Summary
A violent storm rages around a small ship at sea. The
master of the ship calls for his boatswain to rouse the mariners
to action and prevent the ship from being run aground by the tempest.
Chaos ensues. Some mariners enter, followed by a group of nobles
comprised of Alonso, King of Naples, Sebastian, his brother, Antonio,
Gonzalo, and others. We do not learn these men’s names in this scene,
nor do we learn (as we finally do in Act II, scene i) that they
have just come from Tunis, in Africa, where Alonso’s daughter, Claribel,
has been married to the prince. As the Boatswain and his crew take
in the topsail and the topmast, Alonso and his party are merely
underfoot, and the Boatswain tells them to get below-decks. Gonzalo
reminds the Boatswain that one of the passengers is of some importance,
but the Boatswain is unmoved. He will do what he has to in order
to save the ship, regardless of who is aboard.
The lords go belowdecks, and then, adding to the chaos
of the scene, three of them—Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo—enter again
only four lines later. Sebastian and Antonio curse the Boatswain
in his labors, masking their fear with profanity. Some mariners
enter wet and crying, and only at this point does the audience learn
the identity of the passengers on-board. Gonzalo orders the mariners
to pray for the king and the prince. There is a strange noise—perhaps
the sound of thunder, splitting wood, or roaring water—and the cry
of mariners. Antonio, Sebastian, and Gonzalo, preparing to sink
to a watery grave, go in search of the king.
Read a translation of
Act I, scene i →
Analysis
Even for a Shakespeare play, The Tempest is remarkable
for its extraordinary breadth of imaginative vision. The play is
steeped in magic and illusion. As a result, the play contains a
tremendous amount of spectacle, yet things are often not as they
seem. This opening scene certainly contains spectacle, in the form
of the howling storm (the “tempest” of the play’s title) tossing
the little ship about and threatening to kill the characters before
the play has even begun. In terms of stagecraft, it was a significant
gamble for Shakespeare to open his play with this spectacular natural
event, given that, in the early seventeenth century when the play
was written, special effects were largely left to the audience’s
imagination.
Shakespeare’s stage would have been almost entirely bare,
without many physical signs that the actors were supposed to be
on a ship, much less a ship in the midst of a lashing storm. As
a result, the audience sees Shakespeare calling on all the resources
of his theater to establish a certain level of realism. For example,
the play begins with a “noise of thunder and lightning” (stage direction).
The first word, “Boatswain!” immediately indicates that
the scene is the deck of a ship. In addition, characters rush frantically
in and out, often with no purpose—as when Sebastian, Antonio, and
Gonzalo exit at line 29 and re-enter at 33,
indicating the general level of chaos and confusion. Cries from
off-stage create the illusion of a space below-decks.
But in addition to this spectacle, the play also uses
its first scene to hint at some of the illusions and deceptions
it will contain. Most plays of this era, by Shakespeare and others,
use the introductory scene to present the main characters and hint
at the general narrative to come—so Othello begins with Iago’s jealousy,
and King Lear begins with Lear’s decision to abdicate his throne.
But The Tempest begins toward the end of the actual story, late
in Prospero’s exile. Its opening scene is devoted to what appears
to be an unexplained natural phenomenon, in which characters who
are never named rush about frantically in service of no apparent
plot. In fact, the confusion of the opening is itself misleading,
for as we will learn later, the storm is not a natural phenomenon
at all, but a deliberate magical conjuring by Prospero, designed
to bring the ship to the island. The tempest is, in fact, central
to the plot.
But there is more going on in this scene than initially
meets the eye. The apparently chaotic exchanges of the characters
introduce the important motif of master-servant relationships. The
characters on the boat are divided into nobles, such as Antonio
and Gonzalo, and servants or professionals, such as the Boatswain.
The mortal danger of the storm upsets the usual balance between
these two groups, and the Boatswain, attempting to save the ship,
comes into direct conflict with the hapless nobles, who, despite
their helplessness, are extremely irritated at being rudely spoken
to by a commoner. The characters in the scene are never named outright;
they are only referred to in terms that indicate their social stations: “Boatswain,”
“Master,” “King,” and “Prince.” As the scene progresses, the characters
speak less about the storm than about the class conflict underlying
their attempts to survive it—a conflict between masters and servants
that, as the story progresses, becomes perhaps the major motif of
the play.
