Mad Science Theater: Shakespeare’s The Tempest

By Jeanette N. Tran

Shakespeare was born in 1564, some two months before Galileo Galilei, who established the principles of the scientific method, and died in 1616, more than sixty years before the publication of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which demonstrated to the wider world modern science’s power to comprehend and transform the world. Accordingly, in Shakespeare’s age, during the late prehistory of modern science, the division between art and science was far more fluid than it is today. The term “science” existed, but it did not refer to the natural or physical sciences as we now know them, and referred instead to any recognized area of knowledge or study. The term “art” existed as well, but referred to the practical application of the principles of a recognized area of knowledge or study. Prospero, the central character of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is in this sense a scientist of the occult whose art manifests as illusion. Sumptuous feasts, Roman goddesses, vicious hounds, and, of course, the titular tempest all appear and disappear out of and into thin air at Prospero’s command. 

Before the invention of the modern disciplines of physics, chemistry, and biology, the study of magic was not regarded with the same derision that it is today, in part because, like the modern scientific disciplines, it was understood to have a practical application. Magic, which derives from the Persian word for wisdom, magia, was considered by many to be the highest form of natural philosophy. To quote Sir Francis Bacon—a cofounder, along with Galileo, of the empirical method—magic was “a sublime wisdom, and the knowledge of the universal consent of things.” The study of magic was generally held in the same, if not higher, esteem as geometry, grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, arithmetic, and music. In the Renaissance, to be “mad” about something was to be overly enthusiastic or infatuated with it. Thus Prospero, obsessed as he is with the occult, can be read as an early example of the “mad scientist” in literature. The modern reader may be tempted to dismiss Prospero’s illusions as mere sleights of hand, but Shakespeare’s play is determined to demonstrate how even illusions can have real consequences and inspire real action.

The Tempest is, on the most basic level, a revenge story. It begins on an unnamed island where Prospero (the Duke of Milan) and his daughter Miranda have been living for the past twelve years. Years earlier, before they fled Milan, Prospero—obsessed with his “secret studies”—had failed to anticipate his brother Antonio’s treasonous plot to murder him and Miranda and usurp his dukedom. He and Miranda narrowly escape from Milan on a boat that their counselor Gonzalo has filled with clothes, food, water, and—most importantly—magic books. When they first arrive on the island, the only other inhabitants are Caliban, the son of Sycorax—a witch who ruled the island until her death several years before the present of the play—and Ariel, an airy spirit. Both inhabitants quickly become, in their own ways, bound to Prospero: Caliban is enslaved by Prospero after he attempts to rape Miranda, and Ariel is bound to assist Prospero with his feats of magic in recompense for Prospero saving his life. With Ariel’s help, Prospero conjures the illusion of a tempest that appears to shipwreck Antonio (Prospero’s brother and nemesis), Alonso (the King of Naples), Prince Ferdinand (Alonso’s son), and some other attendants and ship crew—the play’s conclusion later reveals the ship to be completely intact—and sets the revenge plot in motion. 

The portrayal of magic in Shakespeare’s play is complex and multifaceted, and in the character of Prospero we witness Shakespeare interrogating the idea of what it means to approach or achieve the heights of human wisdom. By presenting Prospero’s study of magic as both the cause of his demise and the mechanism by which he restores himself and his daughter to power, The Tempest blurs the line between madness and mastery, decency and depravity. Even as Prospero’s work is driven by his ability to imagine a better world—in this case, one where the guilty are exposed and justice is served—the realization of this vision requires that he commit acts whose consequences compromise the moral high ground he holds over those he enslaves (Ariel and Caliban) and those he seeks retribution upon (Antonio and King Alonzo, who has failed to punish Antonio for his usurpation of Prospero’s dukedom). 

A crucial part of Prospero’s revenge plot, for example, involves putting Miranda in the position to be the next Queen of Naples by marrying her to Ferdinand. In order for Miranda and Ferdinand to fall in love on what appears to be of  their own accord, Prospero and Ariel plot an elaborate courtship in which Ferdinand is separated from his father during the illusory shipwreck, each man is led to believe that the other one is dead, and Ferdinand—ostensibly free to choose his own wife—is led to Miranda, whom he will woo. In addition to using his own daughter as a pawn in his revenge scheme, the collateral damage suffered by both Alonso and Ferdinand—the very real grief each suffer during the time they believe the other is dead—is made clear prior to their reunion, with Ariel’s plea to Prospero to break the magic “charm” and to have mercy on the shipwrecked men who are “brimful of sorrow and dismay.” Hinting at the ways in which Prospero’s revenge demands that all those on board the tempest-torn ship, even the most innocent such as Gonzalo, must suffer, Ariel says: “If you now beheld them, your affections would become tender.” “Dost thou think so, spirit?” Prospero asks, to which Ariel replies, “Mine would sir, were I human.”

Though Prospero’s obsessive desire to learn how to alter the nature of things should lead to wisdom (magia) and transcendence, instead it dehumanizes and damages him and everyone he encounters. As Ariel is tasked with teaching Prospero how to extend the same compassion and kindness to his fellow countrymen that Prospero himself sought during his twelve years in exile, it seems that Prospero has not learned much at all. Prospero’s studies have left him full of knowledge of the universal “consent” of things but bereft of empathy. It is only after the non-human Ariel speaks to him with compassionate words of the suffering of those around him that Prospero begins to understand what harm he may have done, and how to rectify it. And so, when juxtaposed to Prospero’s occult science, the primitive art of drama—the ability to produce wonderful effects, such as empathy, through imagination, poetry, and storytelling—is seen as having its own form of power. 

The Tempest—the first recorded performance of which took place on November 1, 1611 before James I and the English royal court—is often referred to as Shakespeare’s “farewell to the stage” because it was his last solo authored play (he would die five years later in 1616) and features a protagonist whose final gesture is a promise to drown his (magic) books. We feel close to Shakespeare in The Tempest, his most seemingly biographical play, and to Prospero, the “hero” of his play. Both magician (Prospero) and playwright (Shakespeare), after all, are illusionists who trade on feigned death. Moreover, in a speech that follows his final display of magic—the conjuring of the goddesses Ceres, Iris, and Juno—Prospero muses upon “the baseless fabric of this vision.” “The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, / the solemn temples, the great globe itself,” he speaks, “shall dissolve, / And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind.” The speech highlights the similarities between Prospero’s art and Shakespeare’s. The “great globe,” as well, clearly refers to the Globe Theater where most of Shakespeare’s plays were performed. And yet, while there are significant parallels between Prospero, the mad scientist, and Shakespeare, the playwright, so too are there differences, the most striking of which is that while Prospero’s art fades, Shakespeare’s endures even to this day, moving audiences and inspiring critical debate. 

At the play’s emotionally fraught conclusion, Prospero arranges the marriage of Miranda to Ferdinand, the Prince of Naples, and takes back his dukedom from Antonio, then abjures magic by breaking his staff, drowning his books, and freeing Ariel. All ends happily ever after, it would seem. Except for the fact that all is not quite so neatly resolved. Indeed, it is easy to get distracted by the play’s comedic resolution—in which those who were thought dead turn out to be actually alive, a marriage is proposed, and those who were in exile or lost at sea somehow find their way safely home—and forget about Caliban. 

The character of Caliban is among the most complex and problematic of Shakespeare’s oeuvre. The son of a witch, he is introduced as a primitive, sexually violent, half-human when the play begins. Indeed, one of the first things we learn about Caliban is his attempted rape of Miranda, for which he is enslaved. And yet, rather quickly, our conception of Caliban evolves. Consider, for starters, that it is at the hands of Prospero, the “civilized” European, that Caliban is enslaved. In addition, during his enslavement Caliban reveals himself capable of not only learning English but speaking in stunning lyrical terms. Caliban’s fate at the end of the play is left ambiguous. While all other character storylines are resolved, his is not. The final line he speaks is the remorseful and rueful: “I’ll be wise hereafter.” What are we, the audience, to make of this? We are not instructed, but are instead left to ponder, along with his fate. Our ability to grapple with and, to a degree, identify with Caliban, despite his otherness, is a testament to the superiority of Shakespeare’s probing, inconclusive empathetic science, his art that is always an interrogation of itself and its maker.