The Characters Metamorphoses In Shakespeare’s Tempest-Universe Essays

The Characters Metamorphoses In Shakespeares Tempest-Universe In the play The Tempest, Shakespeare provides a unique and alternate universe for his characters to function in on the magical island. In this universe there are both native characters Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, and Caliban, who have lived on the island previously, and external humanness characters, namely Alonso, Ferdinand, Antonio, Sebastian, Stephano, Trinculo, and Gonzalo, who have been forced upon the island. While the different characters histories cross paths in the past, the clear and present plane section between the two groups immediate situation represents the division in their differing kind of spiritual journey. That is, firearm the natives seek rejuvenation from isolation outward, the shipwrecked characters seek rejuvenation from the outside world inward, on an island of solitude. As David Bevington notes in the substructure to the Bantam edition of the textShakespeare creates in The Tempes t an idealized world of imagination, a place of magical rejuvenation same the forests of A Midsummer Nights conceive of and As You Like It. Yet the journey is no escape from reality, for the island shows men what they are and what they ought to be. Even its location juxtaposes real world with idealized landscape like Platos New Atlantis or Thomas Mores Utopia, Shakespeares island is to be found both somewhere and nowhere. (xvii)In this Tempest-universe Prospero rules as a kind of artist-king, creator, and magician. Invested with these qualities he represents the God-figure of the universe, effecting change in others, while consistently demonstrating God-like qualities in himself the ability to perform miracles, grace, and forgiveness. Ul... ...and Dreamworks, 2000.-Eliot, T.S. The Complete Poems and Plays. New York Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980.-Howse, Ernest Marshall. Spiritual Values in Shakespeare. New York Abingdon Press, 1955.-Hunter, Robert Grams. Shakespear e and the Comedy of Forgiveness. New York Columiba University Press, 1966.-Knight, G. Wilson. Myth and Miracle An strive on the Mystic Symbolism of Shakepeare. London Ed. J. Burrow & Co., LTD., 1929.-Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare As You Like It. New York W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.-Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare Hamlet. New York W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.-Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare Macbeth. New York W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.-West, Robert H. Ceremonial Magic in The Tempest. Knoxville The University of Tennessee Press, 1964.