Untitled Essay, Research Paper

The Tempest, written in 1611, was one of William Shakespeare’s last

plays. It has a combination of superb characters, interesting settings, and

a good plot line—all held together by the running theme of magic, and

its ever-present importance. A closer examination of the magic in The Tempest,

and the public’s view of magic at the time, will give insight as to

Shakespeare’s choice of magic as a theme, and why it has made the play

so successful and timeless.

Magic presented itself to Shakespeare as a controversial topic, as it had

been the persecution of those believed to perform “black magic,” (witches)

that had been at the forefront of societal concerns since 1050. However,

after 500 years of witch-hunts, a turning point occurred in 1584, at the

publication of Reginald Scot’s The Discouerie of Witchcrafte (The Discovery

of Witchcraft). This book was the first major book to denounce witch-hunts

and their ringleaders, and unquestionable the first book in English to actually

hypothesize about the methods of these so-called witches. It contained one

chapter of approximately twenty pages describing what we might view as

unsophisticated, old-time magic tricks.

One would assume that it was this text, and texts succeeding this (The Art

of Juggling, written by Samuel Ridd in 1610 also presented a few how-to’s

of magic) were probably not only what suggested the idea of using magic as

a them to Shakespeare, but in addition, provided methods as to how the magic

in the play might be accomplished.

Despite the fact that in retrospective analysis it is fairly clear that witches

were nothing more that magicians with a slightly different presentation,

audiences were not always aware of –and those that were, were rarely

convinced by—the two aforementioned texts. Witches were still persecuted

and witch-hunts did not actually stop until the end of the seventeenth century.

Therefore, Shakespeare’s use of magic was controversial, compounded

by the fact that Prospero was presented in a largely good light—a move

probably made as a political statement, as it is known that Shakespeare’s

plays were sometimes written to include political suggestions to King James.

However, when Prospero relinquished his powers at the end of the play, those

that did believe in the witch-hunts were satisfied. Everyone was happy.

After considering the contention that the masque scene was added for the

purposes of compliment to Elizabeth and Frederick’s marriage, one could

conclude that Shakespeare learned more about magic after he wrote The Tempest.

The reasoning follows. One could only assume that Shakespeare would have

tried to make the magic in the play as fooling and magical as possible. Although

there were two magic effects in the play, one of them –the spirit

music—would not have fooled even the most unsophisticated and naïve

audiences. Even before the era of Harry Houdini, or even the wandering street

magicians of the 1700’s, audiences were not fooled by music being played

offstage. It is the other effect, that of the banquet disappearance that,

well executed, would have fooled Shakespeare’s audiences, and would

even have a shot of passing muster today.

However, this banquet sequence was in the masque scene, theoretically added

two years after the original writing of the play. The question that begs

to be answered therefore, is why didn’t Shakespeare fund some other

way of including a more sophisticated magic effect into the play? The most

logical answer would be that he learned more about magic and witch techniques

after he wrote the play. Maybe at first he was unable to grasp the explanations

in the Scot text, or maybe he didn’t even read it before the original

writing—possibly it was just called to his attention, and he was unable

to lay his hands on a copy until after he wrote the play

Whether or not Shakespeare ever read the Scot text in its entirety, or whether

or not the banquet disappearance was added before or after the original writing,

neither is relevant to magic’s central importance to the play. Obviously,

magic could grab audiences of Shakespeare’s time. As it happens, magic

had been grabbing audiences since 2500 BC (according to a depiction of a

magician on the Beni Hassan tomb in Egypt) and magic continues to grab audiences

today. It caught Shakespeare’s eye, and has made the play timeless,

and theatrically entertaining.

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