Prospero’s Magic in Shakespeares The Tempest Essay -- Tempest essays

Prosperos joke in Shakespeares The Tempest In rescript to understand the full effect the character of Prospero, in Shakespeares 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 religious men, but God permitted magic partly to demonstrate, by its overthrow, his own super earthy 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 frequently associated with magic.So, people sought to clarify the ambiguities by distinguishing sinful magic from natural magic, or black magic from white magic. Basically, demonic magic was performed with the upkeep of spirits and natural magic was not. But even that definition became befogged 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 or so magic can be traced to Marsilio Ficino. He developed theories of ways to suck up planetary daemons (to be carefully distinguished from demons evil spirits) by the social function 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 quite an than evil spirits. Ficinos ideas were further developed by Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) as he divided natural magic and create... ...-48.Craig, Hardin. Magic in The Tempest. Philological quarterly 47 (1968) 8-15.Egan, Robert. This Rough Magic Perspectives of Art and Morality in The Tempest. Shakespeare every quarter 23 (1972) 171 -82.Estrin, Barbara L. Telling the ace from the Magic in The Tempest. Bucknell Review A Scholarly Journal of Letter, Arts and Science 251 (1980) 170-87.French, dent J. John Dee The World of an Elizabethan Magus. London Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.Harris, Anthony. Nights Black Agents Witchcraft and Magic in Seventeenth-Century English Drama. Manchester Manchester University Press, 1980.Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York Charles Scribners Sons, 1971.Traister, Barbara Howard. Heavenly Necromancers The Magician in English Renaissance Drama. Columbia University of Missouri Press, 1984.