Prospero's first appearance in the second scene of the first act is as a
loving father and magician; he says to Miranda:
"I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one! thee, my daughter."
He asks Miranda what she can remember of her early life, and reaches
magical words:
"What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?"
Miranda is only fifteen years of age. Shakespeare turned Juliet, it will
be remembered, from a girl of sixteen into one of fourteen; now, though
the sensuality has left him, he makes Miranda only fifteen; clearly he
is the same admirer of girlish youth at forty-eight as he was twenty
years before. Then Prospero tells Miranda of himself and his brother,
the "perfidious" Duke:
"And Prospero, the prime Duke, being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal arts
Without a parallel; those being all my study."
He will not only be a Prince now, but a master "without a parallel" in
the liberal arts. He must explain, too, at undue length, how he allowed
himself to be supplanted by his false brother, and speaks about himself
in Shakespeare's very words:
"I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicate
To closeness, and the bettering of my mind
With that, which, but by being so retired,
O'erprized all popular rate, in my false brother
Awaked an evil nature: and my trust,
Like a good parent, did beget of him,
A falsehood, in its contrary as great
As my trust was; which had, indeed, no limit,
A confidence sans bound.
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