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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Folger Shakespeare Library and George Washington University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Shakespeare Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org 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. 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 43 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 exam- ple, 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.