Orestia Trilogy & The Tempest
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Rulers are fascinating subjects for dramaturgy. The decisions a ruler makes literally command other lives - and yet, ironically, a ruler remains as captive to the whims of fate and emotion as the most lowly peasant. Sometimes even more so: rulers live on a rarified plane where actions have serious consequence, where motivation for emotional reasons has political implication. The ruler is rarely "free" to behave irresponsibly, nor can he or she rely upon the standards of pure "ideal" to guide the way. If he or she does so, the dramatist is ready to describe the unexpected events that inevitably ensue. This is a fascination that began with the Greeks and continues to this day. In Sophocles' tragic Orestia trilogy, particularly the concluding play, Antigone, the playwright wrestled with the elusive concept of what proper rule should be. Nearly two millennia later William Shakespeare would take a less extreme, albeit equally perceptive approach to the same subject in his romance The Tempest. the ship of state is safe. The gods who rocked her, after a long, merciless pounding in the storm, have righted her once more (Sophocles 179-182). The ruler in Antigone is Creon, a man who has come to his position after years of standing in the background while his in-laws, Oedipus and family, played havoc with the political security of Thebes. The situation now is simple: after a civil war between Oedipus' self-destructive sons, Eteocles and Po
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earlier orders, Antigone has hung herself, his son Haemon killed himself for love of her - and Creon's own wife, Eurydice, committed suicide as well on learning of her son's demise. The final hubris of the ruler is exposed: however much he attempts to control the lives of others, whether rationally or in the name of the state, he is as much a pawn of fate as all others.
PROSPERO: Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint (Shakespeare Epilogue, 1-3).
William Shakespeare offers a different take on ruling and power in The Tempest, beginning with a storm of disorder conjured by the protagonist, Prospero, and concluding with Prospero's benign acceptance of the limitations of any human-controlled power.
At The Tempest's beginning, Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, now rules the island he and his daughter inhabit as its sole human occupants. He is more than just a "ruler" in the temporal sense, though: since arriving on this isolated shore Prospero has mastered the occult arts. He now reigns over an array of elves, monsters and "demi-puppets that/ By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make" (V, i, 36-37). He also controls aspects of Nature. The tempest storm of title th
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Haemon Antigone, , CREON It's, CREON Experience, Shakespeare's Prospero, Antonio Sebastian, Duke Milan, William Shakespeare, Ariel Prospero, PROSPERO Yea, power heart, balancing power heart, revenge prospero, haemon antigone, prospero learned, son haemon, william shakespeare, love love, whims fate, antonio sebastian, king naples,
Approximate Word count = 1743
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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