more "Genesis in The Tempest"

So now that I’ve given you a whole twelve hours to contemplate the greatness that I bestowed on you yesterday, let me continue.

• I think my last point was that both God and Prospero undo an act of creation - God with the flood and Prospero with the banishment of Caliban. This is true, but they also both make vows of mercy with a rainbow. After the flood, God sends a rainbow to Noah and his family, promising never to destroy the earth again. Prospero eventually also apologizes to those that he tormented with drowning and to Caliban for putting him into slavery after expulsion. After this, he presents a rainbow and a blessing of prosperity (here's the theme again!).
• Both books show an important example of lifelong love. Examples from Genesis are Abraham and Sarah (who didn't receive the gift of a baby until they were 100 and 99)AND Jacob and Rachel (whom Jacob had to work fourteen years for in her father's house). In The Tempest, Ferdinand and Miranda seem to have a "love at first sight" encounter when they first meet each other.
• Ferdinand and Jacob both had to yield to father-in-laws. Genesis 29 depicts Jacob and Rachel's marriage. Jacob agreed to work seven years for her father-in-law, Laban, in order to take her hand in marriage. After the seven years, however, Laban secretly switched Rachel with her sister, Leah, without Jacob knowing. Jacob then had to work seven more years in order to actually marry Rachel. Ferdinand also moves logs for Prospero in exchange for his daughter, Miranda.
• Later on in Genesis, Joseph is introduced. Joseph is one of twelve sons born to Jacob, and, as you can imagine, there is intense sibling rivalry amongst the group. Eventually, Joseph's brothers get fed up with partiality within the family, and plot to kill Joseph, just like Prospero's brothers plot to kill their other brother, Alonso.
• What both sets of brothers don't know, though, is that they will both end up at their brother's mercy in the future. Joseph gets sold to slave traders from Egypt and prospers there (there it is again!). He works his way to second in command under the Pharaoh and saves the country from seven years of famine. Even his brothers, who do not recognize him, come to him for food when the famine reaches them. Prospero's brother also come to him, "waterlogged, bereaved, and exhausted."*
• Once both sets of brothers repent of betrayal, "the focus shifts to the hidden controlling brother,"* Joseph and Prospero. The reader starts to feel compassion towards the once corrupt brothers. Personally, I think that this is the perfect picture of Jesus - compassion for the repentant.

Okay, are you ready to know the one difference that Marx points out?
The Tempest opens with chaos that divides species and classes, while the Bible opens with perfect unity and peace.
God walks with Adam and Eve and they don't eat other animals - they abide with them. The Tempest opens with a dark, turbulent feel to it.

Well there you go. I think that Steven Marx sums the similarities up the best when he says,
"I doubt that Shakespeare intended to marry his book to the Bible, as did Dante, Spenser, Milton, and Blake, but I do think he intended them to embrace."





*-From Shakespeare and the Bible, Steven Marx