The Tempest - Relationship Between Prospero and Caliban
With close reference to appropriately selected episodes write about the dramatic methods Shakespeare uses to present the relationship between Prospero and Caliban.
‘The Tempest’ was the last play written by Shakespeare and is widely regarded to be his greatest play. ‘The Tempest’ is thought to have been written about the year 1610. All of Shakespeare’s previously used genres are in the play: romance, tragedy, comedy and history. ‘The Tempest’ adheres to the three classical unities, unity of time, action and place. ‘The Tempest’ takes place in a twenty-four hour time period which abides by the unity of time. Unity of action is adhered to by the fact there is only one main plot being Prospero’s attempts at regaining his dukedom. Disregarding the ship at the beginning of the play, the unity of place is used by the player being staged on an island the whole time. A multi-sensory experience is created on stage by Shakespeare’s use of sound, exotic images, music and the traditional masque, making it very popular with the aristocratically seventeenth century audience. The play focused on different themes including magic, nature versus nurture, harmony/disharmony and colonialism.
In this essay, I will be writing about how Shakespeare presents the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. In the Tempest, nearly every scene in the play conveys a relationship between someone who possesses a great deal of power and someone else who is admittedly a subject of the power. The play explores the master-servant dynamic most harshly in cases in which the harmony of the relationship is or has been threatened or disrupted in some way, as by the rebellious nature of a servant or the exclusion of a master.
In the opening scene of the play the ‘servant’ is angry towards his ‘masters’, whose exclusion threatens to lead to a shipwreck in the storm. As time passes in the play, master-servant relationships become more dominant. “What cares these roarers for the name of King? To Cabin:
‘The Tempest’ was the last play written by Shakespeare and is widely regarded to be his greatest play. ‘The Tempest’ is thought to have been written about the year 1610. All of Shakespeare’s previously used genres are in the play: romance, tragedy, comedy and history. ‘The Tempest’ adheres to the three classical unities, unity of time, action and place. ‘The Tempest’ takes place in a twenty-four hour time period which abides by the unity of time. Unity of action is adhered to by the fact there is only one main plot being Prospero’s attempts at regaining his dukedom. Disregarding the ship at the beginning of the play, the unity of place is used by the player being staged on an island the whole time. A multi-sensory experience is created on stage by Shakespeare’s use of sound, exotic images, music and the traditional masque, making it very popular with the aristocratically seventeenth century audience. The play focused on different themes including magic, nature versus nurture, harmony/disharmony and colonialism.
In this essay, I will be writing about how Shakespeare presents the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. In the Tempest, nearly every scene in the play conveys a relationship between someone who possesses a great deal of power and someone else who is admittedly a subject of the power. The play explores the master-servant dynamic most harshly in cases in which the harmony of the relationship is or has been threatened or disrupted in some way, as by the rebellious nature of a servant or the exclusion of a master.
In the opening scene of the play the ‘servant’ is angry towards his ‘masters’, whose exclusion threatens to lead to a shipwreck in the storm. As time passes in the play, master-servant relationships become more dominant. “What cares these roarers for the name of King? To Cabin: