SHAKESPEARE AND PSYCHOGNOSIS 



ESSAY III. MAJOR CHARACTERS OF "THE TEMPEST" [Concluded] ' 



By Melanchthon F. Libby 



Miranda: Ideal Feminine Type 



Sycorax, Claribel, Ceres, and Juno, and the sea-nymphs, are female characters 

 interesting to the student of The Tempest^ but strictly speaking Miranda is the only 

 female character dramatically portrayed. Of Miranda's mother almost no mention 

 is made, though in the relation of his downfall it is remarkable that Prospero says 

 nothing of his duchess, since the girl should naturally be curious concerning her 

 lost parent. The austerity of Prospero is emphasized by the fact that Miranda has 

 been twelve years upon the island without having learned anything of her origin. 

 Her remembrance of the women that once tended her prepares her to believe in her 

 high birth, still the tale affects her like an improbable romance. If the loss of his 

 wife, before his child was three years old, was associated with his overthrow, it must 

 have added to his sense of injury, but even in the fifth act there is no mention of her. 

 The couplet 



"Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and 

 She said thou wast my daughter," 



records all that we know of the mother of Miranda. Miranda appears in four scenes — 

 the second, fifth, eighth, and ninth. 



The whole burden of pity, caused by the sight of the vessel dashed to pieces, 

 with its freight of noble creatures, as she generously and romantically conceives, is 

 transferred to the interest of Ferdinand the moment she meets him. Pity is con- 

 verted by the chemistry of romance into love of the sufferer. The immense com- 

 passion and sympathy revealed in the earliest speeches of Miranda are the natural 

 overflow of a full and intense heart not yet engaged in a romantic attachment. 



While her father tells her the story of her life, her pride of birth is roused, but 

 much more her feelings of pity for her father and his cares. She listens with the 

 intense interest of a girl naturally eager for romance and charmed to find her own 

 story full of it. The gushing sentiment with which she greets every part of the story, 

 shown in her intense little speeches, "O, good sir, I do!" "O, the heavens," "Alack 

 for pity," "Alack, what trouble was I then to you!" "Would I might but ever 

 see that man!" indicates a disposition that must have been soothing to Prospero, 

 deprived of the applause and love which he had a right to exjject as the social reward 



' The other essays on the characters of The Tempest appeared in the University of Colorado Studies, 

 Vol. Ill, p. 63 and p. 229. This series will be followed by essays dealing with the types of human situations. 

 A third series will include a discussion of the whole problem of The Tempest and Shakespeare's psychognosis. 



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