Question: Comment On The New World That Prospero Creates and Rules in The Tempest

Question: Comment on the new world that Prospero creates and rules in The Tempest.
Shakespeare has presented an enchanted island which is full of “noises, sounds and sweet
airs that give delight”. This island is the binary opposite to the real world, and in spite of that, it
is not an Utopia since many dystopic elements like treachery, jealousy, domination and many
other things are lurking in the ambience of the Island. Like the ideal world of Keats, this
enchanted island is not the world of unmixed joy and blessing. This island provides a contrast,
and simultaneously, it also perpetuates the vices practiced in the real world.
This land is too strange for natural eyes to believe, and for the first time, a willing
suspension of disbelief is created on the mind of the audience for its strange qualities. This land
is full of strange creatures which are primordially simple. People are delighted by the masque of
spirits which are the “most majestic vision”. Clifford Leech says that the land provides “an
idyllic union of rest and motion; pleasure and pain”. Prospero, being banished from the land of
Milan, gets settled in this ravishingly beautiful island where he becomes the “master of his lonely
magic” says Professor G Wilson Knight. Prospero had magic in Italian land also but his magical
excellence gets the perfect soil for germination in this “faery land forlon”, and thus, it can be said
that the land is the abode of supernaturalism, magic and mystery.
In spite of all that, this land has also presented in such a way where evil hovers high in
the limitless sky. Here, Prospero is not that naïve Duke who had single minded devotion for
study, but rather, “from a naïve and gullible ruler and scholar, he has been transformed into a
shrewd Machiavellian Prince” says Frank Kermode. He, wholeheartedly, engages himself in the
power relations of the Island. He becomes the colonial ruler, and in the name of so called
civilizational values and to establish order amidst of chaos, he uses the tool of domination. Like
European colonizers, he has, according to the words of Franz Fanon, “a fixed concept of Negro”
and “classifying, imprisoning, primitivising and decivilising” the black people. Ngugi
Wa’Thoingo says that “Language is the means of spiritual domination” and by means of
language, he subjugates the colonial subjects. Therefore, the land is presented in a dystopic light.
The above discussions can be described through the character of Caliban who is a hybrid
individual according to the theory of Homi K. Bhabha. Bhabha’s hybrid characters are black in
color but they are educated with Western education which helps them to conduct revolution
again the Oriental discourse. Likewise, Prospero, in order to establish and perpetuate his rule in
the enchanted island like Lord Macaulay, he teaches language to Caliban but this native is not
that much obedient subject but rather, he becomes a rebel and curses Prospero through English
language: “You taught me language… I know how to curse”. Prospero and Miranda uses many
abusive language towards Caliban: “abhorred slave”, “a thing most brutish”, “a born devil, on
whose nature/ Nurture can never stick…his body uglier grows, so his mind cancers.” Therefore,
the power relations are at work in this enchanted island, and the land becomes a kind of
miniature of the real world.
The enchanted island is also fraught with fraud, jealousy and treachery. When the king
along with his courtiers are lulled to sleep by the numbing music of Ariel, then Antonio, the
usurper starts his plan. Professor G Wilson Knight compares his treachery with the “motiveless
malignity” of Iago in Othello. Previously, he had lured the mind of the king against the offspring
of his own mother; and now, with his full effort, he plays with the mind of Sebastian to
overthrow his own brother. He says: “My strong imagination sees a crown/ Dropping upon thy
head.” Despite having these destructive elements, they come out futile by the good magic of
Prospero. Conversely, Prospero had been dashed out from the land of Milan by sibling rivalry.
Therefore, despite being fraught with fraud, this enchanted island is such a place where human
jealousy, plotting come out futile.
This island is not only filled up with scenic beauties and strange creatures, but the
creatures also display a high degree of individuality and their mind is full of creative imaginative
excellence. Caliban is not just a dumb brute as described by Prospero, rather he “has a poetic
character and always speaks in blank verse” says Hazlitt. He describes the glamour and grandeur
of the land to Stephano and Trinculo. He is also witty and humorous, and frequently he sings:
“Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban.” Peter Hulme says: “Caliban, though defeated, is allowed to retain his
dignity in spite of Prospero’s best effort to degrade him.” Thus, the inhabitants of the island is
also creative and imaginative- creation and imagination is not the only task of the Westerns.
The beauty of the land is also described by the “noble, Neapolitan Gonzalo” who is
enthralled by the “lush and lusty grass” of the land. He, unlike Prospero and other courtiers, does
not consider the people of the land as vile and brute, rather, he deems them as “idle”, “innocent
and pure.” He says that the “monster shape[d]” people are also “gentle, kind” than the civilized
nations. He wants to establish a kind of commonwealth where things will produce naturally
without any effort and “sweat”. Though he forms his ideas of the land on the basis of
assumptions which confronts the discourses of Orientalism propounded by Edward Said, his
ideas are a kind of testimony that the land is far better than the center of civilization.
Critics are divided in their opinion about the land-some considers the land as a Utopia
where good resides and evil evaporates; conversely, there are some critics who consider the land
as a dark and vile place like the real world but actually, as stated earlier, the land is a miniature
of the world where good prevails though having some element of uttermost evil. The land can be
considered as a land of fantasy and romance but not as a real world to reside, and therefore,
Prospero “put[s] the wild waters in roar” so that he can go back to the place he belongs. All the
major characters start for the real world from the world of imagination which reminds a reader
about the ending of As You Like It.

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