How does the play address the conflict between nature and nurture?
...sents. This theme that the nobility and aristocracy hold no legitimate claim to being the images of purity and God’s will is further expressed through the figure of the Boatswain. ‘What causes these roarers for the name of the king?’ (line 16, Act1 Sc1) this statement coincides with the storm that Prospero places upon the king’s ship. At this point within the play, the aspects of each character are broken down to the simplest terms. Sebastien is seen as a tyrant, ‘a pox o’ your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog!’ Gonzalo as an idealist, ‘methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him’, and Antonio as a rascal, ‘we are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards’. It is therefore important that the Boatswain states in one of his few lines that it is unjust for these characters to claim to have usurped the king, since he recognises that they are not laying down a just claim, but simply one born out of nurture, that of a claim made out of greed. Despite clear suggestions through the Boatswain as well as in Antonio and Sebastian’s statements that nurture leads to so many malevolent things, the ideological figure of nature, that of Caliban, is represented as being ‘a devil, a born devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick’ (page 145). Consequently, the conflict between the two virtues is magnified, as Shakespeare flits one way to the other in suggesting which one is a truly sound virtue. This aspect of Shakespeare’s thinking is perhaps understandable in light of the way he draws Caliban to represent a native, on whom nurture was never going to provide an acceptable outcome, since in his eyes, those born to nature, should remain a part of nature. This idea is emphasised through Miranda’s role in the play, ‘o brave new world that has such people in it’ (p171) this statement that she makes, shows how nature and nurture combine into making a child of nature, who’s protection from a machiavellian world mean that she is full of wonder, that only the mind of an innocent can ever have. Therefore it is possible to suggest that Shakespeare sees neither nature nor nurture as a truly perfect virtue, but that somewhere in the median ground between these two virtues is the closest that mankind can ever come to a perfect society. It is therefore possible to suggest that Shakespeare was offering one of the first calls...