15

Hidden Treasure: The Marvelous Present and Magical Reality

in The Tempest and La vida es sueño

"¿Qué sabemos del presente? Nada o casi nada. Pero los poetas saben

algo: el presente es el manantial de las presencias" “What do we know

about the present? Nothing or almost nothing. Yet the poets do know

one thing: the present is the source of presences” – Octavio Paz (32-3,

67)

While it is tempting to see Shakespeare's The Tempest and Calderón's La vida

es sueño in terms of binary oppositions such as illusion and reality, nature and

nurture, predestination and free will, chaos and harmony, as well as with respect to

wakefulness and dreaming, it is perhaps best to see them not in terms of oppositions,

but of metamorphoses, of syntheses that merge the apparent with the real. This

chapter examines the aesthetic experience as the pivot of the spiritual transformations

in these plays, centering on illusion as a means of revelation, and on the reiteration of

the present as the alchemy that dissolves opposites to reveal a magic reality.

A well-known haiku by the Zen monk Basho brings us a compact sense of the

possibilities of the aesthetic experience: "Now I see her face, / the old woman,

abandoned, / the moon her only companion.” What does the adjective "abandoned"

modify? The old woman? Her face? The moon? The poet? The reader? Humanity?

This fleeting world? Familiar adjective-noun categories no longer hold. To be

disconcerted by this ambiguity is to undergo the bewilderment of Shakespeare's

shipwrecked Gonzalo awakening to the new world of Prospero's island, or Calderón's

Clotaldo with his freshly-discovered paternity and its associated complications of

fealty -- to see the world anew. As Sam Hamill, the translator, observes, "The seer,

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the seen, the moon -- these are not three things, but one; a moment's epiphany, a flash

of kensho or sudden illumination. But the meaning, the authentic experience of the

poem, lies only within ourselves" (xii). The reader is baffled at first, like Gonzalo or

Clotaldo, and must, in the words of John Noss, “go beyond intellect to insight,” and

realize, like a Zen student, “that discursive reason misleads; that the bafflement of

reason is an indication of its limited nature; that one must go beyond rational concepts

to a blinding realization, an insight transcending all rational limits” (168-69). Just as

subsequent readings of this haiku reveal the "Now" to be the wondrous immediacy of

insight, so will readings of The Tempest reveal the presence of that word in key

aesthetic experiences in the play, obliging us to see the remarkable in the familiar, as

when Gonzalo tells Alonso: "Sir, we were talking that our garments seem now as /

fresh as when we were at Tunis at the marriage of / your daughter, who is now

Queen" (The Tempest II.i.92-4).

The aesthetic experience is the alchemy that dissolves the dualistic thinking

that is the legacy of Greek philosophy and the Judeo-Christian tradition. This legacy

divides reality into two aspects: one that is enduring and unchanging, and another that

is shifting and transient. The resulting dualisms, such as body and soul, reality and

appearance, truth and falsehood, shape our perceptions. The Tempest and La vida es

sueño refashion our modes of understanding through a "perplexity" that has more in

common with the belief-systems of the native peoples of the Americas and of the

classical Chinese than with the assumptions common to the Western cultural heritage.

Roger Ames' description of the classical Chinese world view illuminates our

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understanding of the cosmos of The Tempest and La vida es sueño:

The classical Chinese believed that the power of creativity resides in the world

itself, and that the order and regularity this world evidences is not derived

from or imposed upon it by some independent, activating power, but inheres

in the world. Change and continuity are equally "real". The world, then, is the

efficient cause of itself. It is resolutely dynamic, autogenerative, self-

organizing, and in a real sense, alive (45-47, 49-50).

This living world appears to us, as it does to some of the characters in The

Tempest and La vida es sueño, as a magical reality. Magical reality blurs the boundary

between the natural and the supernatural. Objects assume a vital life of their own.

Binary oppositions cease to exist, such as the one between the past and the future. The

present does not divide the past from the future since it has no duration and is but an

illusion, one that informs our aesthetic experience of the play. Similarly, the

opposition between what is living and non-living blurs, for there is no line of

demarcation between what is alive and what is not. A virus, for instance, may remain

dormant for years, resembling a crystal, and then seemingly come to life when placed

inside a living organism. Magical reality defies our conceptualizations.

The notion of space is vital to magical reality. For example, in some cultures,

the place of the occurrence of death changes the experience altogether. Prospero's

island is a magic space that, as A. D. Nuttal reminds us, "shimmers between

subjectivity and objectivity, presents itself differently to different eyes, yet it will not

keep still long enough for one to affix an allegorical label" (“Tempest” 84). This

shimmering refusal to keep still is what makes it hard to "know" whether Caliban is

"human," or whether the island is green and beautiful as Gonzalo describes it.

Magical reality is, above all, a reality that one experiences: boundaries blur between

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the perceiver and the perceived. Calling The Tempest an "act of mystical vision," G.

Wilson Knight affirms, "God… is the mode in which the subject-object distinction is

transcended. Art aspires to the perfected fusion of expression with imitation" (24).

In The Tempest and La vida es sueño, the imagery pertaining to sleep, to the

world as a stage, and, above all, to the prodigious beauty of the world, creates a poetic

distillate of reality. Hallett Smith’s objection to much of the previous criticism on The

Tempest also applies to the criticism that had led to the neglect of La vida es sueño:

"The allegorizers and philosophical interpreters run the risk of paying insufficient

attention to the charm and delight of the play. That critic will be closest to the truth

who responds most fully to its pervasive, enchanting beauty" (11). This is what

Quiller-Couch intimates when he writes about The Tempest "forcing tears, not by

'pity and terror,' but by sheer beauty; with a royal sense of the world, how it passes

away, with a catch at the heart surmising hope in what is to come" (19). In celebrating

a royal sense of beauty, Quiller-Couch, a late Victorian, celebrates the pageantry of

empire, as do Calderón and Shakespeare, for these allegories of beauty are also

allegories of power.

Because he missed beauty as the transforming agent in La vida es sueño,

Menéndez y Pelayo saw the sub-plot concerning Rosaura's honor as a parasitic

outgrowth irrelevant to the main plot, whereas this action illustrates Segismundo's

redemption and the thesis that "life is a dream." E. M. Wilson underscores the

relevance of this sub-plot to the main plot by showing how Rosaura's beauty was the

cause of Segismundo's change of heart, confirming eternal values in himself and the

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reality, or better said, the validity of his experience (78). As A. E. Sloman observes,

Rosaura not only makes possible the conversion of Segismundo, but provides the

proof of it, for Segismundo will sacrifice the woman he loves in order to uphold her

honor (99).

Ultimately it is the vision of Rosaura -- what William Whitby calls "the

eternal form of feminine beauty" -- that leads Segismundo to see that his experiences

in the palace were real (101). She enables Segismundo to distinguish between illusion

and reality, serving as a guiding star amidst confusion and deceptive appearances.

Rosaura also situates Segismundo in time, as Robert ter Horst observes:

Rosaura makes Segismundo real by providing him with a field of moral

decision and its consequent action where the inner conscience and the outer

deed have genuine and lasting importance... Rosaura helps to return

Segismundo to the past and the future, to the finite and to the things that

endure beyond the finite... She reveals the operations and uses of time. He

grasps and improves upon them (57).

The turning point in La vida es sueño comes when Segismundo sacrifices his longing

for Rosaura and fights for her honor with the words, "acudamos a lo eterno" (La vida

es sueño III.x.2982) (“let me aim at what is lasting” Life is a Dream 104).

Segismundo coexists with Rosaura on an eternal plane, in which, in the words of John

Noss, one can

contemplate beautiful things... in a meditative way that allows the object

and its perceiver to co-exist in a unified field, through an aesthetic trance

in which object and perceiver are, as it were, relocated in a timeless

continuum, where they take their place side by side, as if in a landscape

not of this world... (170).

Beauty is the anchorage that Segismundo seeks amidst the transience of

experience, the guiding star (as Rosaura's assumed name, Astraea, suggests) to a

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lost mariner. As Anthony Cascardi observes, "The beautiful always stands just

outside a particular space... the ideally beautiful object must lead away from itself,

like Rosaura… emblematic of beauty in the sublunary world" (9-10). Edwin

Honig notes that Rosaura’s "beauty and her light are essentialized in her name: the

spirit of the rose (rose aura) and a series of dawns (auroras, her name

anagrammed)" (xx). In The Tempest and La vida es sueño, beauty is the seeing of

one’s own nature as well as the restoration of proper order, social and natural,

through the understanding of how one relates to others.

The plays begin with a fall from grace which corresponds to a disruption

of the social order. The Tempest opens amidst the chaos of a storm that will cast

the ship containing the company of Alonso, the king of Naples, on Prospero's

island. Among them is Prospero's brother, Antonio, who deprived Prospero of his

dukedom with the connivance of Alonso. This is the first of three subplots in The

Tempest depicting drives for power. In the second, Antonio and Sebastian scheme

to murder Alonso and thus inherit his kingdom. Finally, Caliban, reduced to

servitude, waits to take revenge on Prospero, whom he feels cheated him of

sovereignty of the island, inherited from his mother the witch Sycorax. In a comic

variant on the theme of usurpation, Caliban urges Stefano, the drunken butler, to

murder Prospero. Similarly, La vida es sueño begins with a fall that is reminiscent

of Rosaura's loss of honor at the hands of Astolfo, a precipitous descent down the

slopes of a mountain as she approaches Segismundo's prison. Imprisoned in order

to avoid the fulfillment of the prophecy that he would overthrow his father,

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Basilio, the king of Poland, Segismundo leads a revolt when soldiers free him.

Another contender for the throne is Astolfo, who seeks to attain it by marrying his

cousin Estrella, who claims the throne as the granddaughter of Basilio's deceased

father. In both plays the urges to power will be brought under control, resulting in

reconciliation and the restoration of social order.

In The Tempest, Prospero promises Ariel, the airy spirit, his freedom once he

carries out Prospero’s design of goading and creating remorse in his enemies, of

reconciling himself to them, of then forgiving them and finally of creating a living

embodiment of that reconciliation in the marriage of his daughter, Miranda, to

Alonso’s son, Ferdinand. First, however, Ferdinand must undergo an ordeal of

servitude before he can be deemed worthy of Miranda. After a brief show of

Prospero's power to Ferdinand and a reminder to Ariel of a debt of gratitude, both

bear their trials gladly for they sense that in fulfilling their tasks something higher

awaits them. Caliban, however, broods over his slavery to Prospero. Some critics, as

Smith points out, view Caliban's condition as the consequence of his brutish nature

and lack of moral principles, seeing in his yearning for freedom an outlet for devilish

purposes (5). Yet Caliban’s open defiance of Prospero is unlike evil, which usually

hides its intentions:

Pros. ...Thou most lying slave,

Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have us'd thee,

Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodg’d thee

In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate

The honour of my child.

Cal. O ho, O ho! would’t had been done!

Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else

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This isle with Calibans.

(Tempest I.ii.346-53)

All the same, many critics deny Caliban, "the natural man," the possibility of

redemption. Bonamy Dobrée, for instance, says that the moral of The Tempest is that

Caliban cannot be regenerated (51). Dobrée quotes Prospero to support this

contention: "A devil, a born devil, on whose nature / Nurture can never stick..."

(Tempest IV.i.188-89), forgetting that the viewpoint of one of Shakespeare's

characters is not necessarily Shakespeare's view of Caliban.

Frank Kermode maintains that Caliban is incapable of love, though he listens

to music with pleasure (95). Kermode ignores Caliban's state prior to his enslavement:

...When thou cam'st first,

Thou strok'st me, and made much of me; wouldst

give me

Water with berries in't; and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night: and then I lov'd thee,

And show'd thee all the qualities o'th'isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile...

(Tempest I.ii. 333-40)

As Northrop Frye observes, "his sensuality is haunted by troubled dreams of beauty"

(“Introduction” 61). Caliban, like Segismundo, yearns for the present's hidden riches

in midst of his troubled thoughts:

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices

That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds me thought would open and show

riches

Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd,

I cried to dream again.

(Tempest III.ii.135-141)

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This from one who just moments earlier had urged Stefano to kill Prospero, saying:

"... thou mayst brain him, / Having first seiz'd his books; or with a log / Batter his

skull, or paunch him with a stake, / or cut his wezand with thy knife..." (Tempest

III.ii.86-89).

Critics have dwelt on Caliban's contradictions. Frye maintains that "he is

certainly no Yahoo, for all his ancient and fish-like smell" (“Introduction” 61); Hazlitt

notes that while his character is the essence of grossness, there is no vulgarity in it

(68); and Smith observes that whereas his companions Stefano and Trinculo speak

prose, Caliban speaks verse. Caliban's is the debasement of nature and enslavement,

not the corruption of civilization. Smith associates Caliban with the background of the

magical island, which is created largely by poetry (8). Shelley affirms: "The great

instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by

acting upon the cause" (Dover Wilson 41). Similarly, poetry, according to Robert ter

Horst, is the real plot in La vida es sueño, the creative force behind the fashionings

and makings of the characters (85).

To posit an opposition between an ethereal Ariel and an earthy Caliban is to

reproduce the dualisms that have often hindered the understanding of The Tempest.

The opinions of various critics notwithstanding (see, for instance, Dobrée 51),

Caliban has changed at the conclusion of The Tempest for he has come to understand

the difference between reality and appearances:

Ay, that I will; and I'll be wise hereafter,

And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass

Was I, to take this drunkard for a god,

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And worship this dull fool!

(Tempest V.i.294-297)

Previously, only fear could temper Caliban's surly defiance; now there is a new

creature in the making. And "now" is precisely how we experience the play.

Segismundo too is half-beast, half-man, metaphorically speaking. Like

Caliban, Segismundo lacks the guile of evil, as when he describes to Clotaldo the

homicidal urges he had entertained during his day as prince in the palace, after he is

again imprisoned in the tower and is told that his day as sovereign was but a dream.

While Segismundo’s first impulse upon seeing Rosaura in his dungeon was to

strangle her, she brings out what E. M. Wilson calls "hidden treasure" (71) -- the

informing spark that remembers Segismundo's splendid lineage:

Con cada vez que te veo

nueva admiración me das,

y cuando te miro más,

aún más mirarte deseo.

Ojos hidrópicos creo

que mis ojos deben ser,

pues cuando es muerte el beber

beben más, y desta suerte,

viendo que el ver me da muerte

estoy muriendo por ver.

(Vida I.ii. 223-32)

Each time I look at you

the vision overwhelms me

so that I yearn to look again.

My eyes must have the dropsy,

to go on drinking more and more

of what is fatal to their sight.

And yet, seeing that the vision

must be fatal, I’m dying to see more.

(Life 10)

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Rosaura awakens in Segismundo a troubled splendor and an insatiable longing to see

more, recalling Caliban’s need for the sky to pour forth its abundance. The Tempest,

David Daniell tells us, "is 'about' something just out of sight" (48). One senses in

these plays an imminence, a poetry that coaxes the objects of a living universe to

reveal their secrets, and to be seen.

To see the world with eyes of wonder -- the "magic casements" of Keats

(1086)-- is to see what Eduardo Galeano describes as "lo que la tierra quiso ser

cuando todavía no era" (“what the world wanted to be before it ever was”) (Memoria).

As Ferdinand approaches, Prospero tells Miranda "The fringed curtains of thine eye

advance, / And say what thou seest yond" (Tempest I.ii.411-12). Miranda feels the

wondrous newness of Ferdinand, taking him for a spirit. Miranda’s very name, an

anagram of ‘admire,’ conveys the sense of seeing for the first time, of eyes opening

out on the impossible. Upon meeting the ship's company, Miranda exclaims, "O,

wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is!"

(Tempest V.i.181-84). Nuttal affirms that Miranda's visionary cry survives, in part,

the undercutting cynicism of Prospero's reply 'Tis new to thee' (13). Similarly, the

vision of Gonzalo, the trusted old councillor, who sees beauty in the island, survives

in part the mockery of Sebastian and Antonio:

Gon. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!

Ant. The ground, indeed, is tawny.

Seb. With an eye of green in 't.

(Tempest II.i.51-53)

In his nihilistic witticism about the island's "eye of green," Sebastian unintentionally

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alludes to the living universe in which, under Gonzalo's astonished gaze, the

boundaries between the animate and the inanimate dissolve.

Gonzalo senses the wonder and confusion of the island's "maze" (Tempest

III.iii.2), a word that suggests both astonishment and the labyrinth (Dixon Hunt 26)

and is used by Alonso to describe the strange events that have restored his son to him

(Tempest V.i.242). When Prospero sees Miranda's anguish over the spectacle of the

shipwreck which he had conjured for her, he tells her, "Be collected. / No more

amazement..." (Tempest I.ii.13-14). Similarly, in La vida es sueño, Clotaldo, who has

discovered that Rosaura is his daughter, is bewildered as he ponders the conflict

between restoring Rosaura's honor and serving Basilio and Astolfo:

¿Qué confuso laberinto

es éste, donde no puede

hallar la razón el hilo?

................................

descubra el cielo camino;

aunque no sé si podrá

cuando en tan confuso abismo,

es todo el cielo un presagio

y es todo el mundo un prodigio.

(Vida I.viii. 975-85)

…What sort of maze

is this now, where reason finds no clue?

…Heaven’s above,

show me the way to go.

There may be none, I know,

since all I see through this abyss

is one portentous sky

covering the whole wide world.

(Life 33)

King Alonso is also baffled: the island's magic and music make him regret his

treachery. Antonio and Sebastian, however, remain impervious to their effect -- there

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is no hint at the end of the play that they are contrite, though Prospero forgives them.

With the characters of these plays unable to distinguish between the natural and the

supernatural, confusion leads to insight, illusion to catharsis, and poetry to revelation.

The aesthetic experience extends beyond the play, as we too taste the "subtleties of

the isle" that will not let us "believe things certain" (Tempest V.i.124-5).

In both plays, dream-like presentations of an offering or boon that is

withdrawn convey the illusion of reality. In The Tempest, various spirits offer Alonso

and his company a feast, only for Ariel, in the guise of a harpy, to immediately whisk

it away. In La vida es sueño, Basilio frees Segismundo from his tower for a day in the

hope that he will prove worthy of his freedom and overcome his destiny. No sooner

does he rule than he tramples on those who thwart his desires, threatening Clotaldo

for having concealed his station in life at the behest of Basilio, whom he intends to

humiliate. The trouble is that Segismundo has confused free will with freedom (Hesse

141). As Wilson observes, a man who is at the mercy of his passions and impulses

does not act, but is acted upon as in a dream (73).

Segismundo is sent back to the tomb-like tower that symbolizes death, an

awakening from the dream of life that Wilson describes as the ultimate desengaño

(74). In the palace, Segismundo threatens to kill Clotaldo for suggesting that his fury

and passion might turn out to be nothing but a dream. Segismundo's words upon

coming to his senses once again in the tower reveal the death of illusion: "Sí, hora es

ya de despertar" (Vida III.xviii.2091).1 Segismundo describes his tower as "cuna y

sepulcro fue / esta torre para mí" (Vida I.ii.195-196) (“here in this tower, / my cradle

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and my tomb”) (Life 9), echoing Basilio’s words regarding Segismundo’s death-in-

birth: "el sepulcro vivo / de un vientre, porque el nacer / y el morir son parecidos"

(Vida I.vi.665-68) (“the living sepulcher / of the womb / birth and death being / so

much alike”) (Life 24). By dying to the life of his passions, to the very processes of

his mind, Segismundo is reborn.

Death as rebirth also figures in The Tempest. Ariel's songs chart the spiritual

progress of the characters, celebrating reconciliation and metamorphosis (Dixon Hunt

14), as in the one Ferdinand hears:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange...

(Tempest I.ii.399-404)

Ariel’s "Those are pearls that were his eyes" transmutes sight into something

precious. Gonzalo notes the miraculous quality of the deliverance of those who were

in the ship, saying in a revealing pun that their garments were "new-dyed" (Tempest

II.i.61) rather than drenched with sea water (Dixon Hunt 16). Alonso's remorse over

the imagined death of his son, Ferdinand, figures in the rebirth of his conscience. His

sense of loss effaces the power lust that had led him to abet Antonio’s usurpation of

Prospero's dukedom. Having achieved the union of his daughter with Ferdinand,

Prospero expresses his wish to retire to Milan “…where / Every third thought shall be

my grave” (Tempest V.i.310-11). Prospero has died to the life of his world view, one

which harmed himself and others.

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Both Shakespeare and Calderón criticize the scientism and paternalism of

Basilio and Prospero, whose pride and self-assurance in their learning cause them to

lose their kingdoms. Subscribing to the dualistic world-view mentioned earlier, both

characters see themselves as being in control of events and of the destinies of others.

Roger Ames states that this 'two-world' theory that originated in classical Greece

“begins from a fundamental separation between 'that which creates' and 'that which is

created,' 'that which orders' and 'that which is ordered,' 'that which moves' and 'that

which is moved'” (Ames 47). Basilio and Prospero misuse the occult learning they

have acquired, for it enables them to influence events, but not to understand

themselves.2 When Prospero recounts to Miranda how Antonio displaced him as the

duke of Milan, his didactic tone is rather pronounced in these expressions: "...I pray

thee, mark me... Dost thou attend me?... Thou attend’st not?... Dost thou hear?..."

(Tempest I.ii.67 / 78 / 87 /106). Despite what he imagines, Prospero's design is not his

alone, shaped as is it is by Ariel and Miranda, both of whom teach Prospero to be

merciful.

Basilio is equally patronizing when he addresses Astolfo and Estrella in the

court:

Ya sabéis, estadme atentos,

amados sobrinos míos,

corte ilustre de Polonia,

vasallos, deudos y amigos.

Ya sabéis que yo en el mundo,

por mi ciencia he merecido

el sobrenombre de docto;

(Vida I.vi.600-06)

Listen to me, then, beloved niece

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and nephew, noble court of Poland,

my kinsmen, vassals, friends.

You knew the world in honoring

my years of study has given me

the surname Learned.

(Life 22)

Robert ter Horst states, "Basilio's is the artistic temperament that anticipates its

disappearance from the human scene and in compensation seeks to build a monument

to and of the spirit that will long remind following generations of his brief and

glorious span on earth" (55). Prospero lost his kingdom because he was engrossed in

his studies, entrusting affairs of state to his unworthy brother Antonio. Likewise,

Basilio, renowned for his learning in mathematics and astronomy, confided too much

in his own sagacity. As E. M. Wilson observes: "Basilio dreamed in his wisdom"

(83). Although Basilio intended to preserve Poland from tyranny by imprisoning

Segismundo and later granting him a chance to redeem himself, he erred in not

granting freedom to his son. Anthony Cascardi concludes, "He raises his son in

isolation; he enforces a division between man and nature; and Segismundo emerges a

brute" (16). However, Basilio learns from the example of Clarín, the gracioso whose

cleverness and mutability lead to his imprisonment, and finally, to his death. Basilio

learns that he had brought about the very circumstances that he wished to avoid;

paradoxically, he overcomes destiny in his acceptance of it when he bows his head at

his son's feet.

Like Basilio, Prospero made possible the evil that he sought to avoid. His

abuse of Caliban and harshness towards Ferdinand betray a sense of superiority, one

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that seems to have contributed to his ouster as duke. Nuttal says, "Prospero's

fierceness is not purely functional; it exceeds the object," for it is "the consequence of

Prospero's psychological state rather than the instrument of his reasoned indignation"

(Stoic 12). In this regard, Harry Berger notes the difference between Prospero's view

of Caliban and our own, a distinction that many critics have missed (150). Prospero,

who feels wronged, does not understand the injustice he does to Caliban by reducing

him to servile labor as well as by representing him as pure evil. Caliban's degradation

is attributable, at least in part, to Prospero, just as Segismundo's brutality was caused

in part by Basilio. Caliban's yearnings are not so much evil as the uncontrolled

expression of primal instincts, according to Berger who notes that Caliban's

baseness is shot through with gleams of aspiration, though the mixture is

unstable.... He displays the most transcendent, the most poignant, and the most

natural urges of man as well as the most foolish and murderous and disloyal...

We see in him all man's possibilities in their undeveloped form, and this means

that we see the longing for brightness and beauty as no less real, no less rooted

and persistent, than the tendency to darkness and evil (158).

Just before Prospero releases Ariel from captivity and renounces his magic, he

recognizes himself in Caliban when he confronts the drunken but chastened trio of

plotters, telling King Alonso and his company: "... Two of these fellows you / Must

know and own; this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine" (Tempest V.i.274-76).

These last two words do not merely indicate possession of Caliban as a slave; they

also reveal that Prospero too possesses a dark side, a moral burden for what is wrong

in the world.

The Tempest and La vida es sueño address the notion of the improvement of

the individual through education and moral reform, one which became commonplace

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in the sixteenth century. Because earnest attempts at reform had turned into

intolerance, there was, as Daniel Heiple notes, a consequent disillusionment that

resulted in a withdrawal from the world (118). Calderón, like Shakespeare,

understood the dangers of inaction and of refusing to come to terms with evil and

injustice. To divorce labor from art, body from spirit, and wisdom from practical

matters is to court disaster. Like Basilio, Prospero realizes that he cannot retire to a

sphere of perfection, that he is in part responsible for the state of the world, and that

he must assume the paternity that he had refused to see.

There are other myopic characters in The Tempest. As noted earlier, Caliban

recognizes his blunder in taking the drunken Stefano for a god, suggesting that grace

might yet come his way. The ambitious courtiers Sebastian and Antonio are blind to

the beauty of the island in the midst of their decadent wit. Sebastian experiences the

somnolence that comes from viewing the world in terms of self-interest. As he plots

with Antonio to kill Alonso, who is fast asleep, Sebastian unconsciously alludes to his

own spiritual state, the blindness of one who looks without seeing: "This is a strange

repose, to be asleep / With eyes wide open; standing, speaking, moving, / And yet so

fast asleep" (Tempest II.i.208-10).

In La vida es sueño, Segismundo also sees life as a dream until Rosaura’s

beauty takes him beyond illusion. He learns the truth of Clotaldo's words, that "aun en

sueños / no se pierde el hacer bien" (Vida II.xviii.2146-47). When he sees Rosaura in

the palace he compares her to the images of the rose, the morning star, the sun and the

diamond, repeating in each instance the words "Yo vi..." (Vida II.vii.1595-1610).

33

Here, the preterit conveys the moment of insight -- the "now" in the past. In contrast,

Astolfo remains blind to his own honor in the midst of his polished eloquence and

calculation. Rosaura's myopia at the beginning of La vida es sueño contrasts with her

clarity of purpose and vision later in the play. Just after her symbolic descent, Rosaura

barely perceives the outlines of Segismundo's prison, as she tells Clarín:

Mas si la vista no padece engaños

que hace la fantasía,

a la medrosa luz que aún tiene el día

me parece que veo

un edificio.

(Vida I.i.50-54)

…But if my eyes

do not deceive me and this is not

a fantasy, a trick

of failing daylight, I seem to see

a building there.

(Life 5)

Similarly, when she approaches Segismundo's cell, Rosaura can hardly make out what

is inside:

¿No es breve luz aquella

caduca exhalación, pálida estrella,

que en trémulos desmayos,

pulsando ardores y latiendo rayos,

hace más tenebrossa

la obscura habitación con luz dudosa?

(Vida I.ii.85-90)

Isn’t that tiny light

like someone’s dying breath

or some faintly flickering star

whose pulsing, darting rays

make that dark room even darker

in its wavering glow?

(Life 6)

34

Ultimately, only by adhering to principles, to one's eternal self, can one see

clearly. Rosaura’s determination to restore her honor is her guiding light. For

Clotaldo in La vida es sueño and Gonzalo in The Tempest, loyalty is the principle that

provides direction and vision. Blinded as a result of their violation of this principle,

the soldiers who betray Basilio mistake Clarín, the jester, for Segismundo, the

hereditary prince. Those who are disloyal (in La vida es sueño, Astolfo to Rosaura,

Segismundo to Basilio; in The Tempest, Caliban to Prospero, Antonio and Sebastian

to Alonso) are in need of self-discovery. When Prospero stirs up the tempest, he tells

Miranda that he had done so out of concern for her who "Art ignorant of what thou

art; nought knowing / Of whence I am..." (Tempest I.ii.18-19), beginning the process

of self-discovery for his daughter as well as for his enemies. Gonzalo rejoices,

towards the end of The Tempest that self-knowledge has restored harmony, ending

the time "When no man was his own." (Tempest V.i.213)

Self-discovery reveals the profusion of possibilities in the passing moment.

Above all, it is the key to freedom -- not the illusory freedom of Caliban singing

"Freedom, high-day! high-day, freedom!" as he imagines his deliverance from

Prospero at the hands of the drunken Stefano (Tempest II.ii.186), nor the "free will" of

Segismundo in the palace where he hurls a servant to his death, but the freedom that

comes from self-mastery, that defers gratification in order to take a long view of

things, that is predicated on change within, not on change without.

For Prospero and Segismundo, self-mastery is the necessary step to becoming

a beneficent ruler. Remembering that he could, at any moment, return to his former

35

state of physical and spiritual confinement, Segismundo invokes the need for

forgiveness as he renounces his claim on Rosaura as well as vengeance against his

father:

...Y cuando no sea,

el soñarlo sólo basta:

pues así llegué a saber

que toda la dicha humana

en fin pasa como sueño,

y quiero hoy aprovecharla

el tiempo que me durare,

pidiendo de nuestras faltas

perdón, pues de pechos nobles

es tan propio el perdonarlas.

(Vida III.xiv.3310-19)

Even if this should not happen,

It would be enough to dream it,

since that’s the way I’ve come to know

that all of human happiness

must like a dream come to an end.

And now, to take advantage

of the moments that remain, I’d like

to ask your pardon for our mistakes;

for such noble hearts as yours,

it would be fitting to forgive them.

(Life 115)

Segismundo had accused Clotaldo of having prevented self-discovery: "me

ocultaste a mí" (“you hid me from myself”) (Vida II.iii.1301-2). Self-knowledge

bestows on Segismundo his inheritance as prince, for it reveals the importance of

what we do in the marvelous present. To know oneself is to see how one relates to

others and to the world. These relations make self-identity possible, for we only

discover ourselves through the prism of others. In the words of Eduardo Galeano, "La

identidad no es una pieza de museo, quietecita en la vitrina, sino la siempre

36

asombrosa síntesis de las contradicciones nuestras de cada día" (Libro de los abrazos

111) (“Identity is no museum piece sitting shock-still in a display case, but the

endlessly astonishing synthesis of the contradictions of everyday life”) (Book of

Embraces 34).

While serving as an attendant to Estrella in the hope of confronting Astolfo

and regaining her honor, Rosaura assumes the name Astraea, that of the goddess of

justice, who was the last of the immortals to leave earth. Frederick de Armas states

that "Astraea's supreme value is the eternal moment, the transcending experience

when historical time disintegrates through a vision of the eternal" (43). Astraea's

return heralds the arrival of a golden age, which in La vida es sueño is augured in the

reconciliation of Segismundo to Basilio, as well as in the marriages of Rosaura to

Astolfo and of Segismundo to Estrella. As de Armas notes, the golden age is one "that

begins in the individual, proceeds through human relationships, and extends to the

whole country" (92). Gonzalo speaks of the golden age (Tempest II.i.143-52, 155-60)

as one who sees the potentiality and plenitude of life, and it is he who celebrates the

providential marriages and reconciliations that conclude The Tempest:

O, rejoice

Beyond a common joy! and set it down

With gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage

Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,

And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife

Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom

In a poor isle, and all of us ourselves

When no man was his own.

(Tempest V.i.206-13)

The aesthetic experience (the gold) is borne on eternity (the lasting pillars) and is

37

ultimately the means of finding oneself .

The concordance of The Tempest, Smith informs us, shows that despite the

play's brevity, the word "now" occurs seventy-eight times, twice as often as in any

other play of Shakespeare (4). Unlike other plays of Shakespeare, The Tempest

observes the unity of time, which reinforces our awareness of the present. Calderón

also draws our attention to the present. When Segismundo awakens in his cell after

his disastrous day in the palace, he tells Clotaldo, after being asked if he had awoken

since he had last seen him: "No, / ni aun agora he despertado, / aun según, Clotaldo,

entiendo, / todavía estoy durmiendo" (Vida II.xviii.2098-2100) (“Yes, nor have I

wakened yet, / Clotaldo, for if I grasp / your meaning, I must be still asleep” Life 74).

Our attention is drawn to the present for good reason. What is most elusive lies before

our very eyes. As Anthony Cascardi observes in regard to Segismundo, "The path to

personal transcendence, to responsible action, to political prudence, requires passing

through, not around, illusion" (ix).

Prospero also passes through illusion, which for him was the magic and the art

which had sheltered and, at the same time, estranged him from others. While

Prospero's magic was necessary in achieving his ends, he ultimately renounces it in

order to come to terms with the world. After forgiving those who had wronged him,

Prospero, at the conclusion of The Tempest, asks for forgiveness in turn from the

audience, as Segismundo had done, in preparation for his return to Milan. The

epilogue opens with the word "now," the present that goes beyond illusion, as

Prospero renounces his magic: "Now my charms are all o'erthrown, / and what I

38

have's mine own, / Which is most faint. Now 'tis true / I must be here confined by

you, / Or sent to Naples..." (Tempest epilogue, 1-5). The epilogue concludes with a

plea for forgiveness and freedom:

...Now I want

Spirits to enforce, Art to enchant;

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be reliev'd by prayer,

Which pierces so, that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

(Tempest epilogue, 13-20)

Justice served within, the judgement awaits from without -- from us. Frye observes:

The theme of release spreads over all the characters in the final recognition

scene, including the release of Ariel into the elements, and carries on into

Prospero's Epilogue, when he asks the audience to release him by applause. To

release is to set free, but what does freedom mean in this context? We have to

go back to Shakespeare's world to give an intelligible answer. In that world

everything has its natural place -- "kindly stead," as it's called in Chaucer --

and within the individual mind the natural order is a hierarchy with reason on

top and emotional impulses under it (179).

In the marriages and reconciliations, in the unshacklings of minds and bodies

that we witness at the end of the plays, lie the freedom and love that link our destinies

and reveal the unity of all experience. Shakespeare and Calderón herald an elusive

modernity for which we search until, in the words of Octavio Paz, “las puertas de la

percepción se entreabren y aparece el otro tiempo, el verdadero, el que buscábamos

sin saberlo: el presente, la presencia" (“the door of perception opens slightly and the

other time appears, the real time we had been seeking without knowing it: the present,

the presence”) (34, 68). To see clearly amidst the confusion of life, Shakespeare and

39

Calderón tell us, we must adhere to ideals, while falling in love with the human

condition, tainted as it is with our contradictions. The eternal present -- a fleeting and

illusory non-instant -- is a veritable metaphor of our transience and of our

permanence.

Notes

1 Bécquer expresses well this awakening: "La gloria y el amor tras que corremos /

sombras de un sueño son que perseguimos. / ¡Despertar es morir!" (105) (“The glory

and love that we chase are but the pursued shadows of a dream”).

2 As Karol Berger points out, "the Renaissance attitude towards spiritual magic was

comparable to the twentieth-century attitude toward psychoanalysis" (DiPuccio 116-

17).

40

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