This was a question raised at one of the recent Shakespeare book cubs. Why does Prospero repent like that? It seems rather sudden. Here’s an attempt at an answer. It’s a good question and helps us think about the whole play.
Introduction: Who is human?
The plot of The Tempest is simple: Prospero fled Milan many years ago, usurped by his brother; he is now a magician on an island, and shipwrecks his brother, and imprisons him, in revenge. By marrying his daughter, Miranda, to Ferdinand, the son of his enemy the King of Naples, Prospero can find not just revenge, but a secure future for Miranda. Eventually, he must choose between the love plot and the revenge plot. He must repent for his anger against the people his shipwrecks. He has to choose love over power (even though he becomes Duke of Milan again: good leaders are not vicious.)
Who counts as human is the central question of the play. Prospero is reminded throughout The Tempest that he is not a true lord: “I am all the subjects that you have”, Caliban taunts him. Prospero’s human superiority over Caliban is worth less than he thinks: he left Milan to become the high mage of the island—and for what? The control of Caliban and Ariel! Some kingdom!
Eventually, his cruelty to them is revealed as a diminution of himself. He repents because he realises he has made himself base by treating others are less than human.
Ferdinand: Man or Spirit?
The “who is human?” theme come out strongly when Miranda first sees Ferdinand. She says,
What is’t? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form. But ’tis a spirit.
Prospero corrects her,
No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses
As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest
Was in the wreck; and, but he’s something stain’d
With grief that’s beauty’s canker, thou mightst call him
A goodly person: he hath lost his fellows
And strays about to find ’em.
Prospero tells Miranda that Ferdinand is human, not spirit. This is a familiar theme from The Merchant of Venice, where Antonio’s treatment of Shylock as less-than-human is the basis of their tragic feud. But Prospero will not treat Ferdinand as an equal. (The line “hath such senses/ As we have” recalls Shylock “if you prick us do we not bleed?”)
She replies,
I might call him
A thing divine, for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble.
Prospero, like many a father, thinks this is a sign that he is in control.
It goes on, I see,
As my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit! I'll free thee
Within two days for this.
To make sure this is understood, Shakespeare has Prospero repeat himself a few lines later. He expects to control Ferdinand through Miranda, and to free Ariel in reward. (He has said it earlier too.)1 Of course, whatever control he had in bringing them together is now in free-fall. Ferdinand becomes a prisoner but he and Miranda continue to fall in love and she tells him to ignore the work he has been given: Prospero is too busy studying magic to notice. Real power often eludes Prospero without his immediate presence to inflict cruelty.
Revenge or love?
Meanwhile, Prospero andAriel torment his enemies who have been captured and imprisoned.
My high charms work
And these mine enemies are all knit up
In their distractions; they now are in my power;
And in these fits I leave them, while I visit
Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown'd,
And his and mine loved darling.
He is torn between the true affection between Ferdinand and Miranda and his zeal for revenge. But note the contradiction. It cannot last that Prospero expects Ferdinand to marry Miranda while he imprisons Ferdinand’s relative.
After the betrothal of Ferdinand and Miranda, he says to Ariel, “I must use you/ In such another trick… I must/ Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple/ Some vanity of mine art.” This is the masque, a parade of spirits for their entertainment. At the end, Prospero says he had forgotten about the “foul conspiracy/ Of the beast Caliban”, who is plotting against his life.
Miranda says, “Never till this day/ Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd.” Distemper can mean disease as well as disproportion. Prospero’s anger is turning him into a beast. The more he comes to see Ferdinand as a “real” person just like Miranda, the greater the dissonance with his revenge on the others he shipwrecked, and with his hatred of Caliban.
It is becoming undeniably obvious that he is treating people as if they were Calibans—and he treatment of Caliban is hardly justified by the play! Prospero is accumulating a wealth of misdeeds for which he must repent. He must eventually choose between revenge or love.
As he says to Ferdinand, “I am vex’d… my, brain is troubled.”
Irredeemable anger
When Caliban and the plotters are seized, Prospero becomes cruel and excessive,
Prospero: Go charge my goblins that they grind their joints
With dry convulsions, shorten up their sinews
With aged cramps, and more pinch-spotted make them
Than pard or cat o' mountain.Ariel: Hark, they roar!
Prospero: Let them be hunted soundly.
Like Henry V, he allows his anger to completely distort his judgement. The final words of Act IV can be read ominously.
At this hour
Lie at my mercy all mine enemies:
Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou
Shalt have the air at freedom: for a little
Follow, and do me service.
Prospero has forgotten what he told Miranda: the people he torments “eats and sleeps and hath such senses/ As we have.” He teeters on the edge of tragedy here, with the inner fire of cruel anti-hero.
This is one of the frequent “hinge moments” in Shakespeare’s work. Prospero could turn down the route of tragedy, instead of taking the high road of comedy. He could now enact fierce revenge. He could become irredeemable.
Ariel diverts the action to the better course.
Prospero opens Act V saying “My charms crack not; my spirits obey.” He asks Ariel the time. A quiet rebuke is implied in the answer.
On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord,
You said our work should cease.
Prospero replies with characteristic testiness.
I did say so,
When first I raised the tempest. Say, my spirit,
How fares the king and’s followers?
And now Ariel delivers one of the most important speeches in the play.
Confined together
In the same fashion as you gave in charge,
Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir,
In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell;
They cannot budge till your release. The king,
His brother and yours, abide all three distracted
And the remainder mourning over them,
Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly
Him that you term’d, sir, ‘The good old lord Gonzalo;’
His tears run down his beard, like winter’s drops
From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.
Ariel has become Prospero’s conscience. How similar this is to Shylock! But the rebuke here comes not from the tormented one (Shylock) but from the assistant to the tormenter.
And worse: Ariel is not human. If Ariel can feel this, why cannot Prospero?
One of their kind
When Ariel, a spirit, can understand this, Prospero is confronted undeniably with the fact that it is he who has become less than human.
Prospero: Dost thou think so, spirit?
Ariel: Mine would, sir, were I human.
Prospero: And mine shall.
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?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gaitist my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance
Rare means excellent as well as uncommon. Prospero has pursued the excellence of lordship—in his magic book, in his dominion of the island, in his rule of Miranda, in his revenge on his brother—but has realised that Ariel, he spirit-servant achieves an excellence he has neglected.
His choice is between the baseness of tragic rule and the rare virtue of comic reconciliation. (You can hear all of this in the superb delivery of the scene in the 1982 production with Derek Jacobi below.)
We remember his line “It goes on, I see,/ As my soul prompts it.” But no. Ariel is the prompt. Ariel has to act as his soul. That’s why Prospero chooses repentance.
Otherwise he’ll be less than human, less than Ariel, like the people he hates.
The Duke of Milan
And his more braver daughter could control thee,
If now 'twere fit to do't. At the first sight
They have changed eyes. Delicate Ariel,
I'll set thee free for this.
I like The Tempest a lot and wish it were performed more often. I think this is a good take on Prospero. Another aspect of Prospero that bears examination is his self-absorption. Yes, he was deposed, but if you read carefully, he was politically vulnerable because he was not a very good Duke, spending way too much time on his magic and the private world it opened up to him and not enough time on the community. Yes, Prospero chooses love over revenge, but he also recognizes that he needs to get out of his own head and pay attention to the needs of others. Or so I would submit.