The Tempest and The Winter's Tale

Both plays are around the time 1611, The Tempest perhaps being a little later, though with the fuzziness of dates, that's only an uneducated guess.

So, topics to think about.

There's tons of magic in both of these plays; more in The Tempest, though a little at the end of The Winter's Tale too. It's unclear whether the unveiling of Hermione at the end of the play, her transformation from statue into life, occurs after she was hidden away for sixteen years, or after her actual death. I read it as the latter, a bit of flash and awe to tie things together in this fireside tale. This is also true because of the presence of the ghost, which doesn't make much sense otherwise.

There are other mentions of course. The suspicion that Perdita's garments and the like are "fairy gold," or Mamillus's inclination to tell his mother about tales of "goblins and sprites." It's clear that there's an undercurrent of romance in this play.

I would also note the use of humoral language. It doesn't have a systematic use, like the plays I wrote on last semester, but blood and (in one case at least) melancholy work with the astrological language to provide emotional indices for the characters.

Finally, I don't have much of a grasp on what Autolycus is really doing. He's a swindler, seeming to be amused that the Clown is so easily taken in.

Oh! I guess there's a lot to do with nature and artifice, including the line drawn by Polyxenes with Perdita, and the crafty art of the statue maker. Also some to do with lineages, and who gets the father's stamp. Also a lot about women's place - Paulina gets called down from speaking too loudly at a few occasions.

I haven't talked at all about The Tempest. I can see why scholars like to read the colonial tinges into it. Caliban is the loathed and self-loathing servant figure, who cannot know anything else due to the society surrounding him, first with Prospero and then with Stephano, a servant who can nonetheless pretend to be a lord. There's a lot to do with levels of servitude, how one treats servants, and the like. Caliban chooses his master poorly, but he can't be too much to blame for having fallen in love with Miranda. And we can't ignore race. Sycorax came from Algeria, and there's a lot of talk about Alonso's daughter, who was just married to the king of Tunis. Racism is rather rampant in the play; god forbid you be dark.

Prospero as author, with authority coming from his book. The related status of Ariel, since he's a little bit of a trickster, and also quite eager, and finally rather powerful. Prospero doesn't do too much magic on his own. 

And the magic itself bears some reflection, though I don't know precisely what to do with it now. It requires its practitioner to be learned. It's not inherently evil, but Prospero's renouncing of it signals that it is at least duplicitous, that it is something that he can no longer brook. Why doesn't Caliban have any magic? Levels of earthliness and spirituality are fascinating.