio. None, man; all
idle; whores and knaves. Gonzalo. I would with such perfection
govern, sir, T' excel the golden age. Sebastian. Save his majesty!
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