Prospero’s Mirages of Power Struggle and Conscience in The Tempest
Lauren Gifford

Of all William Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest emerges as one of the strongest testimonies to the morality of its characters as they respond to Prospero’s egocentric motives, which are resolved by breaking the vice of power for the sake of his goodness. Prospero’s moral boundaries are constantly tested as his conscience tempers his thirst for power from developing into villainy. Prospero attempts to elucidate his concerns as the overbearing, patriarchal archetype and father of Miranda, but does so at the expense of his own contentment. In Spiritual Values in Shakespeare, Ernest Marshall Howse argues, “One interesting modern study says that The Tempest is a religious drama of the type of early religious mystery plays from which the art of theater developed; and that, and such, it is an allegorical account of those inward experiences with which mystics have struggled from the darkness of sin and error into the light of wisdom and truth” (129).

It is apparent in the beginning of the play that Prospero wants to inspire wonder and awe in Miranda by disclosing a history of political errors in which his dukedom to Milan was stolen and usurped. Prospero sustains his relationship with his daughter by trusting her to understand the motives for his actions. As Murray M. Schwartz and Coppélia Kahn say in Representing Shakespeare, “Shakespeare shows us a pattern of doubt and reassurance, of a father’s obsessive need for attention and a daughter who fulfills it, and also of a man preparing to relinquish something precious by clutching it more passionately than ever” (p. 37). By illuminating Prospero’s nature to “rule” over Miranda as well as over Caliban and Ariel, Shakespeare places his power struggle as a paramount problem that surfaces in his reactions to these characters’ entreaties for freedom. His complex past with Sycorax, the mother of Caliban, seems to be an opposing relationship that has taught him to be skeptical about trusting others. Prospero prides himself on saving Caliban from the wickedness of Sycorax’s imprisoning, but regards the monster with contention.

Caliban’s sense of nativism to the island is inherent, and he is most affronted by Prospero’s sense of ownership and right to command him. Prospero threatens Caliban to do as he says, demanding Caliban’s obedience and reverence. As Caliban says, “I must obey/His art isof such power/It would control my dam’s god, Setebos/And make a vassal of him” (I.ii.375-76). Prospero’s knowledge of the gods coupled with his mastery of sorcery make him a formidable character, and makes Caliban initially submissive to Prospero’s demands. Prospero’s presence looms over the budding romantic relationship of Miranda and Ferdinand, and he proves to be a hostile, domineering paternal figure who interferes too much for his daughter’s sake. However, Miranda and Ferdinand’s romance is developed through Ferdinand’s perseverance and endurance of Prospero’s trials of true love in which he tests Ferdinand’s genuine intentions. In governing the actions and choices of Miranda, Prospero’s fault of desiring to “play God” dictates the psychological pattern of control he learns to manage by gradually letting go of Miranda as his daughter.

Ariel, the ethereal spirit who maintains Prospero’s conscience and saves him from the corrupting powers of magic, is a character who not only influences him with secret information, but also changes his perception on the significance of staying true to his word. As a victim of a personal injustice, perhaps Prospero’s hardened character remains rigid as an affirmation to not make other errors, but this injustice is what mobilizes him to make amends to Alonso and his court. This paradox is central to the plot of the play, and reveals Prospero’s determination to be dependent on virtue rather than the sorcery he has practiced. Harold C. Goddard states in The Meaning of Shakespeare, “And forthwith follows a wonder that genuinely deserves the name- the forgiveness and reconciliation that Prospero has just resolved on. Here is a divine right of kings to which even the strictest equalitarian could not object…Here is the counterpart and antithesis of Macbeth’s surrender to the Witches. As they tempted him to crime and death, so Ariel tempts Prospero to forgiveness and life” (p. 669). This divine intervention on Ariel’s part assuages Prospero’s inner conflict, and shows him how to reject the evil threatening to dictate his life. Ariel’s angelic direction shapes Prospero’s perception of his actions, and helps resolve hispeace with himself.

Prospero’s morality rigidly defines how Miranda is socially and culturally oriented, and also implicates her to perform her role as a daughter who adheres directly to the rules of her father’s game. Prospero’s psychological development can be applied by using the abstract of conscience (defined through the id, ego, and superego), and by Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. These two theories serve as the composition of Prospero’s mentality witnessed through his efforts to control, and use his self-pride as a device that assures him of the righteousness of his intentions. How Prospero’s conscience surfaces after patterns of deviance against morality and social norms is the focus of the falling action of The Tempest. As Kenneth Gergen says, conflicts caused by the creation of the Super-Ego lead to the creation of a guilty conscience. The conscience develops into a powerful force, independent of reason and instinct. It leads to feelings of guilt based on perceived expectations of society (Gergen, 11). By definition, the ego is the developed part of the mind socializing the individual with society, precluding a repression of natural desires. Miranda’s absence of ego is most apparent in her unfamiliarity with society, portrayed by the fact that her love, Ferdinand, is the third man she has ever seen in her life. The super-ego controls the sentiments of disapproval society forms, restricting instincts from what is right behavior. Prospero’s shaping of Miranda’s super-ego typifies his maniacal drive to assert Miranda’s morality, and it is the motif of how The Tempest is dependent on Prospero’s reasons for interfering in his daughter’s life.

In contrast, Kohlberg postulates that the six stages of morality development individually provide a unique perspective in which reasoning is established according to the consequences of actions in society. These six stages closely model Prospero’s moral development as they unfold through his actions, illustrating how he abuses his power to affect and mold Miranda’s conscience, almost as if he was creating it himself like God. These six stages are: obedience and punishment orientation, self-interest orientation, interpersonal accord and conformity, authority and social-order maintaining orientation, social contract orientation, and the establishment of universal ethical principles (Gergen, 119). Correspondingly, each of these stages is echoed by Prospero, and demonstrates his conversion in character through the cognition of truth and falsity allowing him to see the consequences of his actions, and their effect on his soul. The first stage occurs through his demands of Miranda’s attention to his words, and the second through seeking his self-interested revenge on his brother Antonio. Thirdly, he establishes interpersonal rapport with Ferdinand after a series of interactions. Fourthly, he uses magic to embolden his power as an authoritarian figure of the island. In the fifth stage he makes peace with Alonso and forgiving his brother and the other lords for their faults against him. Finally, Prospero firmly concedes to the marriage of Miranda and Ferdinand by changing his relationship to all of the characters from hostile and revengeful to peaceful and celebratory.

Unlike Shakespeare’s Tragedies, The Tempest encompasses the complexity and strength of the human mind by using parallelism to portray the internal struggles of the psyche as it wins over adverse conditions. Prospero’s recognition of his daughter’s independence juxtaposed with his own choice to free himself from magic shows that the power of the human spirit has the ability to triumph over fate. Prospero’s moral development proves that humanity can transcend life’s unfortunate circumstances, and exemplifies how deeply reality is affected by the moral judgments of conscience.

Works Cited

Bevington, David. The Necessary Shakespeare. 3rd ed. University of Chicago, Chicago:
Pearson Education, Inc., 2009

Gergen, Kenneth J. The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life.
Washinton, D.C.: Basic Books, 1991.

Goddard, Harold C. The Meaning of Shakespeare. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1951.

Howse, Ernest Marshall. Spiritual Values in Shakespeare. New York: Abingdon Press,
1955.

Schwartz, Murray M, and Coppèlia Kahn. Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic
Essays. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.