ABSTRACT
Characters whose life is in their action; adventures full of variety and always interweaving; such was the old romance. In The Tempest, encounter supplies all the action given to anyone; simply to meet suffices. The quest to find one’s fellows is to regain society out of loneliness. For character exists without need for action—Miranda has no need to do anything—she has simply to appear “the goddess on whom these airs attend” 1 to gratify Ferdinand at his labors. The sublimation of romantic escape lies in the musician, Ariel, who finally escapes from man, as his songs escape, in perpetual holiday from “poor little talkative humanity”—its conflicts and loss—to somewhere on the other side of despair. “Full fadom five thy father lies; / Of his bones are coral made; / Those are pearls that were his eyes” (1.2.399–01). Grief is transmuted—as a medieval poet once too saw a girl with a coronet of pearls, through the separation of flowing water which he could not cross.
