Prospero

For other meanings, see Prospero (disambiguation).

Prospero and Miranda by William Maw Egley

Prospero (/ˈprɒspəroʊ/ PROS-pər-oh) is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.

The Tempest

Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who (with his infant daughter, Miranda) was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived, and found exile on a small island. He has learned sorcery (referred to as his "Art" in the play), and uses it while on the island to protect Miranda and control the other characters. On the island, he becomes master of the monster Caliban (the son of Sycorax, a malevolent witch), and Ariel, an elemental who has become enslaved by Prospero after he is freed from his prison inside a tree.

However, at the end of the play, Prospero intends to drown his books and renounce magic. In the view of the audience, this may have been required to make the ending unambiguously happy, as magic smacked too much of diabolical works; he will drown his books for the same reason that Doctor Faust, in an earlier play by Christopher Marlowe, futilely promised to burn his books.

Prospero's speech

The final soliloquy and epilogue in The Tempest is considered to be one of the most memorable speeches in Shakespearean literature. In it, Prospero describes his loss (magic) and his imprisonment of Caliban and Ariel. He relates his imprisonment of them to that of his own bondage, which can only be undone by the applause of the audience. Many feel that since The Tempest was Shakespeare's last play (though he did write one more, with some assistance), Prospero's feelings echo Shakespeare's own.

Epilogue

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free .

In popular culture

Literature

• In the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic by Alan Moore, Prospero appears as a founding member of the first such grouping in 1610, alongside his minions Ariel and Caliban, as well as Robert Owe-much, Amber St. Clair, Orlando, Christian from The Pilgrim's Progress and Don Quixote, and plays a minor part in The Black Dossier as it is revealed that he is the one who sent Mina and Allan after the Dossier, and he also has the closing monologue of the third volume. Prospero's appearance in the books is deliberately based on Moore himself.
• In The Sandman, the title character has William Shakespeare write The Tempest. And it is presumed Prospero is based on Dream.
• In The Reptile Room, one of the entries in A Series of Unfortunate Events, there is a ship called the Prospero, which is an allusion to this character.
• In the comic series Fables, Prospero is one of Fabletown's magic users.
• In the short story "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe
• In the Dan Simmons Ilium and Olympos novels.
• T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"
• In John Bellairs's 1969 novel The Face in the Frost, Prospero is one of the protagonists.

Film and television

• In the Swedish animated 1989 film The Journey to Melonia, which is loosely inspired by The Tempest, Prospero is the ruler of the island Melonia, though he (mostly at the prompting of his gardener, Caliban) abdicates at the end of the movie, proclaiming that the power is to be shared among all the inhabitants of the island.
• In the 2010 film adaptation of the play, Prospero is played by Helen Mirren and is now named Prospera.
• Peter Greenaway's movie (1991). Prospero's Books
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Emergence begins with Data playing Prospero. Captain Picard teaches Data about the role. The episode draws strongly from The Tempest, especially from Prospero's character, as it is one of the final episodes of the series.
• In the TV series Primeval season 4 & 5, Prospero is the name of the company run by the primary protagonist Phillip Burton

Other

• Loreena McKennitt sings a slightly altered version of the epilogue speech on her 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
• Prospero is the name of the planet originally inhabited by the Astartes Legion, the Thousand Sons, in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The Thousand Sons are a legion of Sorcerors, who use the Warp with much similarity to Magic and Ritual.
• Eric Gill's sculpture (1932), Prospero and Ariel
• R. Juha's sculpture (2004), Prospero