“THE TEMPEST” THE SEQUEL TO “HAMLET.”

BY EMILY DICKEY BEERY.

“The Tempest” is a little enchanted world where play all the forces that are manifested in the larger creation from the lowest animalism to the highest manhood, harmonious with his invisible environment. This world in miniature—true to the laws of the macrocosm—begins in chaos, storm, and stress, but finds completion in supernal air and divine peace. We shall find by consecutive study of the dramas that the poet, in his creative work, has ever risen from lower manifestations to higher as his own soul soared on higher and higher wing. Prospero was his last, greatest, and divinest thought of man in his unfolding godward.

Nature in her evolution takes no vast strides, and her supreme poet follows her divine current of growth from the animal man to the grand manifestation of his ideal. He understood that in man’s unfolding not a round could be missed of the “Jacob’s Ladder” resting upon the earth, but reaching into the heavens.

In this ideal world of “The Tempest,” Caliban stands upon the earth groping to attain the first step, while Prospero stands upon the summit with his face heavenward. This typical man comes upon the stage on a high plane of development. Long previously he had left the rank and file of humanity to tread the ever lonely path to higher achievement, therefore we must look below him to find, among the creations of the poet, the incarnation which was the chrysalis for this last ideal. Here our intuitive perception immediately descries Hamlet, that wonderful human mystery who was the first of Shakspere’s sons to enter the precincts of the inner life and catch a glimpse of the godlike potentialities of the human soul.

In Hamlet was the struggle of birth; in Prospero, the glory of achievement, the fulfilment to some extent of the poet’s ideal man, and the first to realize that the power of thought is the supreme force in the universe. Hamlet caught the first glimpse of this truth when he said, “There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” He is the hero of spiritual birth and growth in man from the dawning of the soul-life, through its fierce struggles to dominate the lower self and rise into realms of clearer light and truth. The “godlike reason which was not left in him to rust unused,” in its aspiration became illuminated by intuition and revealed to his awe-inspired gaze new worlds not dreamed of by the Horatios of his time.

Hamlet was lost in wonder at himself. The lower forces of his nature along the old inherited lines of thought, coming in contact with the higher thought-currents, newly created, caused the blended stream to “turn awry and lose the name of action,” termed by the unseeing world lack of courage and will-power. Even he could not understand but that in some inexplicable way he must be a coward, because he could not perceive the why of his delaying vengeance. Yet he knew he was brave to the core of his being. When his military friends, “distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear,” would have restrained him from following the spirit of his father, he cries out:

Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin’s fee; and for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as itself? … My fate cries out, and makes each petty artery in this body as hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

He was strong of will and resolute of purpose, but had reached the plane of development where his higher nature would not permit him to commit murder. Yet the strong current of popular opinion, as well as all hereditary and sub-conscious influences in himself, were ever impelling him to do the deed. In his soul-growth, Hamlet had passed the plane of revenge as a passion, but had not reached the divine heights of forgiveness. To avenge the murder of his father was to him a sacred command and duty coming in conflict with another equally sacred duty voiced by his higher self, and the mighty meeting of these two soul-forces always resulted in inaction. This moral battleground is the pivotal point of the drama, indirectly putting in motion all the forces which terminate in the final catastrophe.

In his thoughtful moods his disposition was ever shaken with “thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls,” saying, “Why is this? wherefore? what should we do?” It was the unlaid ghost of his higher self that propounded these queries to the apparition. The birth-throes of thought were giving him entrance into a new world where he began to see “What a piece of work is man! how infinite in faculty! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a God!”

The thoughts that Hamlet voices had passed through Shakspere’s brain, and the wonderful powers manifested by Prospero had been apprehended by his own prophetic vision. Hamlet might have moved along on the lower plane successfully, but the law of spiritual growth, the divine force upheaving and uplifting his soul against the barriers of his sub-conscious mentality and his environment, finally ended in the sad tragedy. Yet in the defeat was a victory, for it was merely the turn of the spiral downward for a higher rise in evolution.

Prospero is first revealed to us at about the age of Hamlet when the curtain falls and hides him from our tear-dimmed eyes. Shakspere loved Hamlet. He was dearest to his heart of all his children, and he felt that he must not die, but must come into the full fruition of the immortals. The soul so nobly struggling from its swaddling clothes must become a freed spirit of godlike power. Therefore he presents to us an ideal world where Hamlet sits upon the throne as Prospero, “transported and rapt in secret studies,” “neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to closeness and the bettering of his mind with that which o’erprized all popular rate.” Prospero was born a higher type, therefore the divine in him had freer action. His soul opened to the over-soul like a flower to the sunlight.

The divine force in man is his will—his true will—and this force in its perfect exercise has no human limitation. It is only the seeming will that is limited. This power, manifested in thought, is represented by Ariel.

The statement of Prospero that his studies bettered his mind to such high degree is proof that they were those not of the magician, but of the philosopher and true psychologist, for the study of magic darkens the soul and degrades the intellect. Prospero’s power was not magical, and Shakspere used the word magician only to bring the drama within touch of his audience, knowing full well that the wise would understand, for “wisdom is justified of her children.”

In the manifestation of soul-power we first perceive the true greatness of Prospero and the heights to which Shakspere’s own soul had risen, for “the stream cannot rise higher than its source.” The greatness of Julius Cæsar is “weighed in the balance and found wanting,” for every truly great nature must be the rounded out and harmonious development of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual. This is the measure of Prospero, and in his unfolding, unseen realms and previously unknown powers had opened, according to eternal law, to his demanding soul.

“The Tempest” is philosophical, psychological, and occult—philosophical because thought is the motor power. Le Conte says: “That deepest of all questions—the nature and origin of natural forces—is a question for philosophy and not for science.” Thought is a natural force; yes, a dynamic force of the most intense power. It may be a search-light of the universe, a thunderbolt of destruction, or a messenger of light and love with healing in its wings. The mantle of Prospero is simply an emblem of power, and the word is so understood among the Orientals. In Scripture, when Elijah ascended in his fiery chariot, his mantle fell upon Elisha, who immediately caused the waters to retreat from its stroke and continued clothed with his master’s power. So Prospero, robing himself in his mantle or laying it aside, means his exercise or non-exercise of what are termed supernatural powers.

Victor Hugo says that Shakspere “did not question the invisible world, he rehabilitated it. He did not deny man’s supernatural power, he consecrated it.” There is no reason why man in his higher estate should not have free intercourse with a world invisible to him in his lower conditions. Can the grub have the same companionship as the butterfly?

Victor Hugo also says that the “‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ depicts the action of the invisible world on man, but ‘The Tempest’ symbolizes the action of man on the invisible world. In the poet’s youth, man obeys the spirits. In the poet’s ripe age, the spirits obey man.” This shows a fine apprehension of the interior revealings of the supreme poetic genius. Every great and true poet is also a prophet and seer. Then why should not Shakspere—the supremest in all the “tide of time”—not have the widest and most far-reaching vision of the wonderful attainments and powers of the perfected man. He undoubtedly saw and felt the grandeur of the ages to come, and knew, with divine prescience, that only the hem of the garment of knowledge had been as yet touched. There is but one power in the universe, and as Emerson says, “Every man is an inlet to the whole.” Then where is his limitation?

Did not nature obey the Nazarene, and the winds and mountainous waves lie gently down at His bidding? And did He not say that His disciples should do greater works than He had done? Then why should not Prospero, as a typical man, have control over all the forces of nature?

It is interesting to note that Shakspere has given to him almost the identical powers of the Man of Nazareth! This is not strange, as it is an absolute truth that when man rises to the royalty of spirit every element will be his obedient servant. Thought will be the agent of his ministries; which the poet has so marvellously portrayed in its personification as Ariel. Ariel says: “Thy thoughts I cleave to;” and Prospero, in calling him, “Come with a thought.” It is now claimed by the most advanced and best psychologists, that a forceful, living thought does become a real embodiment which may be perceived by the finer senses. Ariel was what the mind of his master made him, sometimes a sprite, sometimes a sea-nymph, again a harpy, anything and everything the master directed.

Sycorax symbolized ignorance, and thought had been long imprisoned in the holds of nature by this creature of darkness, but ever painfully struggling to reach the light. Ignorance imprisoned thought, but could not free it. Prospero, as wisdom, gave it freedom and directed its action until he could send it forth in still more glorious freedom. Freedom of thought is a dominant strain in the drama, and is even sung by the “reeling ripe” Stephano. Caliban represents the child of ignorance, closely allied to nature and partaking of its poetry and grandeur. He is man in his first estate, just emerging from the animal. Yet, in this crude, forbidding aspect how superior in dignity compared with Stephano and Trinculo in their vile abasement through the vices of civilization.

Shakspere’s knowledge of the power of thought over the body is shown in his saying that Sycorax, “through age and envy, had grown into a hoop;” and of Caliban that, “As with age his body uglier grows, so his mind cankers.” It is not strange that Shakspere perceived the new psychology, for Milton sang—

The poet Spenser most beautifully expresses this truth in saying:

This is the teaching also of St. Paul, that the body must be transformed by the renewing of the mind.

Here we perceive the source of the heavenly beauty and grace of Miranda. “The pure in heart shall see God.” Her thought and vision wrought out for her a bodily expression that made her seem celestial to the beholder, and held him in doubt whether she were goddess or mortal.

In esoteric thought the perfected being must be an equal blending of the masculine and feminine, which Balzac has so gloriously interpreted in his “Seraphita.” This quality we see in Prospero, the gentle, refined element of motherhood, blended with sublime dignity and strength. His child was to him “a cherubim infusing him with fortitude from heaven,” and he gave to her the richest dower of inheritance—knowledge, with purity of heart and purpose. With the gentle patience of love he instructed her in the laws of nature and her being, with divine purity of thought. For all nature is pure as God himself. Thus Miranda became the peerless young Eve of blended wisdom and innocence.

After a display of his power, he states, in his address to Ferdinand, the most abstruse problems of the ideal philosophy.

This sublime inspiration was almost the last outburst of the mighty genius of Shakspere, and is a fitting crown of glory.

Prospero was fully conscious of his superiority, and with simple but grandest dignity he claims that practically it was his own power that worked all the wonders. Most sublimely he expresses this when he calls before him his invisible helpers:

Passing from his power over nature to the manifestation of his higher self with men, we see the spiritual plane he had reached. In coming again in contact with the world of humanity his first action is the recognition of the good and the forgiving the evil:

His divine forgiveness of those who had so cruelly wronged him shows the height of his spiritual attainment:

In the very remarkable events of his life he recognizes a higher power in all his guidance. “Was Milan thrust from Milan, that his issue should become kings of Naples?”

In no drama has the poet risen to such supreme types of character. Prospero was the highest expression of Shakspere’s latest thought, but only the shadowing forth of a supremer ideal. We can portray what is beneath us far more vividly and truly than what is above us. Shakspere had lived Hamlet, and that is why he so vitally touches every human soul. In Prospero it was the vision by the great poetic soul of a promised land he had only viewed from a mountain top. He had seen the wonderfully luscious grasps of Eschol, but had not yet tasted them. This is why we feel the vast yet subtle difference between “Hamlet” and “The Tempest.”

If the immortal poet had lived the years allotted to man, with ever increasing openness of vision, his own soul would have attained that lofty height where, from the “pattern on the mount,” he would have portrayed the splendor of divine manhood in godlike majesty, the soul irradiating the body like the shining face of Moses in its halo of awe-inspiring divinity. The people required a veil; they would require one still.

Although Shakspere left us before he had lived in the radiance of the truly spiritual realm, we may well crown his Prospero with his words of another: