Using integrated linguistic and literary approaches, explore the presentation of learning and education in “The Tempest” and “Translations”.
Vital lessons are both learnt and taught throughout The Tempest and Translations. The role of schoolmaster is most clearly adopted by Prospero and Hugh, whose teaching illustrates the timeless importance of a child’s formal education. However there are deeper moral and political lessons that are learnt by the plays’ characters. In particular, the final pages of the plays see both aforementioned schoolmasters make significant personal revelations based on what they have experienced throughout the play. Regardless, the most important lessons are undoubtedly learnt by the audience as they reflect on the events that unfold during The Tempest and Translations. In this case it is Shakespeare and Friel who serve as teachers, expertly using their works in order to influence the minds of their audience and, ultimately, the minds of generations of audiences to come.
In The Tempest, Prospero longs to teach a lesson to those who have wronged him and bases his ‘master plan’ on this desire. Shakespeare uses the metaphor “Their understanding/ Begins to swell, and the approaching tide/ Will shortly fill the reasonable shore” to show how Prospero believes that, through his skilful manipulation of events, he has taught his enemies a vital lesson about humanity. The pre-modified noun phrase “the reasonable shore” reflects the characters’ wavering sensibility whilst the aquatic imagery (a common motif throughout the play) intensifies the symbolic importance of the tempest itself and thus reflects how the storm continually affects the lives of the characters in the play. Although by Act V Alonso appears to have learnt from his wrongdoing (“Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat/ Thou pardon me my wrongs”) Antonio and Sebastian seem far less repentant, even with Prospero’s assurance that he will not expose their treachery to the king (this is...