William Hamilton, “Prospero and Ariel”
Monday
Sometimes the news of the hour bleeds imperceptibly into the works I am reading, prompting me to see them in a new light. This occurred with me this past weekend as I was reading The Tempest while keeping an eye on the Republican and Democratic presidential races. I thought of Prospero as “the Establishment” on his Caribbean island and noted that the Democratic Prosperos were more successful than the Republican Prosperos. That is to say that the Democratic Establishment succeeded in saving the day for Hillary Clinton in the Nevada Caucus while the Republican Establishment got smoked by Donald Trump in the South Carolina primary.
Prospero attempts to orchestrate everything on his island. He has learned that he must pay attention to the events of the day from having been overthrown by his brother Antonio after spending too much time with his books. Once he reaches his Caribbean island, however, he uses his magic to arrange things to his liking.
While Prospero is more successful than not, each of his victories must be qualified. For instance, he succeeds in vanquishing the witch Sycorax but is only able to subdue, not civilize, her son Caliban. He forestalls a plot against himself by Caliban and two other characters, but they create enough commotion to put him out of countenance and disrupt an elaborate wedding ceremony he has set up for Miranda and Ferdinand. He forestalls a murder attempt against the king of Naples by Sebastian and Antonio and reconciles himself with the ruler who once assisted in his overthrow—only he realizes that Antonio and the king’s brother remain a potential threat and he warns them that he is watching them.
We fantasize that a force with higher wisdom will step into our troubles and sort things out for us. We are given a version of a utopian fantasy by the good-hearted Gonzalo, who imagines that we can erase history and begin anew, constructing a perfect society upon the island. Think of it as John Winthrop’s “city on a hill.” I include in his description Antonio and Sebastian’s cynical commentary:
Gonzalo: Had I plantation of this isle, my lord—
Antonio: He’d sow ’t with nettle seed.
Sebastian: Or docks, or mallows.
Gonzalo: And were the king on ’t, what would I do?
Sebastian: Scape being drunk, for want of wine.
Gonzalo: I’ th’ commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things, for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all,
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty—
Sebastian: Yet he would be king on ’t.
Antonio: The latter end of his commonwealth forgets
the beginning.
Gonzalo: All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavor; treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth
Of its own kind all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.
Sebastian: No marrying ’mong his subjects?
Antonio: None, man, all idle: whores and knaves.
Gonzalo: I would with such perfection govern, sir,
T’ excel the Golden Age.
The pageant that Prospero sets up is hardly less idealistic. Juno, goddess of the hearth and home, will collaborate with Ceres, the goddess of fertility—Iris, Juno’s messenger, is their intermiediary—so that the marriage will be a perfect one. Prospero wants to guarantee that his daughter will face no difficulties, just as he wants to make sure that order is restored to the state.
Who is who in these dramas may depend on your politics. If Bernie is Gonzalo, is he visionary or just naïve? If Hillary is Sebastian and Antonio, is she realistic or just cynical? I can see Sebastian and Antonio are stand-ins for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, contemptuous of political norms as they grasp for power. Caliban, meanwhile, could be our base human nature, prepared to undermine any elaborate pageants we try to set up,
Idealism invariably butts heads with reality and unfortunately we can’t, like Prospero, throw away our staff, drown our book, and withdraw from the world. Instead, we must do the best we can with the world in which we find ourselves.