Similarities Between Macbeth And The Tempest

The concept of magical beings such as fairies, witches, mage’s and spirits are seen as fabricated creatures to a modern audience. Regarded as products of imagination or hallucination, situated outside the realm of reality. However, to Shakespeare and his audience the actuality of the supernatural was very real. Fairies would roam the countryside; any neighbour could be a witch or mage and the practice of magic could be learned from books like any other academic subject. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth , Banquo and Macbeth stumble upon the Weird Sisters, who make mystic prophecies of the pair’s future. In The Tempest , the mage Prospero conjures a raging tempest that shipwrecks a traveling party from Milan, leaving the marooned companions on an island. In both plays, Shakespeare subverts the conventional representation of …show more content…
234 Tonge). In terms of The Tempest, Frank Kermode states that Prospero’s magic is “rough” because it is “unsubtle by comparison with the next degree of the mage’s enlightenment” (Kermode 396). Cosmo Corfield evaluates this viewpoint in his article Why Does Prospero Abjure His “Rough Magic”? Stating that Kermodes ‘ “Rough” magic implies neither a set back nor moral dubiousness: Prospero simply sheds his magic as a snake sheds its outworn skin, and proceeds to higher things’ (p.33 Corfield). In both texts the power of magic is used to manipulate events proceeding in the natural world. I submit that the basis of magic in Macbeth is symbolized by the cauldron of the Three Weird Sisters, and is suggestive of the manipulation that destroys Macbeth’s morality; contrastingly, magic in The Tempest initiates from Prospero’s mind, and is channelled through his cloak and staff, which are used for manipulation toward eventual virtuous