The Wykehamist
‘ For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible To enter human hearing, from Algiers, Thou knowst, was-banished’( I. ii. 263-6)
it is also notable that Prospero, too, was banished from his dukedom, as well as enslaving Ariel to do his bidding, furnishing the plays protagonist with almost identical crimes to its antagonist. The key difference between the two sorcerers is that Sycorax is female, and presumably not of any high-station, while Prospero is male and a once rich and lauded duke, allowing him a greater restoration to glory in order to bring the play to a satisfying conclusion, leaving Caliban to reign over his mother’ s island once more. In this way, Caliban’ s fate( in lieu of his dead mother’ s) is far more like Medea’ s than Prospero’ s, in its vague, unfulfilled manner, as he is relegated to a forgotten island, not considered a threat unless in visible sight. Neither Medea nor Caliban( representing his mother) are afforded any specific conclusion to their stories, suggesting that both are only villainous due to their direct opposition to the more traditional, male‘ heroic’ characters: left out of sight, any threat they present is at once nullified, as what makes them so dangerous isn’ t their violent actions( which are often equalled by the protagonist), but their difference to society’ s understanding of and preference for the“ normal”.
Leaders
Women in power in Ovid’ s poetry and Shakespeare’ s plays are not always considered to be a threat, however, as both writers present many examples of female leaders who have significant control over their own stories. However, many of these female examples of control in Shakespeare’ s works have some form of caveat limiting their strength so that they might not overshadow any other men in their respective plays. Although not present in the Heroides or the Metamorphoses, Ovid’ s depiction of Lucretia’ s rape in his Fasti and her subsequent complaint“ Gave Shakespeare the opportunity to fuse his classical material with a popular vernacular form, the lyrical lament of the( frequently female) victim who has been deserted by a lover or otherwise abused”( Bate, 2001). This rule is very often followed to the letter in Shakespeare’ s plays by his highborn women, as“ women are allowed to speak out as victims and as martyrs”( Beard, 2018), for instance, the curses of the lamenting women in Richard III such as the bereaved Queen Margarets:
‘ Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self. Long mayst thou live to wail thy children’ s death, And see another, as I see thee now, Decked in thy rights, as thou art stalled in mine; Long die thy happy days before thy death, And, after many lengthened hours of grief, Die neither mother, wife, nor England’ s Queen.’( I. iii. 211-216)
or the Duchess of York’ s shockingly visceral wish of
‘ O, she that might have intercepted thee, By strangling thee in her accursed womb, From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done’.( IV. iv. 140-142)
Both of these uncharacteristically violent speeches are rooted in the acknowledged madness women always undergo in Shakespearean tragedies, which allow them to forgo traditional modesty and speak out and act in order to make those around them suffer, much like Hecuba’ s rage in the Metamorphoses, when
‘ she grabbed hold of him tight, with a shout to her posse of female captives, and dug her fingers into his treach-
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