The Wykehamist
Ovid’ s Medea end there— Portia remains loyal to her father and her honesty, ultimately being granted her happy ending with Bassanio, whereas Medea betrays Aeëtes for Jason, but suffers betrayal herself in his later infidelity. The message of both examples is that of encouraging women to stay honest to themselves and their more immediate duties rather than submitting to their wooers and shafting their initial familial bonds.
Aggressors
One of the costs of Medea’ s tragic love in both the Heroides and the Metamorphoses is her gradual descent into madness resulting in her condemnation as one of the greatest villains of Classical mythology. Neither Ovid nor Shakespeare underestimate the power of a wronged or angry woman— yet often an action which damns a female character is overlooked or even glorified in a male equivalent. Such an example can be found in Medea’ s influence on both Sycorax and Prospero in The Tempest. Medea’ s epithet‘ Scythian Raven’ is considered to be a possible etymological source for Sycorax’ s name( stemming from‘ Sy’ +‘ κοραξ’, the Ancient Greek for‘ crow’ or‘ raven’), providing a tidy link between the two figures other than their magic. However, it is their similarities to Prospero which creates interest with regards to Shakespeare’ s reception of Ovid’ s poetry upon his female characters: Sycorax is widely considered to serve as a foil to Prospero’ s‘ good’ and‘ honest’ magic, in contrast to her cruel enslavement of Ariel.“ Like Prospero, she arrived with child, though hers( Caliban) was still in the womb; like him, she used her magic( witchcraft) to control the elements. But Sycorax’ s powers are presented as demonic, and … Prospero construes his own magic as benign”( Vaughan, 1999), the latter claiming
‘ There’ s no harm done’( I. ii. 16)
following his use of magic in creating the great storm. Yet in his final soliloquy of the play, discounting the epilogue, Prospero performs his final great act of magic in a speech which many of Shakespeare’ s audience would have recognised in its similarities to that of Medea’ s invocation of the goddess Hecate, when restoring her father-in-law to youth. Prospero’ s speech shares clear parallels with Medea’ s in its listing of his various achievements, which carefully treads the line between acknowledging the external sources of his power and claiming the feats for himself.
‘… by whose aid— Weak masters though ye be— I have bedimm’ d The noontide sun, call’ d forth the mutinous winds. And’ twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’ s stout oak With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck’ d up The pine and cedar: graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let’ em forth By my so potent art.’( V. i. 46-56)
‘ By your aid, I can quieten the troubled Seas or ruffle their calm with my spells. By your aid I can banish The clouds or cause them to gather; I summon and scatter the winds. With my incantations I force fanged serpents to split their skins; I dislodge the rocks and uproot the trees, shift the forests and order The mountains to tremble, the earth to rumble and the spirits to rise From their graves’( VII. 200-206)
By having his protagonist so clearly align himself with one of Ovid’ s most well-recognised female antagonists, Shakespeare begins to cast an ambiguous shadow on the casting of good and evil in The Tempest. Prospero is far more in control of the narrative of the play and able to manipulate the manner in which information is fed to the audience; thus, despite Sycorax being introduced as a witch who
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