"The Man in the Moon"

In Act II of the Tempest there are 7 instances where the word "moon" comes up. I wasn't even looking for it, and after a while, I just kept noticing it. So, then I had to go back and count...and find out Shakespeare's motive behind this particular word usage:

1. Gonzalo: "You are gentlemen of brave metal; you would lift the

moon out of

her sphere, if

she would continue in it five weeks without changing."

2. Antonio: "The man i' the moon's too slow..."

3. Stephano: "How camest thou to be the siege of this moon-calf?"

4. Trinculo: "I hid me under the dead moon-calf's gaberdine for fear of the storm."

5. Sephano: "How now, moon-calf! How does thine ague?"

6. Stephano: "Out o' the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man i' the

moon when time was."

7. By this good light, this is a very shallow monster! I afeard of him! A very weak monster! The man i' the moon!"

Here are a few things that I found with a good amount of Google-Searching:

"Elizabethans believed the earth was flat...There was a sharp division between everything beneath the sphere of the moon, and all the rest of the universe."

Moon-calf actually refers to an aborted fetus, "abortive, shapeless, fleshy mass" attributed to the influence of the moon.

According to the Oxford Companion to the Body, the moon is thought of as the most "human" in the heavens (probably because many people found people or faces in the craters of the moon), and as a result of its phases, it has been linked to many other life cycles. Its three most common connotations are: the feminine principle, controlling menstruation, and cause madness, (the term lunacy is derived from the Latin luna, which means moon!).

So What?

With all of this information, I think that Shakespeare is using the

"man in the moon" and "moon-calf" so often because in this act, one, because there is a lot of lunacy going on, but also for the other moon connotations that an Elizabethan audience would have caught. Caliban, for one, does not have a distinctive human or animal form, so it makes sense for the stranded men to call him "moon-calf." Plus, he is driven by natural human vices, such as alcohol consumption... Shakespeare refers to the female using the moon, cycles of life, as well as madness with mentions of "moon" in Act 2.

A Romantic Tempest

So far, The Tempest conjures up many Romantic paintings in my mind. For a little background, Romanticism was a period in the 18th century dealing with themes like:

Being in awe with nature, especially untamed nature

Elevating folk art

Embracing the exotic and unfamiliar

Pushing the imagination

It is an art period with a lot of landscapes, but definitely not serene ones...

The first scene of this play struck me as very Romantic. With the tempest itself, and well as how the men go from being indignant about the storm, to Gonzalo saying "would I give a thousand furlongs of the sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any thing."

And then the opening of scene ii with Miranda's speech about the shipwreck just conjures up Romantic paintings all over the page for me:

"If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,

But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in

her, Dash'd all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish'd.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere

It should the good ship so have swallow'd and
The fraughting souls within her."

Beautiful. Fantastic. Romantic. I am excited for this play.