Act 4 Sc. 1 Flashcards
‘perform…another trick…bestow upon the eyes of this couple some vanity of my art’
AO1/2: Semantic field of performance, creates an air of metatheatricality. Implications of P as disingenuous, manipulative, creating illusions to trick.
AO5: Prospero is ‘a stage director’
‘Do you love me, master? No?’
Rhetorical questions = desperation and plaintive nature of Ariel who wishes for his master to respect him. This line creates sympathy for the abused Ariel as it shows how truly powerless he is against Prospero, his colonial captor who he revers.
‘all spirits…melted into thin air…baseless fabric of this vision’
‘melted into thin air…faded…shall dissolve…’
‘insubstantial pageant’
AO1/2: pageant = showing off, on display.
‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on…our little life is rounded with sleep.’
‘well done, my bird.’
‘born devil…whose nature nurture can never stick.’
AO1/2: ‘born devil’ - introduced nature vs nurture idea, colonial assertion that the native cannot be changed or ‘civilised’ into the ‘correct’ way of behaving.
‘devil’ - immorality & sin inextricably linked to the native.
- ‘nurture can never stick’ - highly ironic bc Prospero’s colonial definition of ‘nurture’ seems to derive from abuse so arg. Caliban lashes out because has been conditioned to act this way because of the influences around him.
- Arguably the attempts to socialise Caliban are the root cause of his ‘immoral’ behaviour with him adopting P’s proclivity for abuse of others and nature.
- AO5: Post col lens, XP is imploring those who believe in colonisation to reexamine their ideas of what constitutes as moral and immoral behaviour as often the colonisers are less civilised than the natives they wish to ‘rehabilitate’.
‘his body uglier grows, so his mind cankers’
AO1/2: wounded, misshapen & flawed mind and body.
‘uglier’ - grotesque, malformed, unnatural.
This could also be a form of racial discrimination, as he is the only non-Neapolitan in the play, he is the only character where we are constantly reminded of his ‘ugly’ exterior; because of the intolerance and disgust for ethnicity minorities/ people of colour
AO3: Physiognomy - jacobean society thought you could determine the quality of a person’s character by their appearance.
