| Relationship with Prospero | … |
| ‘Remember I have done thee worthy service Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served Without grudge or grumblings’ | asyndetic list: quickens the pace |
| Ariel is good: W.C Curry | Ariel could be a representative of a rational platonic demon, able to carry out general commands- but not to the extent of Sycorax’s evil |
| Ariel is bad: Burton | ” aerial spirits… are such as keep quarter most part in the aire, cause many tempests, thunder and lightnings” |
| S Beale’s 1993 production | Ariel spits at Prospero when he bids him farewell |
| Die Schone Sidea (1600) | story of an exiled prince who dabbles with magic on an island and conjures a devil to do his bidding |
| John Dee | Uriel was the spirit of famous Elizabethan Alchemist John Dee |
| De Occulta philosophie ( Agrippa) | ‘Ariel’ is one of the named elemental daemons. He was a spirit of earth rather than air. According to Agrippa Ariel would have had power over many legions of lower spirits |
| ‘your affections Would become tender… Mine would, sir, were I human’ | Ariel has the power to steer Prospero to see mercy and reconcile, he himself cannot feel emotion. |
| Neoplatonic dualism | Ariel symbolises the air/ water Caliban’s baseness represents the earth |
| Wilson Knight | ” Ariel and Caliban to Prospero are like Plato’s two seeds of the soul, the noble and the hideous, two potentialities of the human spirit” |
The Tempest quotes: Ariel
July 7, 2019