Who is Prospero in Act 5, Scene 1, lines 1-97?

            Understanding Prospero’s character involves more than just understanding what happens in The Tempest.  At least a rudimentary knowledge of the structure of Shakespearean comedies is essential.  In act five, scene one it is especially important to understand the ideas of the comic individual, the comic solution and Prospero’s role in the two.  As the comic individual, Prospero is at fault for his usurping because he lost his grasp on the importance of the responsibilities of his dukedom and spent too much time practicing his magic.  Act five, scene one helps to further develop Prospero’s character with the establishment of the idea that he is a rational man, another important aspect to the comic individual.

            The reader starts to realize Prospero’s rationality starting at line 34: “Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury/Do I take part.  The rarer action is/In virtue than in vengeance.  They being penitent,/The sole drift of my purpose doth extend/Not a frown further.  Go, release them, Ariel./My charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore,/And they shall be themselves” (5.1.34-40).  Here, Prospero chooses reason and rationality over fury and vengeance; he takes the harder path.  Although Prospero seems villainous at the start of the scene with having taken prisoners, he starts to become more relatable to the reader when he realizes that although he may want to make them suffer, he must free his prisoners to achieve his overall goal of being restored as the Duke of Milan.  This idea of Prospero remaining rational is essential to Prospero’s identitiy as the comic individual.  On the other hand, this is only the first step towards the comic solution.  For the comic solution to be complete, one of the things Prospero must do is get rid of his magic, which he does when he breaks his staff and drowns his books, helping towards the restoring of his senses.  Revisiting the quote above when Prospero says “their senses I’ll restore” (5.1.39), he is not only restoring his prisoners to their senses but also himself to his own.  A major and final part to the comic solution is the comic individual being restored to their senses and here, Shakespeare plays with this idea by making Prospero return his prisoners to their senses just as his senses return to him; it seems as if the power Prospero has over his prisoners is analogous to the power Shakespeare has over Prospero and the entire play.  Throughout act five, scene one Prospero is further developed as a character as the Shakespearean comedy comes to a close with the resolution of the comic individual and the comic solution.

The Tempest, a Shakespearean Comedy? You Bet.

A plot to kill.  Now that seems like a bit of an anomaly in a Shakespearean comedy. However, instead of contradicting the structure of a Shakespearean comedy, the plot to kill actually helps to progress it as an obstacle to Prospero’s fulfillment.  Obstacles to fulfillment are essential parts of all Shakespearean comedies.  The Tempest centers around Prospero’s plan to regain his position as the Duke of Milan, but his entire plan is put in jeopardy when he learns that his former servant, Caliban, has betrayed him and is now planning with Stephano and Trinculo to kill him.  Prospero, facing this change in his plan, must deal with this obstacle head on and stop the trio from fulfilling their plan.  To thwart the plot to kill him, Prospero send his nymph servant, Ariel, to deal with the situation.  By stopping Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo, Prospero not only overcame the obstacle but he helped himself clear a path to regain his dukedom.

A second major element to the Shakespearean comedy is the comic solution.  The conclusion to the play must follow a format which includes a happy ending and the elimination of the pretenses and disguises that guided the play.  Prospero’s magical powers along with his former servants: nymph, Ariel and monster, Caliban must be left behind when Prospero and the others leave for the mainland to preserve the structure of the comedy.  Prospero frees Ariel and Caliban gets left on the island.  To deal with wiping out his powers, Prospero breaks his staff and burns his books so that he can never use his magic again.  With these anomalies wiped away, Prospero is left with a clean slate as he heads back to the mainland to regain his dukedom.  Prospero isn’t the only happy one though; Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian, Gonzalo, Ferdinand and the rest of the passengers on the boat are thrilled to have their family back together after thinking they were all dead.  The marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda also accounts for the presence of weddings in many Shakespearean comedies.  At the end of The Tempest everyone is back to living a normal life and world is back to the way it should be.