Shakespeare: Miranda and Ferdinand’s Relationship
In the play by William Shakespeare, The Tempest, the love story between Miranda and Ferdinand happens very fast. The moment they see. An analysis of the relationship between Miranda and Ferdinand in Shakespeare's Tempest. To Miranda and Ferdinand their relationship seems to be laced with difficulties, 2hen the Tempest was first performed in , it was as part of the festivities.
Shakespeare's The Tempest - The Relationship Between Miranda and Ferdinand
Under Ferdinand's compliments, Miranda asks, "Do you love me? Miranda bursts into tears, and when he asks why, she says that she is unworthy.
However, practically in the same breath, she says that she is his wife if he will marry her. Of course he is quick to assent. He is worthy of Miranda, who is charming, unaffected and genuine. Miranda has known no other women and has no knowledge whatever of the conventions of pursuit and surrender.
She follows simply the dictates of her heart without any pretension. Thus there can be no doubt that Shakespeare's theory of the ideal courtship is a mutual and immediate acceptance, without the use of artificial love conventions.
Shakespeare plays on the idea of slavery by portraying Miranda and Ferdinand as willing slaves to each other, and Ferdinand is a slave to Prospero for Miranda's sake. Miranda would make herself a slave for Ferdinand's sake by taking over the slavery he has accepted for her own sake.
Prospero and Miranda's relationship in the Tempest is a strongly bonded one.
Ferdinand declares himself to be a King and immediately afterward names himself a slave to Miranda. Thus the love between Ferdinand and Miranda is a part of the play's larger pattern of atonement and reconciliation. The purity and innocence of their love in its simple affirmation atones for the suspicions, hostilities and betrayals of their fathers' generations.
Love has made the artless maiden artful, and she suggests that the young man may shirk the unprincely labour for the nonce: Miranda's frank offer to carry logs while Ferdinand rests is a natural touch that might at first seem unnatural, but how thoroughly in keeping with the character it is after all. This child of nature, healthy, strong, active, familiar with the rough demands of life on this uninhabited island, and unfamiliar with the chivalrous deference to woman that exempts her from menial labour in civilized society, sees nothing "mean" or "odious" or "heavy" in piling the wood, as Ferdinand does; and when he resents the idea of her undergoing such "dishonour" while he sits lazy by, nothing could be more natural than her reply: As he says later: Hear my soul speak: The very instant that I saw you, did My heart fly to your service; there resides, To make me slave to it, and for your sake Am I this patient log-man.
Both are wonderfully fresh and natural for the products of court training; both fall in love swiftly and completely; both have that tender grace, that purity of affection, shown in many others, but never more perfectly than in them. Theirs is not the wild passion of Romeo and Juliet; there is nothing high-wrought and feverish about their love-making; it is the simple outcome of pure and healthy feeling; and it is difficult to say which gives us the prettier picture — Ferdinand holding Miranda's little hands on the lonely shore, or Florizel receiving Perdita's flowers among the bustle of the harvesting.
Examine the relationship between Miranda and Ferdinand in The Tempest.
Ferdinand has the most fire and energy, though he should not have been the first to desert the ship in the magic storm. He has the best character altogether, showing much affection for his father, and a manly, straightforward way of going to work generally. Florizel is grace and charm personified, and has the most bewitching tongue; but he is too pliant, too taken up with one idea, to be quite so satisfactory.
It was a part of Prospero's plan that the people on board the ship should be scattered in certain groups on shore and that Ferdinand should be separated from the rest; and Ariel carries out his master's directions. When Prospero afterward asks him whether the men are all safe, he replies: In troops I have dispers'd them 'bout the isle.
The king's son have I landed by himself, Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting. His arms in this sad knot.