The Contrast Between Ariel And Caliban In The Tempest

The Contrast Between Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest

From The Tempest. Ed. Henry Norman Hudson. New York: Ginn and Co., 1909.

Ariel

Nowhere in Shakespeare's plays are two more sharply contrasted characters than Ariel and Caliban. Both are equally preternatural; Ariel is the air spirit, Caliban the earth spirit. Ariel's very being is spun of melody and fragrance; if a feeling soul and anintelligent will are the warp, these are the woof of his exquisite texture. He has just enough of human-heartedness to know how he would feel were he human, and a proportionable sense of that gratitude which has been aptly called the memory of the heart; hence he needs to be often reminded of his obligations, but he is religiously true to them so long as he remembers them. His delicacy of natureis nowhere more apparent than in his sympathy with right and good; the instant he comes within their touch he follows them without reserve, and he will suffer any torments rather than "act the earthy and abhorr'd commands" that go against his moral grain. And what a merry little personage he is withal; as if his being were cast together in an impulse of play, and he would spend his whole life inone perpetual frolic. Small wonder that Prospero calls him "my tricksy spirit," V, i, 226. In his fondness for mischievous sport Ariel is strongly reminiscent of Puck. With what gusto he relates the trick he played on Caliban and his confederates, when they were proceeding to execute their conspiracy against the hero's life:

I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking;
So full ofvalour that they smote the air
For breathing in their faces; beat the ground
For kissing of their feet; yet always bending
Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor;
At which, like unback'd colts, they prick'd their ears,
Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses
As they smelt music: so I charm'd their ears
That calf-like they my lowing follow'd throughTooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns,
Which enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them
I' th' filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell.
There dancing up to th' chins. [IV, i, 171-183.]

But the main ingredients of Ariel's zephyr-like constitution are shown in his leading inclinations, as he naturally has most affinity for that of which he is framed. Moral tiesare irksome to him; they are not his proper element When he enters their sphere, he feels them to be holy mdeed, but, were he free, he would keep out of their reach and follow the circling seasons in their course, and always dwell merrily in the fringes of summer. Prospero quietly intimates his instinctive dread of the cold by threatening to make him "howl away twelve winters." And the chief joyof his promised release from service is that he will then be free to live all the year through under the soft rule of summer, with its flowers and fragrancies and melodies. He is indeed an arrant little epicure of perfume and sweet sounds.

A markworthy feature of Ariel is that his power does not stop with the physical forces of nature, but reaches also to the hearts and consciences of men, sothat by his music he can kindle or assuage the deepest griefs of the one, and strike the keenest pangs of remorse into the other. This comes out in the different effects of his art upon Ferdinand and the guilty king, as related by the men themselves:

Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?
It sounds no more: and, sure, it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on abank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have found it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But 'tis gone.
No, it begins again. [I, ii, 388-396.]

Such is the effect on Ferdinand; very different is the effect of Ariel's art upon the king:

O, it is...