The Tempest

Abstract

Given that metaphor is the pursuit of meaning via association, The Tempest is the supreme Shakespearean model of metaphor in action. The play demonstrates this not through the accumulation of figures classifiable as metaphor (Troilus and Cressida is the major instance) but rather through its dramatic essence, which is the experience of half-perceiving, half-grasping for truth. It is natural that this quality of The Tempest should lead to so much allegorical criticism. Dowden observed a long time ago that the play ‘has had the quality, as a work of art, of setting its critics to work as though it were an allegory; and forthwith it baffles them, and seems to mock them for supposing that they had power to pluck out the heart of its mystery.’¹ That is an observation of fact. But today’s critics have largely renounced the task of describing a finite system of correspondences, which is what ‘allegory’ indicates. Nuttall’s position, ‘The mystery is never allowed to harden into an ontological dogma’,² is in harmony with current thinking. I agree with this, and would merely stress that the possibility of allegory is part of the intellectual experience of the play that we still acknowledge.