The Vocabulary of the Environment in the Tempest Author(S): L

George Washington University

The Vocabulary of the Environment in The Tempest Author(s): L. T. Fitz Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Winter, 1975), pp. 42-47 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2869265 . Accessed: 07/04/2014 10:22

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This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Mon, 7 Apr 2014 10:22:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Vocabulary of the Environment in The Tempest

L. T. FITZ

N this day of travel bureaus and the National Geographic, it is easy to form preconceived notions of what Prospero's island looks like. We summon up visions of Samoa or Tahiti or other tropical paradises and impose the visions back on The Tempest. We are encouraged in this task of the imagina- tion by our knowledge of the Bermuda pamphlets and our knowledge or daydreams of present-day Bermuda. Caroline Spurgeon can be caught in the act of such a reverie, when she speaks of the sounds of The Tempest:

In emphasizingsound he certainlyhit upon the truth, for I have heard from one who knows well just such a small sub-tropicalisle as that on which Alonso's ship foundered,that the most noticeablething about it is the many noises. Wherever you wander, I am told, not only on the shore, but inland through the woods, even in comparativelycalm weather, the roar of the surf is ever in your ears, diversifiedby the harsh rustling and rattling of the wind through the palms and palmettos,and its sighing and moaning through the pines; while in Bermudaitself, in addition, the singing of the wind through the oleanderhedges is so strange as to be almost alarming; all of which, in a storm, rises and swells into a strange wild medley of sound and a roaras of thunder.'

The problem is that there are no oleander hedges in The Tempest; there are not even any palm trees (that prime requisite for a modern tropical paradise), although Shakespeare speaks of palm trees in other plays. Clemen, too, seems to want to impose a tropical lushness on the island that the imagery does not completely support. He notes: "We all of us are aware of the strong earthy atmosphere pervading the play. Except for A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear there is no other play of Shakespeare'sin which so many plants, fruits and animals appear."2Clemen must also note, however, that the plants and animals in The Tempest are "mostly brought into relation with physical pain, threats of punishment, trouble and distress" (p. i89). This problem he subsumes under the statement, "Compared to the nature-world of A Midsummer Night's Dream ... the world of flora and fauna in The Tempest

1 Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (New York: Macmillan, I936), p. 301. 2 Wolfgang Clemen, The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery (London: Methuen, i95I), p. i87.

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is less lovely, less 'Elizabethan,' less poetic and aesthetic" (p. i87). This, it would seem, is putting it mildly. Clemen feels, however, that the impression of "hostile and adverse forces which either oppose man or are called up against him" is completely superseded "in the fourth act . . . by the praise of the fruit- bearing blessings of nature" (p. i89). In his discussion of imagery, Clemen makes almost no distinction between the imagery that refers to the island itself and the imagery that refers to other places. He praises the "sensuous exuber- ance and pregnant wealth of imagery" (p. i88) in Iris' "Ceres, most bounteous lady" speech as if the "rich leas" of that passage referred to the island. In fact, however, the point of Iris' lengthy message could be paraphrased,"Ceres, Juno bids you leave your fertile and abundant fields to come to this bare island where there is nothing but uncultivated grass." Clemen concludes Iris' message after the beautiful catalogue of images, trailing off with three well-placed dots just before Iris says, "the queen o' th' sky . . . bids thee leave these" (IV. i. 70, 72).3 One of the underlying assumptions of Clemen's famous book on Shake- speare's imagery is that all of the imagery in a play, regardless of which char- acter uses it, is "fair game" for a discussion of the total atmosphere of the play provided by the imagery. "This unity of atmosphere and mood," he states at one point, "is no less a 'dramatic unity' than the classical dramatic unities" (p. io5). Often this approach works and provides interesting insights (for example, Clemen points out that the central imagery of the sea pervades even the metaphors used by the characters, e.g., Sebastian's "to ebb / Hereditary sloth instructs me" (II. i. 219-20). Sometimes it does not work, and I believe that Clemen's appropriation of the imagery in the masque as part of the island's earthy atmosphereis a case in which it does not. In fact, the imagery of the masque seems to constitute a direct contrast to the imagery used in regard to Prospero's island. The following items men- tioned in the masque all have to do with cultivation, by which I mean Nature organized and controlled by human effort: "wheat," "rye," "barley,""vetches," "oats," "pease,""nibbling sheep," "broom-groves,""poll-clipt vineyard," "barns and garners never empty," "vines with clustring bunches growing," "sunburnt sicklemen," "furrow," and, above all, "harvest."4On the other hand, there is no evidence whatsoever to show that there is any kind of cultivation or domestica- tion of animals on the island. Prospero and company seem to have been living on fresh-brook mussels and whatever fish Caliban could trap in his dams. For all that has been said in favor of Prospero's "art" as symbolizing civilization, it seems that in twelve years on the island he has succeeded in establishing no more than what anthropologists would call a "hunting and gathering econ- omy." There is a purpose to the harvest imagery in the marriage masque. The purpose is to link harvest and marriage, Ceres and Juno, crop fertility and marriage fertility, in proper mythological fashion. It is not to contribute to the 3 All Shakespearequotations are from The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, ed. W. A. Neilson and C. J. Hill (Cambridge, Mass.: Moughton Mifflin, I942). 4 It has even been suggested that "rocky hard" refers to a "hard" or projecting rock on which grain is winnowed, another tie-in with Ceres and cultivation (Brae, Roy. Soc. of Lit. Trans. X, Part iii, p. 499, i873; cited in the New Variorum edition of The Tempest, ed. H. H. Furness [New York: American Scholar, I966], pp. 203-4).

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Mon, 7 Apr 2014 10:22:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 44 SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY general "earthy atmosphere"of Prospero'sisland. The atmosphere of Prospero's island is something quite different, and the language used for the one as op- posed to the language used for the other reflects and underlines that difference. What does Shakespeare actually tell us about the island, and what are the stylistic features of his descriptions? Let us begin by trying to construct a sort of ecological picture of the island as Shakespeare has presented it to us in his play. The most general descriptions of the island are all quite unflattering: "this most desolate isle" (Ariel, III. iii. 8o); "this bare island" (Prospero, Epilogue, 8); and "this fearful country" (Gonzalo, V. i. io6)4. One of the earliest general descriptions is ambivalent, showing that one's view of the island really depends on whether one is disposed towards optimism or pessimism, but the description as a whole indicates that at least on this part of the island there is little to pro- voke comment besides wind and grass:

Adrian. Though this islandseem to be desert,-... Uninhabitableand almost inaccessible,- It must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate temperance... The air breathesupon us here most sweetly. Sebast. As if it had lungs and rottenones. Anton. Or as 'twereperfum'd by a fen. Gonzalo. Here is everythingadvantageous to life. Anton. True; save means to live. Sebarst. Of that there'snone, or little. Gonzalo. How lush and lusty the grasslooks! How green! Anton. The ground indeed is tawny. Sebast. With an eye of green in't. Anton. He misses not much. Sebast. No; he doth but mistakethe truth totally. (II. i. 35-57)

Indeed, the grassiness and greenness of the island are the only things men- tioned by the goddesses in the masque, who refer to the island (or at least the part of the island where the masque takes place) as "this grassplot" (Iris, IV. i. 73), "this short-grass'd green" (Ceres, IV. i. 83), and "this green land" (Iris, IV.i. I30). The island is fairly large, for it is necessary to have a guide (namely Cali- ban) to find the fresh springs and fertile places (I. ii. 338-39; II. ii. i6445; III. ii.73-75). There is some seasonal change, for in his threat to Ariel Prospero measures time in winters (I. ii. 296). We know that the coast is cut by coves or nooks, since Ariel feels obliged to explain to Prospero in just which nook he chose to hide the ship (Ariel, I. ii. 226-29). We know that there are banks, since Ferdinand sits on one to weep (I.ii 389-9o). We know from Ariel that the sands are yellow (I. ii. 376). We know that there are large rocks with caves in them, for Caliban lives in one of them (I. ii. 342-43) and Stephano hides his stolen liquor in another (II. ii I37-38.). There are streams and ponds, some fresh (I. ii. 339; II. ii. i64; III. ii. 75) and some polluted (IV. i. i82). Such are the larger ecological features of the island.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Mon, 7 Apr 2014 10:22:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE VOCABULARY OF THE ENVIRONMENT 45 As for plant life, there seems to be a great plenty of trees on the island, at least enough to make Caliban miserable gathering wood and Ferdinand miserable carrying logs. Oaks come first to mind, for Prospero uses them in two of his more picturesque threats: first that he will peg Ariel in the knotty entrails of an oak (I. ii. 294-95), and second that he will feed Ferdinand on the "husks / Wherein the acorn cradled" (I.ii 464). Also present is a grove of something called "line-trees,"as anyone who has read the Furness Variorum of The Tem- pest will be most painfully aware, since a large number of pages of that edition is devoted to the question of whether the trees in question are limes or lindens, and to the secondary question of whether the "line" on which the clothes are hung is a line-tree or a clothes line (Brae, for example, is of the line-tree school and feels that a clothes line in such a scene would be the "lowest depth of bar- barity" [p. 223]). Be this as it may, it is at least clear that a "line-grove . . . weather-fends [Prospero's] cell" (Ariel, V. i. io). There are crab-apple trees (Caliban, II. ii. I7i), filbert trees (Caliban, II. ii. I75), and at least one pine (cloven) (Prospero, I. ii. 277,:293). The lesser vegetation on the island is not exactly what we would call "lush." It consists of some sort of berry-bushes (since Prospero at one time fed Caliban berry juice [I. ii. 334]), "pig-nuts" (II. ii. i72), "tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking gorse and thorns" (IV. i. i8o) and "wither'd roots" (I. ii. 463). All of this vegetation seems to be rather un- evenly distributed about the island, for although Stephano has no trouble, even in his drunken state, finding wood from which to carve a liquor bottle, Trin- culo finds that, upon the approach of another storm, "Here's neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all" (II. ii. i8-i9). Notably absent from the plant life of the island is any kind of flower. When we come to animal life, we run into a little difficulty in determining just what is on the island and what is not. We can be sure that the island affords fresh-water fish (Caliban, II. ii. i84), "fresh-brook mussels" (Prospero, I. ii. 463), jays (Caliban,II. ii. I73), marmosetsor monkeys(Caliban, II. ii. I74), and scamels (Caliban, II. ii. I76), although we do not know what scamels are. But the "urchins" (hedgehogs) that are set on Caliban (I. ii. 326) may very well be spirits (they are called "urchin-shows" at II. ii. 5), and the bees (I. ii. 330), beasts (I. ii. 37i), blind mole (IV. i. i4), wolves, and "ever-angry bears" (I. ii. 288-89) may all be figurative. Such, then, is a brief naturalist's description of the enchanted island. But the naturalist would describe the island in Linnaean Latin, and our concern is with the words Shakespeare chose to describe his island and what was on it. The language Shakespeare uses to delineate the physical appearance of the island can best be described as "simple." The general conditions of the island, as we might expect, evoke some Latinate words such as "desolate,""uninhab- itable," and "inaccessible,"but otherwise the physical description is couched in pure Anglo-Saxon. Elsewhere in Shakespeare, rocks are "pendent" (Antony and Cleopatra, IV. xiv. 4) or "unscaleable" (Cymbeline, III. i. 20); The Tem- pest they are simply "hard" (I. ii. 343). Elsewhere sands are "congregated" (Othello, II. i. 69); in The Tempest they are simply "yellow" (I. ii. 376). Else- where rivers are "pelting" (Midsummer Night's Dream, II. i. 9i), "peculiar" (Measure for Measure, I. ii. 9i), "crimson" (Titus Andronicus, II. iv. 22), "plenteous" (Lear, I. i. 66), or "tributary"(Cymbeline, IV. ii. 36); in The Tem-

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pest, they are simply "fresh"(I.ii 338). The nook is "deep"(I. ii. 227); the freshes are "quick" (III.ii.75); the gorse and thorns are "pricking"(IV.i. i8o); the lake is "foul" (IV.i.i83). Occasionallya submergedmetaphor ap- pears (eg., "tooth'dbriers," IV. i. i8o), but for the most part the style is as bare and spareas the islanditself. In contrast,interesting words of all sortsoccur in the contextof the play's magical effects,most notablythe masque. Here we have images compressed through the use of nouns as adjectives:"sedg'd crowns" (IV. i. I29), "un- shrubb'ddown" (IV. i. 8i). We have some of the play'smost beautifulsound effects: "boskyacres" (IV. i. 8i), "rich scarf" (IV. i. 82), "wind'ringbrooks" (IV. i. I28), "pionedand twilled brims"(IV. i. 64). And we have a high per- centageof words that are so unusual as to have caused criticalhead-scratch- ing ever since: "pioned and twilled," "broom-groves"(IV. i. 66), "bosky," "wind'ring,""pole-clipp'd" (IV. i. 68). Obscurityis not, of course,a virtue,but the sheernumber of such unusualwords in one passageseems to suggestthat the playwrightwas interestedin expendingsome stylisticingenuity on the passage. We find none of these unusualwords in the mere physicaldescriptions of the island. Outside of the masque itself, the passage that is most often quoted in image-studieson The Tempestis Prospero's"Ye elves of hills, brooks,standing lakes and grooves"speech (V. i. 32-57). But this speech is about Prospero's magic, and there is no real reason to believe that any of the images in the speechrefer directlyto the island: if Prosperocan dispatchAriel to the still- vexed Bermoothesto fetch dew, it is to be supposedthat his elves could make mushroomselsewhere also. Indeed,no one would supposethat the gravesthat "wak'dtheir sleepers"at Prospero'scommand (V. i. 48) were located on the island.And the languageof this passagehas a considerablymore exotic flavor than that used to describethe island.We have not the "bank"of island geog- raphy (I. ii. 389) but a "promontory"(V. i. 46); not the island's"loud winds" (III.iii. 63) but "mutinouswinds" (V.i.42); not "wither'droots" (I.ii.463) but "spurs"(V. i. 47). We have poetic diction ("bedimmed"[V. i. 4i ], "azur'd vault" [V. i. 43], "op'd"[V. i. 491) and classicalallusions ("ebbingNeptune" [V. i. 35], "riftedJove's stout oak / With his own bolt" [V. i. 45-46]), neither of which appearsin physicaldescriptions of the island. And perhapsmost of all, the passageis full of lively verbs ("chase,""bites," "rejoice," "bedimm'd," "rifted,""plucked up," "op'd").In contrast,the liveliest verb we can find in the contextof physicaldescriptions of the island is Ariel's "o'erstunk"(IV. i. i84), which is somehownot the same thing at all. Clemen feels that the barren, hostile imagery of the first part of The Tempestis supersededby the fruitionimagery of the masquein Act IV. And indeed,since the two passageswe have discussedoccur in Acts IV and V, per- haps it would be possibleto see a movementaway from the bare,sterile imagery towardthe fuller imageryof the masqueand "Ye elves."We must, however, accountfor problemssuch as the fact that between the masqueand "Ye elves"is this passage:

So I charm'dtheir ears Thatcalf-like they my lowingfollow'd through

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Mon, 7 Apr 2014 10:22:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE VOCABULARY OF THE ENVIRONMENT 47 Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking gorse and thorns, Which ent'redtheir frail shins. At last I left them I' th' filthy-mantledpool beyondyour cell, There dancingup to the chins,that the foul lake O'erstunktheir feet. (IV. i. 178-84)

Thus, at the height to which we have been lifted by the masque and by Pros- pero's "revels" speech, we are reminded that in close proximity to Prospero's cell is a pool full of "horse-piss,"surrounded by briars and thorns. I would posit a distinction between the imagery and language used in physical descriptions of the island and the imagery and language used in ref- erence to Prospero's magic, the spirits, the goddesses, and so forth. In the for- mer case, the imagery is barren and hostile and the language terse and spare. In the latter case, the imagery is full and "sympathetic" (in both the masque and "Ye elves," man is in complete control of nature-through cultivation in the masque and through magic in "Ye elves"), and the language striking, inventive, and memorable. The question, of course, is why. On the most elementary level, the answer is that the island must be kept fairly unattractive or we would have trouble understanding why Prospero wanted to go back to Milan at all. But more im- portant than this, the world of Prospero'smagic is made more attractivethan the world of the "bareisland" to emphasize the value of what Prospero has brought to the island. For if the imagery of the island shows nature hostile to man, the imagery of magic shows Prospero in control of nature. Prospero's control, although strict, is at all times imaginative. He is not content to mete out con- ventional punishments, but frights with urchin-shows and racks with inward pinches. He does not stop with lectures on his own power and the guilt of the transgressors,but gives the transgressors,through Ariel, an imaginative vision of these things, complete with spirits, harpies, and "Prosper"in thunder. The imaginative, inventive language used in connection with the magic serves to underline the creative force of the magic, and the spare language used in connection with the island helps to show us, as a contrast, what reality would be like without this magic. Finally, the fact that the island is presented as a place of harsh physical reality rather than as a lush ard beautiful place where all is well is closely related to the whole question of the elements of darkness in the play. The contrast between the sterility of the island and the fertility in the masque is one more manifestation of the central ambiguity of the play: the ambiguity that allows "calm seas, auspicious gales" and "this thing of darkness I / Acknowl- edge mine" to be spoken within a few lines of each other. It has become common to speak of the "late romances" as a coherent group, but we must guard against too glibly taking the fertility images of Act IV of The Winter's Tale as a key to themes of regeneration in the whole group of plays. The flowers of The Winter's Tale are most certainly symbolic of hope, fertility, and regeneration. But there are no flowers in The Tempest.

University of Alberta

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