1.1. Introduction
INTRODUCTION
Traditionally Shakespeare’s comedies have highlighted the role of women, they have been considered a basic element in order to construct the play. However, few people give importance to the father’s figure and it occupies a secondary position in modern criticism.
Critics have long recognized the centrality of family relationships in Shakespeare’s drama, but the shifting affections of fathers and daughters has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention only in recent decades.
This is a mistake, one of the causes that characterize women’s personality and behaviour is a direct consequence from the presence of their fathers in the representation of the play.
Shakespeare usually needs this figure (sometimes through the character of an uncle or a tutor) as a person that possesses power and drastically influences the action. The comedies are a fundamental relationship between men and women and the way in which they interact through the play, this fact produced their fame and in them the spectator can see quotidian situations like love, marriage or treachery. This is the secret ingredient of their immortality, a combination of figures and characters each of which has something different to provide.
The father-daughter relationship figures largely in twenty-one of Shakespeare’s plays, from the early Two Gentleman of Verona to hi last complete work, The Tempest. The father of two daughters himself, Shakespeare explored this relationship throughout his dramatic career; it appears as an integral element in comedies, tragedies and romances. Repeatedly, his plays depict the father at middle life, reluctant to release his daughter into adulthood and face his own decline, while she stands at the threshold of adult commitment in marriage.
Human relationships are complicated, and in all plays Shakespeare shows a new situation while explores the possibilities of creating plots familiar for the audience, but he also incorporates new features (like magic, presence of death in comedies, mixture of classical mythology with reality, etc.)
The Tempest is the last comedy of Shakespeare (1610-1611) and has all the aspects described above. It is mainly the story of Prospero (central character that acts as an axis in the play), duke of Milan. He is a God-like figure and governs all what happened in the play, he has power even over supernatural elements (spirits and fairies) that helped him to reach his aims (for more details about the plot go to 1.2 Content Summary).
Prospero has plans for her daughter Miranda (most important female character in the play) and they maintain a difficult relationship. However, Prospero is very authoritative and is not going to accept a disobedience act from Miranda, who in occasions is tempted to rebel herself for a love question:
Alas, now pray you
Worke not so hard: I would the lightning had
Burnt vp those Logs that you are enioynd to pile:
Pray set it downe, and rest you
©(http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Texts/Tmp/F1/scene/3.1)
Prospero wants her maximum benefit, but the spectators do not know that until the end of the play.
There is a strong contrast in the families exposed in the representation. We have on a first term the relation of Prospero and Miranda, but there are other secondary like Alonso (King of Naples) and Ferdinand (his son), or the character of Caliban (sort of monster) that represents evil. In this last case, Caliban has not a known father and this fact is a proof that in Elizabethan times someone without this parental figure looses his/her identity and can be an instrument to develop bad actions.
Image of Prospero and Miranda
Academic year 2011/2012
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Saturnino Figueroa Guerola
safigue@alumni.uv.es