Prospero’s Magic in Shakespeares The Tempest Essay -- Tempest essays

Prosperos Magic in Shakespeares The Tempest In order to fancy the full effect the character of Prospero, in Shakespeares The Tempest, would have had on the audience, it is classical to understand how put-on was regarded during the time. During the Tudor and early Stuart periods, interest in delusion ran high, and attitudes toward charming were varied and complex. For instance, magic was to be avoided by God-fearing men, provided God permitted magic partially to demonstrate, by its overthrow, his own miraculous powers, and partly as one of the pitfalls that appeared in the world as a end of original sin (Traister 3). Also, many scholars and philosophers were magicians, and it was difficult to draw a breeze between magic and science since medicine and astronomy were often associated with magic.So, community sought to clarify the ambiguities by distinguishing demonic magic from natural magic, or black magic from white magic. Basically, demonic magic was performed with the aid of spirit up and natural magic was not. But even that definition became muddled with complexities during a revival of neoplatonism in England. There was a belief in a world spirit that could be tapped into by magic. Early neoplatonist ideas about magic can be traced to Marsilio Ficino. He developed theories of ways to attract mercurial daemons (to be carefully distinguished from demons injustice spirits) by the use of music, situation words similar to incantations, special colors, and perfumes (Traister 7). Ficino argued this to be different from demonic magic because he intended to attract angelic spirits rather than evil spirits. Ficinos ideas were further developed by Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) as he carve up natural magic and create... ...-48.Craig, Hardin. Magic in The Tempest. Philological Quarterly 47 (1968) 8-15.Egan, Robert. This Rough Magic Perspectives of Art and Morality in The Tempest. Shakespeare Quarterly 23 (1972) 171-82.Estr in, Barbara L. Telling the Magician from the Magic in The Tempest. Bucknell Review A bookish Journal of Letter, Arts and Science 251 (1980) 170-87.French, Peter J. prat Dee The World of an Elizabethan Magus. London Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.Harris, Anthony. Nights Black Agents Witchcraft and Magic in Seventeenth-Century English Drama. Manchester Manchester University Press, 1980.Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York Charles Scribners Sons, 1971.Traister, Barbara Howard. Heavenly Necromancers The Magician in English Renaissance Drama. Columbia University of Missouri Press, 1984.