A Discussion of Art and Nature in Shakespeare's The Tempest

In The Tempest, Art is that which is composed of grace, civility and virtue. It is represented by Prospero, the other members of the nobility who belong to the court party and their servants. The world of the court is synonymous with the world of Art in the play. In contrast, Nature is bestial, brutish and evil; and manifest in the form of Caliban and the natural world. With two such extremes brought together, debate between the two is inevitable.

There are two opposing views of the natural. One sees the natural as that which is corrupted by man while the other regards it as that which is defective in itself and must be corrected by nurture. Montaigne's essay, Of Cannibals, is an undisputed source of the novel which supports the former view. Montaigne believed that a society without the civilised 'additives' of law, custom and artificial restraints would be a happy one. Gonzalo's talk of his "commonwealth" mirrors this opinion in the play. Shakespeare agrees more with the latter view which is propounded by Aristotle in the following lines, "men...who are as much inferior to others as the body is to the soul...are slaves by nature, and it is advantageous for them always to be under government" and Caliban is Shakespeare's example of this.

There are also two opposing views of the nobility. The first belief is that nobility comes by birth, and hence one of noble birth is virtuous by extension. Shakespeare supports the second view which sees nobility as the perfection of nature in each thing. Nobility is shown by the manners and merits of the individual. Thus, among those of better birth, there are those who might beget an evil nature and noblemen can do wrong because they are free to choose. Though gentle birth predisposes man to virtue, it is not necessary to virtue. It cannot be uniformly maintained that where there is high birth, there is virtue.

In the play, Shakespeare has portrayed neither Nature nor Art as perfect but as having a complex relationship where one is reflected in the other. While Nature calls forth the authoritative power of Art to correct it, Art can descend to, and even sink below, the level of Nature.

Caliban, the natural man, is a representative of Nature in many ways. His name itself fascinates regardless of whether it is an anagram of 'cannibal' or if it originates from "Carib", which is a term for the savage inhabitants of the New World.