English A2 - The Tempest Flashcards
1) Prospero as a coloniser
Q - “this island is mine by Sycorax my mother”
Q - “lets visit Caliban my slave [who] does make our fire, fetch in our wood, and serves in offices that profit us”
A03 - “in Caliban, Shakespeare depicts, with almost prophetic insight, the history of the white man’s attitude to indigenous populations: the change from kindness to oppression”
A04 - “It has been virtually impossible to dissociate the drama from the discovery of the New World and the colonisation of the Americas” - Diana Devlin
- Our view of Caliban is very much influenced by knowledge of the social context in which the play was written
2) Prospero as a sorcerer
Q - “I will rend an oak and peg thee in his knotty entrails until thou hast howled away twelve years”
Q - “Sometime am I all wound with adders, who with cloven tongues, do hiss me into madness”
Q - “graves at my command have waked their sleepers […] by my so potent art”
A03 - “Prospero’s magical practices, however elevated they might appear are in fact as damnable as blackest witchcraft” - Anthony Harris
A04 - Shakespeare found inspiration for Prospero’s final invocation of his spirits in the words of the witch Medea in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
3) Prospero as Shakespeare
Q - “the great globe itself shall dissolve”
Q - “these our actors, as I foretold you, are all spirits and are now melted into air, into thin air”
Q - “we are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little lives are rounded with a sleep”
A03 - “Throughout the play Prospero uses his powers to control the characters he brings onto the island, making them, in effect, performers in his composition” - Andrew Green
A04 - Shakespeare was at the height of his literary powers, similarly was Prospero who displays his magic in the manipulation of almost every character in the play
4) Prospero as benevolent and a liberator
Q - “I do forgive thy rankest fault all of them”
Q - “I shall break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my book” - syntactical parallelism
A03 - “the play is about Prospero’s own discovery of an ethic of forgiveness, and renunciation of his magical powers” - Madeleine Doran
- “Prospero’s great scheme is to bring about repentance and reconciliation” - Stephen Orgel
- “Prospero’s art is not only a beneficent magic in contrast to an evil one […] it is a means of grace”
A04 - John Dee was a scientist but also a magus (someone who dabbled in magic) therefore seen in a positive light
5) Prospero as affectionate
Q - “O, a cherubim tho wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile, infused with a fortitude from heaven”
Miranda is a piece of christian virtue
A03 - “Prospero’s art is not only a beneficent one in contrast to an evil one […] it is a means of grace”
A04 - Divine Right of Kings (James 1) - “supremest thing upon earth”, “divine power”, “fathers of families”
1) Caliban as a monster
Q - “hag-seed”, “tortoise”, “jesting-monkey”, “monster”, “devil”
Q - “I must eat my dinner” - governed by his appetite
Q - “All the infections the sun sucks up, from bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper Fall, and make him by inch meal a disease”
Q - “thou didst seek to violate the honour of my child”
A03 - “the play opposes civilised and sophisticated values with ‘primitive’ existence” - Kermode
- “Caliban is beyond regeneration and the civilising process is infinitely slow” - Anna Larson
- “Has all the discontents and malice of a witch, and of a devil” - John Dryden (1679)
A04 - Caliban is an anagram for cannibal, the word of which was coined to describe an inhabitant of the West Indies, derived from the french word for wild
- Strachey said the islands ‘can be no habitation for men, but rather given over to devils and wicked spirits’
2) Caliban is naturally subservient
Q - “I’ll kiss thy foot prithee be my master”
Q - “freedom, highway, highway, freedom”
Q - “kiss the book”/”celestial liquor”
Q - “I’ll be wise hereafter and seek for grace”
A03 - “it is when he learns the ways of men and takes to the bottle that he seems diminished” - Anna Larson
- some critics argue that Caliban has a natural desire to be servile
3) Caliban is an oppressed native of the island
Q - “this island is mine by sycorax my mother which thou tak’st from m”
Q - “Sometime am I all wound with adders who with cloven tongues do hiss me into madness”
Q - were I in England now and had but this fish painted not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver”
A03 - “Caliban is demoralised, detribalised, dispossessed” - Jonathan Miller
- “it has been virtually impossible to dissociate the drama from the discovery of the new world and the colonisation of the Americas” - Diana Devlin
A04 - Montaigne called into question our confidence in civilisation by suggesting that a ‘barbarous or savage’ land is only called that because it is unfamiliar to ours
- Shakespeare draws on the discovery of the New World, fascination with the Other
4) Caliban shows a gentle, spiritual, noble and generous side
Q - “when thou camst first […] I loved thee and showed thee all the qualities o’th’isle”
Q - “Be not afeared, 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 […] the clouds methought would open, and show riches to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again”
A03 - Coleridge deems Caliban as a noble being
- “Caliban’s receptiveness to the island expressed a spirituality which raises him above base humanity” - Diana Devlin
A04 - Montaigne called into question our confidence in civilisation by suggesting that a ‘barbarous or savage’ land is only called that because it is unfamiliar to ours
1) Ariel as Prospero’s conscience
Q - “Your charm so strongly works ‘em that if you now beheld them your affections would become tender […] mine would sir were I human”
Q - “His tears run down his bear like eaves of reeds” - simile making it relatable to the everyday life of towns and villages
Q - “this music crept by me upon the waters, allaying both their fury and my passion, with its sweet air”
Q - “nothing of him that doth fade”
A03 - “Ariel embodies the elements of air and fire and is called ‘fine apparition’” - Diana Devlin
“the show is a call to repentance issued in the severest possible language” - Kermode
2) Ariel as subservient
Q - “All hail, great master, grave sir, hail! I come to answer thy best pleasure”
Q - Prospero calls him “my chick”, “my bird” showing a mutual dependence between the two
