Prospero’s Magic in Shakespeare's The Tempest

Prospero’s Magic in Shakespeare's The Tempest

In order to understand the full effect the character of Prospero, in Shakespeare's The Tempest, would have had on the audience, it is important to understand how magic was regarded during the time. During the Tudor and early Stuart periods, interest in magic ran high, and attitudes toward magic were varied and complex. For instance, magic was to be avoided by God-fearing men, but "God permitted magic partly to demonstrate, by its overthrow, his own miraculous powers, and partly as one of the pitfalls that appeared in the world as a result of original sin" (Traister 3). Also, many scholars and philosophers were magicians, and it was difficult to draw a line between magic and science since medicine and astronomy were often associated with magic.

So, people sought to clarify the ambiguities by distinguishing demonic magic from natural magic, or black magic from white magic. Basically, demonic magic was performed with the aid of spirits and natural magic was not. But even that definition became muddled with complexities during a revival of neoplatonism in England. There was a belief in a world spirit that could be tapped into by magic. Early neoplatonist ideas about magic can be traced to Marsilio Ficino. He developed theories of ways to "attract planetary daemons (to be carefully distinguished from 'demons' evil spirits) by the use of music, particular words similar to incantations, special colors, and perfumes" (Traister 7). Ficino argued this to be different from demonic magic because he intended to attract angelic spirits rather than evil spirits.

Ficino's ideas were further developed by Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) as he divided natural magic and create...

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Egan, Robert. "This Rough Magic: Perspectives of Art and Morality in The Tempest." Shakespeare Quarterly 23 (1972): 171-82.

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