Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens. (4.4.135–46)
The only regular iambic pentameter line in this speech is 144: “So singular in each particular,” but the internal rhyme of “singular” and “particular” tends to throw its regularity off. There are many substitutions for iambic feet (unstressed plus stressed syllables). “Pray so” in line 139 is a trochee (stressed plus unstressed syllable), “When you speak” in line 136 is an anapest (two unstressed plus a stressed syllable), and “Nothing but” in line 142 is a dactyl (stressed plus two unstressed syllables). Depending upon how one scans relative to the meaning, there are many spondees (two stressed syllables); for example, line 142 seems to have two spondees together in “move still, still so” (four stressed syllables). In other words, Florizel’s speech makes for highly irregular blank verse. The verse form follows the emotional and dramatic necessities of what Florizel is expressing.
Since the lines have so many accented syllables, there are many unexpected pauses, or caesuras. In line 139, there is a distinct pause after the first foot: “Pray so.” There are two distinct pauses in line 140: after the second foot (“To sing them too”) and after the fourth foot (“When you do dance”). Line 142 has so many accents that it is difficult to place the pauses, but I think there is a caesura after the second foot (“Nothing but that”) and after the fourth foot (“move still”). All of these so-called irregularities and substitutions in the blank verse line help to give Florizel’s love speech its dramatic impact. The speech rhythm is charged with strong feeling that overrides our blank verse expectations.
We may also note that two lines are enjambed; in other words, the meaning is carried over into the next line. For example, line 140 is not end-stopped. “I wish you” at the end is continued in “A wave o’ th’ sea” in the next line. Similarly, line 141 continues over into line 142: “that you might ever do” needs “Nothing but that” to complete the sense of what Florizel is saying. This speech also uses other poetic devices such as alliteration, internal rhyme or half-rhyme, and repetition of key words to underscore its poetic meaning.
Let us take another example from this same context: Perdita’s speech just before Florizel’s in the sheep-shearing scene (4.4):
O Proserpina,
For the flow’rs now, that, frighted, thou let’st fall
From Dis’s wagon! Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady
Most incident to maids); bold oxlips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one. O, these I lack
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o’er and o’er! (4.4.116–29)
This speech tends to have mostly regular blank verse lines (except for line 118, which has only four feet). There are many caesuras, especially in line 117, which has three. The first is after the second foot, “For the flow’rs now,” the second after “that,” and the third after “frighted.” Line 120 has two pauses, the first after “beauty,” the second after “violets.” In line 127 there is a caesura after “being one” and another after “O.” Perdita’s speech makes important use of enjambment to give it a sense of fluency in periods that extend beyond the end of the line. Line 117 continues into line 118: “thou let’st fall / From Dis’s wagon,” and so does line 119 go on to its conclusion in line 120: “and take / The winds of March with beauty.” The description of “pale primroses” continues for two lines without an interruption in the meaning: “That die unmarried ere they can behold / Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady / Most incident to maids).” One can see why Shakespeare manipulates the blank verse line to give Perdita an effect of lyrical sweetness and fluency. The unexpected caesuras and enjambment allow her to have a more natural speech rhythm.
There are many possible examples of the distinctive speech rhythms of The Winter’s Tale as set against regular, iambic pentameter blank verse, but I shall restrict myself to two powerful examples from Leontes and Paulina. Toward the beginning of the play, the frantic quality of Leontes’s jealousy is expressed in the distorted rhythms of his speech. In act 1, scene 2, he seems to be reasoning with Camillo about his wife’s infidelity:
Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career [running course]
Of laughter with a sigh (a note infallible
Of breaking honesty)? Horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? Noon, midnight? And all eyes
Blind with the pin and web [cataract], but theirs; theirs only.
That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing,
The covering sky is nothing. Bohemia nothing,
My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing. (1.2.284–96)
The incantatory repetition of “nothing” sets a demented tone to Leontes’s supposedly factual arguments. The insistent and urgent questions have the same effect, since they can hardly be based on Leontes’s personal observations. The strong rhythm is established by substituting trochaic feet (stress plus unstressed syllables) for the expected iambs (unstressed plus stressed feet) in virtually every line. The word “nothing” is naturally a trochee, and it occurs nine times in this passage. Other trochaic feet are “noses” (285), “Kissing” (286), “Stopping” (286), “Horsing” (288), “Skulking” (289), “Wishing” (289), “Blind with” (291), and “theirs only” (291). There are probably more trochees, depending upon how one does the scansion. We should also note the two spondees (two stresses) in line 290: “Hours, minutes? Noon, midnight?”
There is also a good deal of enjambment. Three lines are run together in 286 to 288: “Stopping the career / Of laughter with a sigh (a note infallible / Of breaking honesty)?” This almost seems like prose rather than blank verse. Another three-line enjambment is 290 to 292: “And all eyes / Blind with the pin and web, but theirs; theirs only, / That would unseen be wicked?” The point of these substitutions for the regular iambic pentameter is to convey Leontes’s disordered jealousy. There are strong emotions packed into Leontes’s repeated accusations, and these are expressed by overriding the iambic pentameter pattern.
As a final example, I would like to look at Paulina’s eloquent speech in the last scene of the play (5.3), where she directs the “statue” of Hermione to come down off its pedestal:
Music, awake her: strike.
’Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach;
Strike all that look upon with marvel; come;
I’ll fill your grave up. Stir; nay, come away;
Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him
Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs.
Start not; her actions shall be holy as
You hear my spell is lawful. Do not shun her
Until you see her die again, for then
You kill her double. Nay, present your hand.
When she was young, you wooed her; now, in age,
Is she become the suitor? (5.3.98–109)
This speech has a number of trochaic substitutions (stressed plus unstressed syllables) for iambic feet (unstressed plus stressed syllables), especially in the imperatives that Paulina speaks to Leontes; for example, “Music” (98), “Strike” (100), “Bequeath” (102), and “Start” (104). But the speech is remarkable for the large number of pauses, or caesuras, which emphasize its dramatic quality. Line 99, for example, has three distinct pauses—after “time,” “descend,” and
“more”—when we expect a typical blank verse line to have only a single caesura after the second or third foot. In other lines, the caesura comes late, after the fourth foot: after “marvel” in line 100, after “nay” in line 101, after “again” in line 106, and after “now” in line 108. In several lines, the caesura comes early, after the first foot: after “time” in line 99, and after “Start not” in line 104. This irregularity in the expected blank verse line endows what Paulina says with a strong speech rhythm.
There is also a good deal of enjambment to encourage the listeners or readers to think that they are not being burdened with the regular five-beat, end-stopped pattern. For example, line 102 continues into line 103: “for from him / Dear life redeems you.” Line 104 extends to the next line: “shall be holy as / You hear my spell is lawful.” Similarly, the meaning of line 105 is not completed until line 106: “Do not shun her / Until you see her die again,” and line 106 needs line 107 to make its statement: “for then / You kill her double.” These variations from the fixed iambic pentameter form heighten our sense of musical, dramatic speech.
Chapter 32
Prospero’s “Art” in
The Tempest
Prospero is the only magician in Shakespeare, and magic—what Prospero calls his “art”—is very important in the play. The word is used at least ten times to refer to Prospero’s white magic, what he has learned from careful study of books. Peter Greenaway’s film version of the play is, in fact, called Prospero’s Books (1991). Prospero definitely does not practice black magic. He makes no compact with the devil, as Doctor Faustus does in Marlowe’s play. Nevertheless, there is a certain danger in Prospero’s magic, which sets him apart from other mortals. At the end of the play, he forgives his enemies (like Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure) and renounces his magical powers. This seems to be essential for him to resume his dukedom of Milan and, as it were, to rejoin the human race.
Let us look at some of the most important references to Prospero’s art. In the long, expository scene of act 1, scene 2, Miranda speaks of her father’s art in the first line of her first speech: “If by your art, my dearest father, you have / Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them” (1.2.1–2). The tempest that opens the play is only a show, a performance, like the wedding masque in act 4, scene 1. It was presented by Ariel, Prospero’s attendant spirit, at his master’s instructions. That is acknowledged in the question he asks Ariel: “Hast thou, spirit, / Performed, to point, the tempest that I bade thee?” (1.2.193–94).
He congratulates him: “Ariel, thy charge / Exactly is performed” (1.2.237–38). Later, Prospero is pleased with Ariel’s role as harpy, who snatches away the banquet:
Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou
Performed, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring.
Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated
In what thou hadst to say. (3.3.83–86)
Prospero speaks like the director of a play, praising his actors for their performance. He uses the same words for Ariel’s dealing with the conspiracy of Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano: “Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service / Did worthily perform; and I must use you / In such another trick” (4.1.35–37).
The point of Prospero’s art is to present illusions, performances, shows that effectively charm his adversaries. He uses his magic like a dramatist, directing his actors (principally Ariel) on how to realize his script. It is also purposive; for example, he prepares carefully for the wedding masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. It is an artistic product of his laborious, bookish study. As he says at the end of act 3, scene 1: “I’ll to my book; / For yet ere suppertime must I perform / Much business appertaining” (3.1.94–96). And, as he says later:
I must
Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple
Some vanity of mine art. It is my promise,
And they expect it from me. (4.1.39–42)
Prospero seems proud of his playwriting skills, which he calls, offhandedly, “Some vanity of mine art.” “Vanity” is used in the apologetic sense of a trifling illusion.
It is interesting that Prospero calls his conjuring robe his “art” in his speech to his daughter before he tells her the story of her previous life: “Lend thy hand / And pluck my magic garment from me. So. / Lie there my art” (1.2.23–25). Once he has taken off his “magic garment,” he can proceed with his narrative as an ordinary mortal. He assures Miranda that the tempest was merely an illusion:
I have with such provision in mine art
So safely ordered that there is no soul—
No, not so much perdition as an hair
Betid to any creature in the vessel
Which thou heard’st cry, which thou saw’st sink. (1.2.28–32)
The good Gonzalo considers the preservation of all the passengers on the ship a “miracle”; moreover, the tempest seems to have laundered their clothes: “That our garments, being, as they were, drenched in the sea, hold, notwithstanding, their freshness and glosses, being rather new-dyed than stained with salt water” (2.1.64–67). This is exactly what the Boatswain reports at the end of the play:
our ship,
Which, but three glasses [hours] since, we gave out split,
Is tight and yare and bravely rigged as when
We first put out to sea. (5.l.222–25)
This is the proof of Prospero’s natural magic, or theurgy, which is a neo-Platonic term for magic performed with the aid of beneficent spirits.
Prospero’s art is nurtured by close study of books. Remember that one of Gonzalo’s favors to the Duke of Milan when he was exiled by his usurping brother, Antonio, and set afloat was to provide him with books: “Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me / From mine own library with volumes that / I prize above my dukedom” (1.2.166–68). Prospero undoubtedly lost his dukedom because of his bookishness. As he explains to his daughter, he was
for the liberal arts
Without a parallel. Those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies. (1.2.73–77)
Presumably, “secret studies” means the study of magic, like Doctor Faustus.
At the end of his narration, before he puts Miranda to sleep (whether she will or not—is he using hypnotism?), he speaks of his studies as if they included astrology:
by my prescience
I find my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star, whose influence
If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop. (1.2.180–84)
In Romeo and Juliet, the Prologue speaks of “A pair of star-crossed lovers” (1.0.6) and Romeo, before he takes his own life, vows to “shake the yoke of inauspicious stars / From this world-wearied flesh” (5.3.111–12). Prospero, like Brutus in Julius Caesar, must take the “tide in the affairs of men . . . at the flood” (4.3.215–16) or his fortunes will droop.
Prospero commands the spirit Ariel, reminding him how he freed him from imprisonment by the witch Sycorax, the mother of Caliban:
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorred commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years; within which space she died
And left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans
As fast as millwheels strike. (1.2.273–82)
By his superior knowledge of sorcery and witchcraft, Prospero comes to the rescue of Ariel: “It was my art, / When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape / The pine, and let thee out” (1.2.192–94).
So Prospero by his art controls Caliban, who acts as his slave. Caliban acknowledges the overwhelming force of Pr
ospero’s magic: “I must obey. His art is of such pow’r / It would control my dam’s god, Setebos, / And make a vassal of him” (1.2.374–76). At the beginning of the play, Prospero is in charge of the island and its inhabitants, and his plot to shipwreck Alonso, Sebastian (his brother), and his own brother Antonio when they are coming from the marriage of Alonso’s daughter Claribel in Tunis is succeeding perfectly. Ferdinand, Alonso’s son, is shipwrecked in another part of the island, where he can fall in love with and marry Miranda, Prospero’s daughter. As the master magician says of this love affair, “It works” (1.2.498), but this is also true for his entire elaborate plot.
The last scene of the play begins with Prospero “in his magic robes” (5.1.1 s.d.). He says, with some satisfaction: “Now does my project gather to a head. / My charms crack not, my spirits obey, and time / Goes upright with his carriage” (5.1.1–3). His enemies are all in his power. It is at this point that Ariel effects a turn in the action by commenting on the present situation: “Your charm so strongly works ’em, / That if you now beheld them, your affections / Would become tender” (5.1.17–19). “Charm” is a word specifically connected with magic throughout The Tempest.
Without much argument, Ariel persuades Prospero to have compassion on his enemies. Ariel, who is only a spirit, declares that his own “affections / Would become tender” “were I human” (5.1.16–17, 20). Prospero agrees, and this is the turning point of the play. From being a heavy father to Miranda (like Capulet is with Juliet in Romeo and Juliet) and a commanding master to Caliban and Ariel, Prospero recovers his human warmth and fallibility. He reasons from the way that Ariel, a spirit, feels to his own human emotions that have been suppressed:
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,
Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?
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