Prospero’s Island

Prospero, a magician with an island of his own, decides to forgive all those who wronged him, set everyone free, break his staff and drown his book and reclaim his status as mere human. Lots of interesting things to contemplate there, but for now, let’s just look at this epilogue.

The play has ended; everyone is going home. But, then Prospero walks out and announces to the audience (that would be you), that his fate now has to be decided. If you clap, he gets to go home. If you don’t clap, he will forever be trapped on his island in this play. Which will it be?

Now, you, like most of my students, may think this is a pathetic bid for applause at the end of a performance. But, give Shakespeare a little credit here and imagine this is a rather important part of the play itself. You have just become part of the play. You not only have the opportunity to decide Prospero’s fate, you must decide his fate. Either you clap or you don’t. Prospero is waiting.

You are still thinking, “It’s just a play.” But wait. Earlier in this play, Prospero puts on a play of his own, and that play gets interrupted when Prospero remembers he has other things he should be doing.

These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Here is the question: in that last sentence, who is the “we”? Just the people in the play? Ah, but remember that epilogue? You are one of the actors in this play.

Are we the stuff which dreams are made on? Dear Reader, are you and I characters in a play? Is all the world a stage (different play, same author)?

The question of whether we are all just characters in a play left a room full of normally quite boisterous Mount Holyoke students silent. Truth be told, I am not sure whether the silence was born of deep contemplation or incredulousness that I was asking such a painfully silly question.

But, as I sit here writing my monologue, there is nobody else on the stage with me right now. There are a couple of distant figures walking across the lawn in the background outside the window of my office. But the only conversation going on is me talking to you, the audience, Dear Readers.

Of course in the play that is your life, you are right now reading a letter written to you by a character (me) who is off-stage right now. Maybe there are other people on the stage with you right now. Maybe not. I have no idea—that’s not my play.

Prospero doesn’t want to be left on his little island in his play. To get off, he needs you to clap. Did you help him out yet? Or is he still stranded there? Of course, as soon as you clap, you are acknowledging that Prospero is real. So maybe you shouldn’t clap and just leave him on his island in his play.

Prospero is begging you to help.

Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.

You and Prospero aren’t all that different, are you? You too lack spirits to enforce and art to enchant. You too are on an island in your own play, bound by the limits of your humanity. You too need others or your end truly is despair. You too are asking for prayer to assault Mercy itself that you will not be left alone on your island with all your faults unforgiven, bereft of the power to leave without the aid of others who have no more reason to aid you than you have to aid Prospero.

A decade later, John Donne picked up the theme.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Is that just wishful thinking?

You are surrounded by Prosperos, not the magician with the staff and the book and the power to create a world, but the human at the end who lacks the power to escape the island. All you have to do is clap. But to do that, you have to notice Prospero first, you have to delay leaving the theater just a moment, linger briefly on the stage of the other person’s life before dashing off to the next exciting adventure in the play of your own life.

Smile and say “Hi” to someone today…even to the stranger who wanders briefly onto your stage by mere accident.