Essay on Shakespeares The Tempest as a Microcosm of Society

The Tempest as Microcosm of Society The Tempest is one of Shakespeares most universal plays and, not coincidentally, is very much concerned with human behavior and emotion. As John Wilders observes in The Lost Garden, â€Å"Prospero’s island is what the sociologists call a ‘model’ of human society. Its cast of characters allows Shakespeare to portray in microcosm nearly all the basic, fundamental social relationships: those of a ruler to his territory, a governor to his subjects, a father to his child, masters to servants, male to female, and the rational to the irrational within the human microcosm itself ([London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1978], 127). Prospero himself is an observer of and experimenter with human behavior: he†¦show more content†¦Hirst, The Tempest: Text and Performance [London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1984], 28). Prospero’s two servants, Ariel and Caliban, are the first subjects of his experimentation. Terry Eagleton explains, â€Å"If Ariel needs to be tied down to the life of the body, the creaturely Caliban needs to be cranked up to the level of language. Ariel and Caliban symbolize, respectively, pure language and pure body, a freedom which threatens to transgress all restraint and a sensuous enslavement to material limit. Prospero strives to bring both of them within that dialectic of activity and passivity, bondage and transcendence, which for Shakespeare is prototypically human† (William Shakespeare [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986], 95). When he first arrived on the island and discovered Caliban, Prospero treated the monster â€Å"with human care† (1.2.346; all references to line numbers are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974]). He tried, with Miranda’s assistance, to educate and civilize Caliban, the offspring of a witch and an incubus, the very epitome of ignorance, bestiality, and treachery. Caliban explains that Prospero taught him â€Å"how / To name the bigger light, and how the less, / That burn by day and night (1.2.334 ­36), and Miranda says, â€Å"I pitied thee, / Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour / One thing or other† (1.2.353 ­55). This particularShow MoreRelatedShakespeare Uses His Play the Tempest to Depict a Microcosm of His Society.1645 Words   |  7 Pagesplay The Tempest, Shakespeare uses the stage to present to the audience a microcosm of society. He minimizes the ideologies of his society so that they are represented through the characters and settings of the play. Through the use of dramatic conventions, the playwright examines human behaviour and emotion on a smaller scale. The shipwreck and the island are a world of their own; however, they are both representative of wider ideas. The play reflects how human nature shapes a society. 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