“These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air; And, like thebaseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.” – Act IV, Scene i, lines 148-58

I found these lines spoken by Prospero at the end of the wedding masque to be striking in their somberness. After all, this should be a happy moment for Prospero. It is after all the the most joyous part of his plan (especially when juxtaposed to the equally fantastical Harpy made  banquet). Going back in the play i noticed other moments like this of somberness when joy seemed to be the more natural sentiment, as when he says “Poor worm, thou art infected” (Act III, Scene i,l. 37) upon watching Miranda and Ferdinand’s blossoming love from afar. We see this general sentiment pop up even later at the end of the scene, “So glad of this as they I cannot be, Who are surprised withal; but my rejoicing at nothing can be more.” (Act III, Scene i, li. 92-4)

The 19th century Critic and poet Edward Dowden said of prospero that there is“unmistakably a certain abandonment of the common joy of the world, a certain remoteness from the usual pleasures and sadnesses of life, and at the same time, all the more, this tender bending over those who are like children still absorbed in their individual joys and sorrows.” (Dowden 369)

Dowden and his contemporaries were some of the first critics to posit the theory that Prospero was a stand in for Shakespeare. Many of these critics tied Prospero’s lines: “I’ll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my book.” (Act V, Scene i, li. 59-62) with the biographical fact that The Tempest was the last play written entirely by Shakespeare to reach this conclusion. However, I find Dowden’s reasoning for this comparison to be especially convincing:

“It is not chiefly because Prospero is a great enchanter, now about to break his magic staff, to drown his book deeper than ever plummet sounded, to dismiss his airy spirits, and to return to the practical service of his Dukedom, that we identify Prospero in some measure with Shakspere himself. It is rather because the temper of Prospero, the grave harmony of his character, his self-mastery, his calm validity of will, his sensitiveness to wrong, his unfaltering justice, and with these, a certain abandonment, a remoteness from the common joys and sorrows of the world, are characteristic of Shakspere as discovered to us in all his latest plays.” (Dowden 371)

Compare The Tempest to an earlier comedy of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Both take place primarily in a green world and both have spirits. In Midsummer, however, the spirits dictate what happens to the humans. There is no mortal mastermind. It is as if Shakespeare, at a younger age is still in touch “with the common joys and sorrows of the world,” still finds them to be unexplainable. As if our fates were outside of our own machinations.

What would you say is the message Shakespeare is trying to get across about the “common joys and sorrows”?

Do you buy into this Shakespeare as Prospero thesis?

Shakespeare wrote Midsummer when he was about 30 years old and Tempest when he was 47, how are they different, is this affected by Shakespeare’s age?

works cited:

Dowden, Edward. Shakespeare: a critical study of his Mind and Art. 1875.