Comment
on the allegorical dimensions of The
Tempest.
William Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest, is rich in
symbolism. It has been interpreted in several ways by critics and reader alike.
There are fanciful interpretations attached to the characters of Prospero,
Caliban, Ariel, Miranda and several others. It has been called a complex piece
of dramatic art.
One
critic considers Prospero as a man of genius, a perfect artist lacking at first
in a practical sense for worldly success. Subsequently, he attains the height
of his supernatural powers. Miranda, for him, represents Art in its infancy.
Caliban stands for the lower human passions and appetites whom Prospero subdues
to his service and who he vainly tries to lift to a higher level. Caliban
trying to rape Miranda signifies the lower passions of mankind attempting to
violate the purity of Art. Ariel represents the imaginative genius of poetry
liberated from long slavery to evil influences, in this case the wicked witch
Sycorax. The marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda shows Shakespeare's view that
success in art is possibly only through the hard labor amounting to toil.
Another
critic opines that in writing this play Shakespeare was answering the great
question of the day, namely, the justification of European usurpation of the
backward and uncivilized areas of Earth. Shakespeare felt a warm interest in
the English colonization. Caliban is interpreted as a mere anagram of cannibal,
representing state of barbarism over which Prospero, the European colonizer,
establishes his just sway in order to carry the torch of civilization to the
remotest parts of this planet. Gonzalo's description of an ideal republic in
Act II is a satire on the prevailing systems of governance......................................................
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