SHAKESPEARE AND PSYCHOGNOSIS 245 



The fifth act is full of Prospero's words and influence. Hamlet once said: "The 

 time is out of joint." Prospero is in strong hope: "My spirits obey, and time goes 

 upright with his carriage." It is as if Hamlet had followed his impulse of returning 

 to Wittenberg, and had through learning acquired the power to overcome his wrongs 

 and seize his birthright, laying the tortured ghost by raising the spirits. 



Ariel's report regarding the prisoners moves compassion in the justly indignant 

 Prospero. "The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance." He has Antonio com- 

 pletely at his mercy; it is because of his nobler reason that, though struck to the 

 quick with the vile treatment he has undergone at his hands, he conceives it not 

 worthy of himself to destroy him. Having decided upon a course of clemency, he 

 dispatches Ariel for the prisoners. Prospero makes a speech concerning his magic 

 art. The greater part of it consists of an apostrophe to the various spirits controlled 

 by his art; he speaks in high praise of the potency of his knowledge — "graves at my 

 command have waked their sleepers, op'd and let them forth." His powerful yet 

 rough magic must give way to music. All the services of Ariel have been directed 

 to the ends of justice, peace, harmony, and fraternity; now that these are about to 

 prevail no services will be required of him; music will take the place of Prospero's 

 potent but rougher art, and harmor^ will ensue. Stafif and book will give way to 

 heavenly harmony. Solemn music is called for to produce a healthy and reasonable 

 rhythm in the brains of the king and his followers, now boiled within their skulls; 

 the charm dissolves; the morning steals upon the night; their rising senses begin to 

 chase the ignorant fumes that mantle their clearer reason; their understanding 

 begins to swell, and the approaching tide will shortly fill the reasonable shores that 

 now lie foul and muddy. Such is the magic method of this strange magician — so 

 suggestive of modem ideas that it has tempted critics to read later-day science into 

 it. He has brought them to a certain stage of reason by motives of fear, terror, 

 sympathy, and other powerful tragic emotions, and now, finding them listless and 

 confused he completes their cure by a musical charm mingled with suitable 

 words of praise, invective, reproach, forgiveness — all delivered with great energy and 

 conviction. 



Prospero desires the common sailors fetched to the cell. Ariel departs, and 

 Prospero reveals himself to the recovering lords in his true character as banished 

 Duke of Milan. His manner to Alonso is more than human in its magnanimity and 

 courtesy: 



"I embrace thy body; 

 And to thee and thy company I bid 

 A hearty welcome." 



There are degrees in forgiveness, and in this scene one finds a compendium of social 

 truth; this estimate of the largest types of social character is central, human, just, 

 absolute — from the poetic point of view. 



The praise of patience as the great virtue of the just is an essential part of this 



