Setting in The Tempest
The significance of setting in Shakespeare's play, with reference to the construction of the worlds of art and reality
Shakespeare?s enchanted island in The Tempest is a restorative pastoral setting, a place where ?no man was his own?, and a place that offers endless possibilities to the people that arrive on its shores. Although the actual location of the island is not known, the words of Seneca aptly describe its significance to the play ? it represents ?the bounds of things, the remotest shores of the world?. On the boundary of reality, the island partakes of both the natural and supernatural, both the imaginative and the real. It allows the exploration of both man?s potential and his limitations, his capacity for reform through art and his affinity for political and social realities. It is in constructing this opposition between art and reality and in giving Shakespeare?s romance the freedom to explore mankind free from the concerns of everyday life that the setting of The Tempest is crucial to its overall dramatic design.
The only scene of the play that does not take place on the island is the opening tempest scene. This is in itself an important use of setting. It hints at the fact that the characters? social assumptions will capitulate when exposed to adversity ? we have the boatswain?s apparently inappropriate that there are none abroad the ship that ?I love more than myself?. In fact, quite the reverse is true. In the court scene we are presented with the characters Antonio and Sebastian who are interested in political gain despite the predicament in which they find themselves. In this respect the setting functions to present the idea that our social conditioning transcends time and place. The inference is that if political clambering can take place on an enchanted island in the middle of nowhere, it can take place anywhere.
The island setting thus gives Shakespeare the opportunity to present man as a zealous political animal, free from the fa?ade of everyday life in the real world. The repeated plots of assassination and usurpation foreground this notion. Prospero usurped the island?s sovereignty, Sycorax usurped control of the local spirit population, and there are no less than three plots to usurp power during the course of the play. The number of these subplots and the way in which they are presented in a mimetic style has the effect of giving The Tempest its characteristic density. They would only be possible on the island setting which has its own history and its own ability to tempt the characters to regicide and fratricide.
The island is also a powerful means of conveying the traits of the characters. This is made possible y the fact that it appears to change depending on who is regarding it. The initial responses of the characters to their arrival on the island illustrates this idea. For Gonzalo it is temperate and full of possibility ? he dreams of a commonwealth ?t?excell the Golden Age?. For Antonio it is barren and unforgiving; he remarks it has ?everything, save means to live?. The archcriminals Antonio and Sebastian mock the advisor?s observation that their clothes are undamaged and cleaner than before, but this is an interesting metaphor for the function of the island setting. The characters have been refreshed rather than hurt by their shipwreck; and, as in all Elizabethan remonaces, providence offers them the opportunity for a new life. By rejecting this notion and showing themselves to be concerned only with dynastic politics and power, the characters illustrate the pervasiveness of political and social realities in a world ruled by art.
The pervasiveness of dynastic politics is further developed by Ferdinand, who locates his sorrow in a set of political relationships, remarking ?My language! Heavens, I am the best of them that speak this speak? and finding political measure for his love of Miranda, declaring ?I?ll make you the queen of Naples?. Alonson also mourns for his son by thinking of him in terms of his dynastic position; ?Mine heir | Of Naples and Milan?. These situations are all occasions where the true motivations of the characters can be discovered by the use of setting as a means to engineer situations where we can discover more about their characters.
Contrasted with these social realities are the utopian dreams of the play. All of these dreams are located in the context of the characters? imaginings aout the isle. First is Gonzalo?s dream, followed by Caliban?s vision for an island where he has power, riches and peace:
?The isle is full o?noises?
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not?
? Riches, ready to drop upon me?
I cried to dream again?
These poetic lines spoken by Caliban in lank verse establish him as a complex, three-dimensional character and largely account for the fact that he has been presented in recent productions of The Tempest as a sympathetic character, rather than the ?savage and deformed slave? of the dramatis personae. His dream of a utopia is catalysed, of course, by the island setting.
Both the island setting and the characters? Utopian dreams relate closely to Thomas More?s Utopia. As in The Tempest, the central character of this text ?lead the characters to an understanding and perfection?. As a romance, The Tempest functions to do precisely that, and this is accomplished through the magus, Prospero. On the island, his magic is made possible and given full scope. The externalization of his magic, his ?triksy spirit? Ariel, seems perfectly at home in the island setting. Indeed, The Tempest was one of the most technically ambitious plays of its era, with complicated staging and extensive use of costumes and props. These techniques are important in constructing the island setting as a place different from the real world, with spirits and magic and music.
The contrast between the representative characters and the magic art of the island does not resolve itself; rather, it leaves the audience in what Russ McDonald called a ?marginal condition between expectation and understanding, affirmation and skepticism, comedy and tragedy?. The setting functions to present the worlds of both art and reality in order to affirm the transcendent human desire for power and order as well as affirm the world of art as a means of dealing with reality.
