Ariel and Allegory in The Tempest Essay examples -- Tempest essays

Ariel and Allegory in The Tempest The temptation to regard The Tempest as an legend has proven irresistible to critics, although opinions differ on what it might be an allegory of, and what the headspring figures might represent. In this essay I wish to discuss the source of Ariel, who has received less attention than either Caliban or Prospero. If The Tempest is an allegory whence each of its characters should fulfil some representative function. Prospero is generally associated with the dramatist (or even, which amounts to much the same thing in some views, with God) as he controls the action on stage. Caliban is taken to represent the physical aspect of humanity, or the will, his uncivilised condition making him close to the beasts. In this view, Prospero represents intellect (in seventeenth-century basis wit, or reason). The opposition of infected will and perfected wit is a common trope of Protestant discourse, as in Sir Philip Sidneys Defense of Poesie. FN1 Ariel, then, (an airy spirit in the Names of the Actors) might represent a trinity part of the self, the soul or spirit, but at this point the allegory seems to break down, in that Ariel is clearly not Prosperos immortal soul, or the godly part in man, as he is under the control of Prospero as intellect, and in fact performs the action of the play just as Prospero directs it. andiron Kermode, in his introduction to the Arden edition, criticises the tendency to allegorical interpretation, and seems to have imbibed something of the late Shakespeares force per unit area on the importance of Chastity. It is not surprising that The Tempest has sent nation whoring after strange gods of allegory (p.lxxx) and most modern attitudes to the play ar... ...s the barrier. If The Tempest is an allegory, then Nora Johnson is probably closest in describing Ariel as a delicate theatrical spirit a figure representing the essence of theatre. If performing Ariel must have presented great adept challenges on the Jacobean stage, the problem for a modern production is to elevate the suspension of disbelief in the audience whilst avoiding comparison with the fairies and principal boys of Pantomime. NOTES 1. sometimes called Apology for Poetry. 2. Nora Johnson, Body and Spirit, Stage and Sexuality in The Tempest (in) Political Shakespeare, (eds) Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen, Volume 9 of Shakespeare, the captious Complex, Garland Publishing, New York and London, (1999), pp. 271-290. 3. Horace Howard Furness (ed.), The Tempest, A New Varorium Edition, J.P. Lippincott, Philadelphia, (1895).