Prospero: Always like a god, now like Jesus too

Toward the beginning of Act V, Prospero delivers a rather poetic soliloquy announcing that he is relinquishing his magic:

But this rough magic
I here abjure, and when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book. (5.1.49)

Throughout the play, Prospero has been in control of all of the people and spirits on the island as an all-powerful, omniscient-type presence. He has made the Europeans confused and terrified (perhaps justifiably so?), treated Caliban as a slave, and has been in command over all of the island’s spirits. Basically, he’s been the god figure of the island.

And while we’ve seen these all-powerful godlike qualities of Prospero in the first four acts of the play, it is in this act that we see another godlike quality of the Christian sort: forgiveness. Making a Jesus-like move, Prospero has mercy upon the men that have betrayed him, telling Ariel:


Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply
Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Do I take part. (5.1.21)


This serves as further evidence of Prospero emulating a European society on the island, as he is transferring his own Christian moral ideology. Even Caliban, the man who only hours before had plotted to kill him, Prospero forgives with a mere slap-on-the-wrist type punishment that a parent might give a misbehaving child: “Go, sirrah, to my cell. Take with you your companions. As you look to have my pardon, trim it handsomely” (5.1.306).

While the incredible sense of forgiveness Prospero has in Act V could serve as evidence of his likeness to God on the island, it can also serve as evidence that he is very much human, especially since this forgiveness is paired with the relinquishment of his powers. However, he continues to use his magic until the very end of the play, when he asks the audience to “release” him; therefore, in the created environment of the island he is always all-powerful. The end of the play serves as the end of his magic, therefore we never see him as a mere mortal. Without his magic, the play couldn't end smoothly: the ship would still be wrecked and the Europeans would still be confused and distraught. But Shakespeare can create anything in his fictitious world, therefore his character can too.