Significance of the Opening and Closing Scenes of The Tempest
Through the deconstruction of the court system in the tumultuous opening scene, and its eventual superior reconstruction in the closing scene, Shakespeare is able to better develop and display inherent character traits in the major roles
The opening and closing scenes in William Shakespeare?s The Tempest are crucial to the significance of the play as a whole. Through the deconstruction of the court system in the tumultuous opening scene, and its eventual superior reconstruction in the closing scene, Shakespeare is able to better develop and display inherent character traits in the major roles.
Shakespeare immediately throws the audience into a court that is not unified and strictly divided by political strife, as were the courts of his day. In The Tempest, the court is in a sense of disorder from the beginning with the shipwreck and its tumultuous and frightening sounds and images. The courtly conventions of politics and class are in great conflict, and the entire court is forced away through reality or magic from courtly order to the enchanted island, in which the characters function under a different order where idealism is a reality. For these characters, the island represents an escape from the political and material concerns of the mainland, allowing for a period of internal meditation aside from the roles that are prescribed to them in the royal household.
This internal meditation through the rest of the play is brought to a conclusion in the final scene, where Prospero bring all of the characters together in a magical circle. It is here that all of their epiphanies occur, and where the characters are changed for the better by the island. This change in the last scene is easily noticed by the audience, allowing for additional characterization through the differences between the opening and final scenes.
One of the most complex changes in the play takes place within Prospero himself. In considering his motives for "wrecking" the ship and bringing the characters to the island, we can?t escape the feeling that Prospero holds a great deal of resentment about his treatment back in Milan and is never very far from wanting to exact a harsh revenge; after all, he has it in his power to significantly injure the parties that treated him so badly. We learn more of Prospero?s character when he has a sudden insight in the start of the final act, when he decides that revenge is not the most appropriate response. He gets this insight from Ariel, when she speaks of the fact that all of Prospero's enemies are now in his power and are painfully confused: "if you beheld them now, your affections would become tender." Prospero replies: "Does thou think so spirit?" to which Ariel responds: "Mine would, sir, were I human." At this point Prospero delivers some of the most important lines in his characterization:
"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 th' quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Do I take part. The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance."
In these lines we see his sympathy for the sufferings of others, sympathy which eventually leads to his actions based upon "virtue" rather than "vengeance." By the end of the scene, Prospero hails as Duke of Milan, Ariel is released, and Miranda is freely given to love Ferdinand. Every problem is resolved by the end of the play primarily through Prospero's decision to forgive. Thus, the new order is established ? or re-established in the case of Prospero ? and the audience is given an insight into Prospero?s character.
It is Antonio and Sebastian that create most of these problems, and their characters are revealed in the opening scene where they are characterized as evil when they shout and behave rudely toward the boatswain. It is an early revelation that they like to be in control, even in matters about which they know very little; they resist the authority of someone as lowly as a sailor and try to give orders and commands. It is this lust for control that is their eventual downfall, and in the final reconstructing scene they are exposed for the evil men they are and Antonio is stripped of his dukedom, completing their characterization.
Likewise, Gonzalo, Stephano, and Trinculo all represent characters unable to change. The island for Stephano and Trinculo has no increased or diminished value. Fools and alcoholics before the shipwreck, they are fools and alcoholics afterwards on the island as well, and fools and alcoholics at the end. This is demonstrated by the fact that Stephano is the only character who is able to salvage supplies from the wreck, creating a link between the real world and the imaginary world of the island such that he stays the same. It is apt that the supplies he manages to save is nothing but a crate of liquor, keeping him drunk and characterizing both him and Trinculo as fools, whose pathetic attempt to start their own court (although an excellent parody of Antonio?s) is nothing but an attempt to go against what the significance of the play is ? to change the court for the better.
Gonzalo, however, is both unique and similar to these two. While well intentioned and loyal to Alonso, he still shows himself to be a product of the continental milieu that cannot change. While he does not plot to usurp power, he cannot help still meditating on the politics and potential of a newly discovered colony. Gonzalo fails to understand that this is not an island of politics at all, but rather, an island of change and rejuvenation, and consequently, Gonzalo, like Antonio and Sebastian, and Stephano and Trinculo, misses the point of his captivity all together, and plays a small role in the final scene as his characterization is already finished.
Meanwhile, in Ferdinand's own contribution to this metamorphoses theme, his courtship with Miranda on the island represents the clear shifting away from the very same political kind of marriage that Alonso has lost his daughter to. Oppositely, Ferdinand's love represents the kind of pure love found at first sight and set apart from politics, while simultaneously existing in the mist of them. Unaware of their fathers' hate for each other, Ferdinand and Miranda fall deeply in love and bring together what their kind of relationships usually destroy in Shakespeare?s tragedies. Yet, at the end of The Tempest, love seemingly transcends politics and helps to form alliance naturally, rather than forcing alliance through an arranged marriage. In the final scene, they are given the blessing of Alonso and their love and characterization as lovers is completed.
The opening and closing scenes of The Tempest are designed to add extra characterization above and beyond the main body of the play. By deconstructing the court system, the characters are forced to reflect on themselves, and through Prospero?s intervention (after his own change) they are further characterized.
