Elements of Shakespearean Comedy in The Tempest

Sometimes it is difficult to sympathize with Prospero, the protagonist of William Shakespeare’s comedy, The Tempest.  Prospero, after all, appears to be something of a hypocrite. He remembers the usurpation of his dukedom by his brother, Antonio, as brutal and unfair.  However, the audience understands that Prospero in fact was not doing his job properly, as he distracted distracted himself with his constant magic and study. Furthermore, although he feels that he was exiled from Milan and imprisoned on an island, Prospero unreservedly treats everyone on the island,with the exception of his daughter, as his personal subjects and prisoners.  In particular, he treats Caliban as less than human, and while this is understandable given the way Caliban violated Miranda,the reader may struggle to sympathize both with Caliban and Prospero simultaneously.  Prospero deceives himself into believing that his behavior is justified, even when the reader might be unsure.

However, self deception is a crucial element of Shakespearean comedy.  The situation of a comedy is based on the protagonist’s self-deception.  In this case, Prospero is a sympathetic character because his brother exiled him from Milan.  As a result, he struggles over the course of the play to come to terms with this deception and overcome it.  This plotline, along with a parallel hyperbolic love story, is the framework of a comedy: cumulating in the last act, the comic individual wipes away his self deception and is usually able to rejoin the world he left.  Prospero becomes a sympathetic character when he understands that he should not be taking prisoners the way he himself has been a prisoner all this time on his island.