The Theatre Metaphor in The Tempest :: Tempest essays

The Theatre Metaphor in The Tempest The theatre metaphor also helps to explain why, in the closing analysis, Prospero has to surrender his magical powers. Life cannot be lived out in the creative activity of illusions, delightful and educative as they can often be. Life must(prenominal) be lived in the real world, in Milan or in Naples, and Miranda cannot frankincense entirely fulfill herself on the island. The realities of lifetime must be encountered and dealt with as best we can. The world of the theatre can remind us of things we may too easily forget it can liberate and encourage upst device wonder and excitement at all the diverse richness of life it can, at times, even wake people up to more big issues than their own Machiavellian urge to self-aggrandizement, and, most important of all, it can drill us into forgiveness. But it can never finally solve the line of work of evil, and it can never provide an acceptable environment for a richly realized adult life. Prospero, as I see it, doesnt start the bidding fully realizing all this. He launches his experiment from a mixture of motives, maybe not entirely sure what he going to do (after all, whizz gets the sense that theres a good deal of improvising going on). But he learns in the tactical manoeuvre to avoid the twin dangers to his experiment, the two main threats to the apprise of his theatrical magic. The first I have already alluded to, namely, the danger of apply of his powers purely for vengeance. Prospero, like Shakespeare, is a master illusionist, and he is tempted to channel his ain frustrations into his art, to exact vengeance against wrongs done in Milan through the power of his art (perhaps, as some have argued, as Shakespeare is doing for unknown personal reasons against women in Hamlet and Lear). But he learns from Ariel that to do this is to deny the moral tax of the art, whose major purpose is to reconcile us to ourselves and our community, not to even a personal score. The second great threat which we see in this play is that Prospero may get too involved in his own grand capabilities, he may become too much the showman, too majestic of showing off his skill to attend to the final purpose of what he is doing.