230 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



which the freckled hag-born whelp, Caliban, was the only human being on the 

 island. Ariel showed himself capable of feeling pain by his groans. His groan 

 moved wolves to howl, a strong comparison as Shakespeare uses words: "It was a 

 torment to lay upon the damned."' 



It was Prospero's art, gained by the bettering of his mind by study, that enabled 

 him to free Ariel from between the forks of the tree. If the freed spirit now declines 

 to assist his learned master in his labors, the master will peg him in the knotty entrails 

 of an oak for twelve years more. Prospero does not deny Ariel's right to liberty. 

 He denies that Ariel should yet assert that right. Ariel acquiesces and begs his 

 master's pardon. 



Ariel's name in the Dramatis Personae is entered after Miranda's, not among 

 the male characters. In the play he is only once referred to by a masculine word.* 

 Prospero commands him to assume the form of a nymph, and to render himself 

 invisible to all but his master. These two powers, of assuming any desired form and 

 of being invisible, are accepted and used by Shakespeare as facts suitable to the con- 

 ception of a spirit. 



When Ariel reappears like a water-nymph, Prospero gives the spirit a command. 

 It is not clear why the form of a water-nymph was required, for when Ariel enters, 

 followed by Ferdinand, he is heard singing, but not seen. Perhaps, as he is to sing 

 like a water-nymph, he must assume that part in its entirety. The first song is an 

 expression of the free play-instinct; with lyrics of the moral and intellectual realm 

 it has no relation; it expresses no interest in anything except the interest of pure, 

 disinterested love of the beautiful. It is unique in its freedom from thought or pur- 

 pose. It has the suggestion of the passing of night and the coming of dawn, which 

 should enhance its beauty to those who might find its clear, dim, peaceful pictures 

 and far away beautiful sounds insipid. 



The second song is also mystical and unearthly. The light, emotionless treat- 

 ment of death, so remote from commonplace dirges, suggests that to the spirit this 

 world is but a passing show and death no more than the dropping of the curtain 

 between acts. It has the note of infinity in a remarkable degree. There is no 

 human pathos in the line, "those are pearls that were his eyes," yet it is not coarse 

 or harsh. Ariel is speaking of human vicissitude under the forms of the eternal. 

 Only from such a point of view is it true that whatever is, is right, and from a station 

 above passion and sympathy it is sufficient to say to Ferdinand mourning for his 



father, 



"Nothing of him that doth fade. 

 But doth suffer a sea-change 

 Into something rich and strange." 



Ferdinand's comment on the poem is the best criticism. "This is no mortal busi- 



' Hartmann's conception of a suffering god. 

 " In Renan's Caliban Ariel is female. 



