SOURCE: Mebane, John S. “Magic as Love and Faith: Shakespeare's The Tempest.” In Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age: The Occult Tradition and Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare, pp. 174-99. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

In the following essay, Mebane concentrates on the theme of magic in The Tempest as it relates to Renaissance conceptions of human nature. The critic stresses Prospero's status as a benevolent magician who employs his powers for the good of humanity.

In his Jacobean tragedies Shakespeare calls into question the idealistic conception of humanity which had been developed by Renaissance humanists and carried to its logical extreme in the occult tradition. Hamlet's discovery of lust and treachery begets his profound disillusionment with human nature, and he tells Ophelia that he himself, as a representative of humankind, is “proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to...