A/Prof Liam Semler
University of Sydney
English Association Conference
2014: Beyond the Horizon
11 October 2014
 Explore The Tempest
 Explore ‘discovery’
 Keep in mind the educational context
 Sell The Tempest as an excellent text to teach and learn
at school
 Advocate diverse modes of teaching and learning The
Tempest
 Part 1: Educational Terrorism
 Some introductory thoughts about The Tempest,
discovery and pedagogy
 Part 2: Discovering The Tempest
 Structure
 Genre
 Character
 Some introductory thoughts about The Tempest, discovery
and pedagogy
 Dis-covery as expository narration
 Transmission model (clarify)
 Dis-covery as presentation of an enigma
 Problem-based model (perplex)
 Discovery as personal experience which expands ones
reality
 Student-led model (own)
 Prospero: ‘Tis time / I should inform thee further....
The hour’s now come; / The very minute bids thee ope
thine ear. / Obey and be attentive.’ (1.2.22-23, 36-38)
 Prospero: ‘At picked leisure...single I’ll resolve you /
(Which to you shall seem probable) of every / These
happened accidents’ (5.1.247-50)
 Prospero: ‘I must / Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple /
Some vanity of mine art’ (4.1.39-40)
 SD: ‘Here Prospero discovers Ferdinand and Miranda, playing at
chess’ (5.1.171 SD).
 Ferdinand:
Ariel:
Ferdinand:
‘Where should this music be? I’th’air, or th’earth?....
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air.’
‘Full fathom five thy father lies...’
‘The ditty does remember my drowned father...’
(1.2.388, 392-94, 397, 406)
 Ariel: [If you saw the sorrow and dismay of your enemies it
would likely make your ‘affections...become tender’ towards
them]
Prospero:
‘Dost thou think so, spirit?’
Ariel:
‘Mine would, sir, were I human.’
Prospero:
‘And mine shall.’ (5.1.9-20)
 Alonso: ‘Whe[th]er thou be’st he or no, / Or some enchanted
trifle to abuse me / ... I not know.... Thy dukedom I resign and do
entreat / Thou pardon me my wrongs’ (5.1.111-13, 118-19)
 Miranda: ‘O wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there
here! / How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world / That
has such people in’t’ (5.1.181-84)
 Prospero as homeschoolmaster
 Multisensory perception: the storm (1.1)
 Prospero as educational terrorist
 Wonder and delight (liberation)
 Constraint and pain (oppression)
 Structure
 Exposition, enigma, for students
 Genre
 Exposition, enigma, for students
 Character
 Exposition, enigma, for students
 Folio text (1623) in 5 Acts
 9 concentric scenes
 3 neoclassical unities
 Place, action, time
 4 comedic stages
 Prologue (storm)
 Protasis (opening establishment of plot)
 Epitasis (complication)
 Catastrophe (resolution into happy comedic ending)
 The Tempest is not Shakespeare’s last solo-authored
play.
 The Tempest as we have it is coauthored.
 Scrivener Ralph Crane composed the stage directions
after viewing a performance sometime before 1623 and
possibly after Shakespeare’s death.
 Crane uses uniquely descriptive (unShakespearean)
SDs to make the play unusually vivid, readerly,
multisensory, actualized.
2.2 Enter Caliban with a burden of wood, a noise of
thunder heard
3.1 Enter Ferdinand bearing a log
5.1.57 SD Here enters Ariel before; then Alonso with a
frantic gesture, attended by Gonzalo, Sebastian and
Antonio in like manner, attended by Adrian and
Francisco. They all enter the circle which Prospero had
made and there stand charmed, which Prospero
observing, speaks:
3.3 Solemn and strange music, and Prospero on the top
(invisible). Enter several strange shapes, bringing in a
banquet, and dance about it with gentle actions of
salutations, and inviting the King etc. to eat, they depart.
Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel, like a harpy, claps his
wings upon the table, and with a quaint device the banquet
vanishes.
He [i.e. Ariel] vanishes in thunder. Then, to soft music, enter
the shapes again and dance with mocks and mows, and carry
out the table.
 Timelines activity (group or individual task)
 Create detailed timelines of all significant
events/discoveries for specific character(s)
 Prospero, Antonio
 Caliban, Ariel
 Ferdinand, Miranda
 The boat, Milan, the island
 How does the timeline illuminate the character, the
play’s concerns and Shakespeare’s artistry?
 Romance
 S.T. Coleridge (posthumously pub. ‘Notes,’ 1836)
 Edward Dowden, Shakspere: A Critical Study of his Mind and Art
(1875)
 Barbara Fuchs (2004) and Patricia Parker (1979)
 Italian pastoral comedy (scripted or improvisational)
 Il Mago, La Nave, Li Tre Satiri
 See: Kevin Gilvary, ‘The Tempest as an Italian Pastoral Comedy’
(2007)
 Tragicomedy
 A tragie-comedie is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but
in respect it wants deaths, which is inough to make it no tragedie,
yet brings some neere it, which is inough to make it no comedie.
(John Fletcher, ‘To the Reader,’ The Faithful Shepherdess, 1609-10 (a
trans. of Guarini’s Il pastor Fido, 1601; B&F Works 3.497)
 The play contains a masque of spirits: 4.1.60-142.
What does it mean for the whole play?
 The play contains a chess game: 5.1.171 SD.
What does it mean for the whole play?
 What sort of a ‘new world’ (eco-feminist-colonial-SF)
narrative is The Tempest?
 Compare Percy Stowe’s Tempest (1908)
 Compare Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet (1956)
 Compare Taymor’s The Tempest (2010)
 How does the ‘new world’ and our response to it
change?
 How does genre function for each film?
 Prospero as political strategist
 Play is not a love story, but a dynastic fight between Prospero
and Antonio
 Ferdinand as new, neoplatonic Aeneas (political story)
 Compare Virgil, Aeneid book 4 on Aeneas and Dido
 Compare log speeches of Ferdinand and Caliban (2.2 and 3.1)
 Prospero as/not Sycorax
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Compare Ovid, Metamorphosis book 7 on Medea
Compare Prospero’s renunciation speech (5.1.33-57)
Compare Prospero’s treatment of Ariel and Caliban
Compare Prospera as scientist-alchemist in Taymor’s
Tempest
 Caliban as/not cannibal
 Compare Montaigne’s ‘Of cannibals’
 Caliban as/not human
 ‘savage and deformed slave’
 Ariel
 ‘Full fathom five…’ (1.2.397-405)
 ‘You are three men of sin…’(3.3.53-82)
 ‘Where the bee sucks…’(5.1.88-94)
 Caliban
 ‘As wicked dew…’ (1.2.322-75)
 ‘All the infections’ (2.2.1-14)
 ‘No more dams I’ll make for fish’(2.2.176-82)
 ‘The isle is full of noises’(3.2.135-43)
Scene from Shakespeare's The Tempest, by Hogarth; c. 1735