spirit, however, raised him to be a divinity --- Christ him self- was he not the embodiment of this contradiction? A celebrated sarcasm was once uttered concerning him: "Yes, Christ was able to save the whole world, but couldn't save himself." True, and his chief merit. Christ as individual was necessarily involved in the struggles of the world and perished; but as spirit he created it anew, and made it, so to speak, a different world, for its history since his time is the history of Christianity. So, too, Prospero as an individual is overwhelmed with the collisions of life; but as spirit he has mastered and portrayed them, and even converted his enemies into his own image. Prospero's career is now at an end; his work is done when the reconciliation is completed. He calls up once more the world of spirits, who have been his faithful instrumentalities, in order to bid them farewell forever. He abjures his rough magic-his Art; and soon he will break his staff- bury it in the earth and drown his book. For the present, Ariel is retained, who brings together the entire company and restores even the ship. "Then to the elements;" the play ends-his poetical activity ceases. The relation of the play to Shakespeare himself has frequently been discussed. Long ago a critic suggested that Prospero was Shakespeare. But the mistake has been that the play was supposed to represent Shakespeare's individual life. It might be taken as a portraiture of his poetic, universal life, or that of any great poet. Other mighty individuals have been suggested in place of Prospero, but in such cases there is merely the substitution of one name for another, whereby, however, nothing is explained. We can only say, as we began, Prospero is the Poet generically, who, in the first place, embodies the manifold themes of his Art in a dramatic form; and, in the second place, portrays himself in the act — portrays himself performing his own process also in a dramatic form. The Drama can go no further; it has attained the universality of Thought. Because Here also can be found the reason why it is impossible to give a theatrical representation of this play. What form shall we assign to Ariel and Caliban? A child for the one, and a low human shape for the other? Then we feel the impassible chasm which shuts off the Poet's creation from the stage. The pictorial art is equally impotent in reaching these conceptions? Why is this? Ariel and Caliban are thoughts more than images; they are not only far beyond the realm of sensuous representation, but even begin to transcend the realm of pure imagination. Hence we can read them and think them, but cannot image them with clearness; they lie too far in the sphere of unpicturable thought. If we now put together the beginning and the end of the drama, we find that Prospero departs from the Real, passes through the Ideal, and returns to the Real. The middle stage is alone portrayed in the play. It would seem, therefore, that Prospero, being forced to abandon the practical world on account of his devotion to his books and his Art, solves in his theoretical domain all the contradictions of finite existence, and thus returns in triumph to the practical world. Thought, therefore, though at first antagonistic, finally restores action. Here we behold a phase of the same mighty theme which is treated in Hamlet and in Goethe's Faust, notwithstanding the great dif ference of form between these poems. But, though this drama touches the Real World at both ends, its action lies wholly in the Ideal World. Tempest stands very high in the list of Shakespeare's dramas; in some respects it is his supreme work. Its wonderful types, its perfect symmetrical structure, its bright poetic language—but, above all, its profound signification — must always make it the favorite among the thoughtful readers of the Poet. It has not been adequately appreciated in the past; it is that one of Shakespeare's plays which has yet to find in the future a full recognition of its meaning and importance. This noblest literary form, invented and perfected by Shakespeare, which no poet since his time has been able to reproduce namely, mediation through an Ideal World-finds its culmination and perfection in Tempest. Moreover, it is a drama bursting the bounds of Dramatic Art and pointing beyond; theatrical representation utterly breaks down in an attempt to give the shapes here, for they refuse to be seen by the outer eye-only the inner eye can behold them. The old theater is gone, sunk beyond resurrection; its ghost may still linger, furnishing a place of amusement but no longer inhabiting the temple of culture. Tempest plainly indicates the limits of the old Drama; it is also a prophecy of a new Dramatic Form - will the prophecy be fulfilled? |