PROSPERO … by whose aid—
Weak masters though ye be—I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread-rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt: the strong based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, ope’d and let ’em forth
By my so potent art. (5.1.40-50)
A great crescendo, and, ultimately, a terrifying one. Prospero is apparently still addressing the elves, but he shifts here to an account of the things that he has done with their aid. I, I, I, my, my resounds through this second movement of the speech (as you, you, ye, ye did in the first), as Prospero speaks of the terrible, wonderful things that he has done. No traceless elven dances or fairy mushroom ringlets here, but an altogether grander scale, and it’s mostly, although not exclusively, imagined in terms of sound. Prospero has bedimmed the noontide sun, caused the sun to be obscured with cloud or fog or mist, or perhaps even caused eclipses. He has raised tempests; we know that already, and he is in effect describing, reimagining, remaking the tempest which began the play, even as it begins to draw to a close. The winds have come at his call. The clouds have been so low, and the waves so high, that it has been as if the green sea and the azured vault of the sky have been at war with each other. The Boatswain had referred to the sea and the winds as these roarers in 1.1; in Winter’s Tale, when the young shepherd describes the death of Antigonus (the bear…) and the shipwreck in terms of roaring:‘how the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them, and how the poor gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both roaring louder than the sea or weather’ (3.3.88-90). Prospero has made it thunder, given it fire (as if with cannon and gunpowder); he has thrown lightning bolts, splitting Jove’s stout oak with the god’s own weapons. (We have seen him do all this, and so we readily believe the rest of it too.) He has shaken the strong-based promontory, made the earth shake to its very core, and torn up tall trees, the pine and cedar, by their roots. And he has raised the dead. By his so potent art, Prospero has done things which are the prerogative of gods, and God, alone. This is art, indeed, but it is frightening, violent, and dark. This speech began with small, delicate, airy things, pirouetting along the tide line; in the space of fewer than twenty lines, it has turned up the volume to deafening, and massively enlarged its scale, as if the earth itself, trees, water, hills, and sky, the very elements, have been blown apart, and death itself defeated. This is Prospero’s art, potent, yes, and dangerous. What will he do next, in this astonishing speech’s third and final movement?
